In years past, it was nat­ural dis­as­ters that led to increases of hun­gry peo­ple, but now it’s mankind’s doing.

The UN’s Food and Agri­cul­ture Orga­ni­za­tion says there are now 1 bil­lion hun­gry peo­ple in the world, that’s more then ever before. The FAO puts the blame squarely on the global reces­sion and ris­ing food prices.

From this VOA story that we found at New Jer­sey News Room, writer Joe De Caupa recieved some quotes from FAO direc­tor Jacques Diouf.

“The num­ber of those suf­fer­ing from chronic hunger in the world has topped one bil­lion in 2009. One bil­lion and 20 mil­lion to be more pre­cise,” he says.

Diouf says a “dan­ger­ous mix” of the global eco­nomic slow­down and very high food prices pushed another 100 mil­lion peo­ple into the hun­gry cat­e­gory over the past year.

“Nei­ther drought, nor floods or dis­as­trous har­vests can be held to blame this time. Wors­en­ing hunger in the last three years largely stems from eco­nomic shocks,” he says.

This includes the global credit crunch, falling trade and invest­ment flows, declin­ing remit­tances and bud­getary pres­sures on devel­op­ment aid.

“The finan­cial and eco­nomic cri­sis is hav­ing a par­tic­u­larly pro­found impact on poor and rural house­holds, specif­i­cally, the rural land­less, the urban poor and the female-headed house­holds,” he says.

The lat­est fig­ures show the num­ber of hun­gry peo­ple in the Asia-Pacific region is up 10.5 per­cent. In sub-Saharan Africa, there’s an 11.8 per­cent increase. The Near East and North Africa are up 13.5 per­cent. Latin Amer­ica and the Caribbean show a 12.8 per­cent increase. Even devel­oped coun­tries are not immune, show­ing a nearly 15 and a half per­cent hike in the num­ber of hun­gry people.

The FAO leader says the world’s food sys­tem is “frag­ile and vulnerable.”

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