JASs ReportsJournal of Anthropological Sciences

Vol. 83 (2005), pp. 119-125

the JASs is published by the Istituto Italiano di Antropologia www.isita-org.com

Malnutrition and distribution of food resources

Carlo Cannella1 & Giovanni Costa2

1) Istituto di Scienza dell’Alimentazione, Università “La Sapienza”, Piazzale Aldo Moro 5, 00185 Roma.e-mail: carlo.cannella@uniroma1.it

2) Scuola di Specializzazione in Scienza dell’Alimentazione, Università “La Sapienza”, Piazzale Aldo Moro5, 00185 Roma.

In memory of Massimo Cresta (Naples, March 9th 1928 - Rome, May 12th 2003)

Summary – The chronically undernourished or malnourished people in the world are about 800 million.This is an alarming figure that should be halved in 2015 following the actions springing from the decisionsof the First World Food Summit, promoted by FAO in Rome in 1996. Anyway, during the time following thismeeting, the reduction registered of about 8 million undernourished or malnourished people every year showedto be insufficient to grant the achievement of the goal, that would require an average decrease of about 20 mil-lions per year. Thus, the Second Summit, held in June 2002 with the aim of promoting or renewing the polit-ical will to fight against hunger and to mobilise the necessary economical resources, could only ascertain thecurrent inadequacy of the countermeasures undertaken. An important concept that emerges from the statistics,is that, at a world level, the food resources are enough to grant an adequate nutritional status to everybody.Nevertheless excessive assumptions of nutrients are observed in the industrialized countries to the detriment ofthe largely inadequate intakes for the developing countries. Starting from the latest decades the technologicaland cognitive progress of food technologies proposed considerable potential with regards to quality and foodsafety. The increase of crop yield through varied selections and new agrarian technologies; the preparation,transformation, conservation and commercialization of food, showed to have such an evolution which madeavailable more and more attractive, healthy foods with a higher added value. This also affected a certain evo-lution of the approach to feeding: food is not only the source of subsistence but also the fulfillment of socialneeds – nutritional aspects apart. The interventions to reduce poverty must not be limited to increasing thetechnical knowledge and the logistic infrastructures, but must operate a revision of the support politics and ofinternational trade, in order to promote a free market that is effectively accessible to everybody. In a widerview, the fight against hunger and misery passes through economical and political systems, through education,freedom of thought and of the press.

Keywords – World Food Summit, Food resources, Food availability, GMO crops.

The World Food Summit

The chronically undernourished or malnour-ished people in the world are about 800 million.This is an alarming figure that should be halvedin 2015 thanks to the actions springing from thedecisions of the First World Food Summit, pro-

moted by FAO and that took place in Rome in1996. Anyway, during the time following thismeeting, the reduction registered of about 8 mil-lion undernourished or malnourished peopleevery year showed to be insufficient to grant theachievement of the goal, that would require anaverage decrease of about 20 millions per year.

Thus, the Second Summit, held in June 2002 withthe aim of promoting or renewing the politicalwill to fight against hunger and to mobilize thenecessary economical resources, could only ascer-tain the current inadequacy of the countermea-sures undertaken.During this event, it emerged that, actually, somedeveloped countries do not regard this problem asone of their priorities either because most of themconsidered useless to carry out the second summitin such a “short” distance from the first one, orbecause very few heads of government of thecountries themselves intervened personally duringthe meeting days. This absence and lack of sensi-tivity was cited in detail by the general manager ofFAO, Jacques Diouf, who also emphasized howthe elimination of poverty and hunger is an essentialstep to fight at the root also other phenomena such asviolence and terrorism.In order to better understand the problem ofhunger in the world, and the related positions ofthe different countries, it is necessary to exploremany aspects, that go from the availability of nat-ural resources, to the cultural profiles, to the his-torical and economical factors that affected andstill affect the distribution of feeding resourcesand, as a consequence, also the availability and thenutritional and dietary safety.

The distribution of food resources

An important concept that emerges from thestatistics, is that, at a world level, the foodresources are enough to grant an adequate nutri-tional status to everybody. Nevertheless excessiveassumptions of nutrients are observed in theindustrialized countries to the detriment of thelargely inadequate intakes for the developingcountries.

In fact, in the last decade, the availability ofcalories per capita in the industrialized countrieswas of 3183 kcal per day, against 2584 in thedeveloping countries in general, and 2411 ofAfrica in particular. Those values allow the assess-ment, for example for Africa, of a percentage ofpeople of 13-20% living under the critical limit of1900 kcal/die. To this regard, an equal distribu-tion of the feeding resources would grant an aver-age assumption higher than 2700 kcal/die per

capita (such a level would allow a correct nutri-tional status) for the whole world population.

This unbalance is the main cause of the devel-oping countries’ fight against the rate of illnessesand mortality due to caloric and protein malnutri-tion, lack of vitamin A, vitamin C, thiamin, iron,iodine, while the main causes of death in thedeveloped countries (metabolic and cardiovasculardiseases, cancer) have as an important etiologicalfactor the excess of food.

The insufficiency of the caloric intake howev-er is only one of the components of malnutrition.An adequate nutritional status comes from a feed-ing that includes various main food groups as oil-seeds, cereals, legumes, animal derived foods,starchy foods and leaf vegetables. The assumptionof balanced quantities of food belonging to thedifferent groups is essential to supply the mini-mum intake of vitamins, minerals, essential fattyacids, energy and protein required to grant a cor-rect health status.

Actually, observing more in detail the foodavailabilities, the unbalance among people is moreand more evident. In the comparison amongdeveloping and industrialized countries, besidesthe differences from an energetic point of view, thelarge disparity is in the intake of nutrients causedby relevantly different types of diets.

To this purpose it can be useful to refer tothe Table, that reports the comparison of somedata regarding Equatorial central Africa, Europeof central Mediterranean and Northern America(Tab. 1).

Food availability and choices

The intakes of nutrients, adequate or not,in any case come from the food consumptionsthat are the result of complex interactionsinvolving a tangled game of decisions andavailability.

The factors that affect the food consump-tion availabilities are related to cultural, social,hydro graphic, climatic, technological, eco-nomical, etc. aspects (Tab. 2). Each feeding pro-file is therefore characterized by a variable freedomof choice (a progressively lower choice capabilitycan be recorded in populations with a lower ener-getic availability).

120 Malnutrition and Food

Thus, in order to have an idea of the phenom-ena that are at the basis of the problem faced bythe Summit it is necessary to consider the sceneryof the feeding choices taking into account somehistorical and social aspects.

Historical ties and freedom in feeding choice

In the fifty years between the nineteenth andtwentieth century, Europe had already sharedAfrica and created colonization and economicalinfluence areas in Asia, while the U.S. became animportant presence in the world economy andstarted to control the markets in Latin Americaand in part of the Pacific. This determined thedivision of the world into two parts. On one sidethere were the colonizers: France, Belgium,Great Britain, Italy, Portugal, Spain, U.S., Japanand Russia; on the other side there was all therest.

Obviously the colonizing countries benefitedfrom the technologies that the industrial revolu-tion gave them while those colonized only hadbasic raw material that was useful in developingthe economical interests of the former.

The war events and the economical crisis inthe first half of twentieth century created a newsituation that was also critical from a feeding pointof view, since large zones of population in devel-oped countries were exposed to malnourishmentproblems, essentially due to poverty. This broughta significant push towards the increase of primaryproduction, since it was not possible to furtherexploit the non-developed countries due to diffi-culties in transportation. This aspect allowed nosignificant variation in the profile of food con-sumption in the non-developed countries in thisperiod of time.

With the end of the Second World War wenote a gradual recovery of the colonizing countriesand the conquest of political independence in thecolonized countries. At the same time a consider-able demographic growth can be observed. In factthere was a doubling of the world population inless than a century (from 1,6 to 3,2 billions peoplebetween the end of the nineteenth century and thesixties of the twentieth), up to the achievement of6 billions people in 1999. To this demographicincrease corresponded a strong tendency to urban-

ization, with the consequent reduction of that partof population dedicated to the primary agricultur-al production – that is a basic source for food –that paved the way to the appearance of the foodunbalance phenomena.

The progress of agricultural technologiesbetween the sixties and the eighties offered a solu-tion to the food problem. For example, those tech-nologies lead to double the yield of the wheatgrowing in Europe, and corn in the U.S., in lessthan 20 years. However, the benefits of thoseinnovations were not the same for all countries. Infact, in the seventies and eighties the yield of cere-als for each farmer was of 18 tons in Europe, 101tons in the U.S. and in Canada and only 500 kgin sub-Saharan Africa.

In the ex-colonized countries agriculture pro-duced 70-80% of the total revenue, but receivedonly 20-30% of the financing. This factor defi-nitely increased the phenomenon of the migrationfrom the country with the consequent demo-graphic increase in the urban and suburban areas.But those areas were not socially and economical-ly ready to receive such an increase, so consequentdevastating nutritional effects in the weaker cate-gories were shown. Those effects are still dramati-cally evident nowadays too.

The economical influence of the ex-colonizingcountries did not disappear with the independenceof the colonized countries. In fact, the cultivationsof the latter were prevalently dedicated to the rawmaterial to be exported in the former, to the detri-ment of the cultivations that should have grantedthe feeding self-sufficiency of those countries thatin this way were going towards a chronic underde-velopment situation.

Thus, the international trade underwent sub-stantial changes: the non-developed countriesbecame food importers and the developed coun-tries had to face exceeding food production com-paring to their needs. This created a strong tradepressure on the non developed countries and, asa consequence, a low competitiveness on themarket of the latter. Furthermore, the foodimports of the non-developed countries wereaddressed essentially to the urban population,whose demand for local products was in this waybecoming progressively lower. This caused a fur-ther curb to the development of the income oflocal farmers and a consequent increase of the

C. Cannella & G. Costa 121

country abandonment.

The result of all said above is the strong foodunbalance that can be seen since the sixties andseventies, with a diet of the non-developed coun-tries essentially made up of vegetable food, whilein the developed countries the consumption ofanimal food increased progressively, overcomingthe quantities adequate to the needs.

In ‘74, already, the World Food Conferenceheld in Rome was obliged to admit that the meansused to fight hunger until that time showed to beinefficient.

The current situation and possiblesolutions

Starting from the latest decades the technolog-ical and cognitive progress of food technologiesproposed considerable potential with regards toquality and food safety. The increase of crop yieldthrough varied selections and new agrarian tech-nologies; the preparation, transformation, conser-vation and commercialization of food, showed tohave such an evolution which made available moreand more attractive, healthy foods with a higheradded value. This also affected a certain evolutionof the approach to feeding: food is not only thesource of subsistence but also the fulfillment ofsocial needs – nutritional aspects apart.

Today the food industry in the developedcountries has thus to compete in a market wherethe health of the products must be granted, alongwith high organoleptic qualities, availability, prac-ticality in use. All this needs the adoption of mar-keting strategies and production and distributiontechnologies that require strong investments. Theyalso have high costs that are obviously connectedto the final price of the consumption product.

The consequence is that to increase or main-tain the market share keeping competitive prices,one of the costs that the Industry tends to reduceis exactly that of raw material purchase.

That is why the economic and productive real-ities of the developed countries incentivate thecultivation of intensive high-yield mono-crop-pings destined to exportation, creating a everincreasing dependency towards a complex andonerous system for the developing countries (seed-banks, fertilizers, agricultural machines, financing,

political organizations).In one side, this phenomenon penalized thosesimple and family-run agricultural techniques thatcould grant food self-sufficiency; in the other side,it created the conditions for the impoverishmentof the soil in those elements that are essential forthe growing of vegetables. But, at the same time,the local farmers that were not directly involved inthe business of holdings, could not easily getaccess to the purchase of fertilizers (in Africa thephosphate fertilizers cost six times more than inEurope or in the United States).

It should also be considered that a large part ofthe agricultural production of the developingcountries is made up of mono-croppings dedicat-ed to the exportation of feed for the animals of thedeveloped countries. This deserves attention, asthe agricultural yield of the feed is much lowerthat that of vegetables destined to the human feed-ing (a same extension of territory can producemore than 10 times protein if it is cultivated withcereals and legumes for the direct human con-sumption, instead of being destined to grazing orto croppings for the production of feed).

In addition, the current food market requiresspecific properties, such as, for example, the trace-ability which the small farmers of the non-devel-oped countries can hardly be conform with.Custom duties and bureaucratic obstacles imposedby the major international organizations are addedto all above said, along with the economical sup-ports destined in a large part to the agriculture ofthe developed countries.

All those aspects contribute to the realizationof a scenery in which, despite products with a everincreasing added value, the prices to the cultiva-tors are kept stable, when not reduced. The mar-gins of earning are reserved to those who trans-form the product or, in the best of cases, to theprimary production when this is realized on a largescale (however, in this case the small cultivatorsthat are not associated and not protected and thatcan only dispose of traditional techniques, are notfavoured).

Finally, even though the potential advantagesfor the developing countries represented a consid-erable push for the introduction of GMO, the realbenefits of the latter are still under discussion.Even if the factors connected with the food andenvironmental safety or with the ethic admissibil-

122 Malnutrition and Food

ity, the hypothesis that the developing countriesmay effectively benefit of the GMO crops are notreliable since the holdings that own the productsinvested considerable resources and expect profitsthat those countries – obliged to be submitted topatents and economical ties – cannot grant.

Furthermore, most part of GMO is applied tocrops destined to animal feeding and, even in caseof products destined to human feeding, anincreased productiveness in not always granted.For example, the genetically modified soy for theresistance to herbicide, other than varying themicrobic profile of the soil and promoting a resist-ance in the surrounding herbage, shows a yieldwhich is lower from 4 to 8% lower than the nonmodified soy.All the above points out that, despite to the glob-alization of the markets (that theoretically couldmake the food necessary for all available) a grow-ing marginalization of entire populations can beobserved; the inadequacy of the food intake of thedeveloping countries is due to the fact that theyare really excluded from the international markets.This gives a more accurate vision of the problemof hunger in the world: it is not much a questionof food lack but the difficulty of access to food,that is at the same time the cause and the effect of

misery, for a large part of the world populationthat do not achieve incomes that are enough tohave granted an adequate health status.In order to effectively face the problem of eco-nomic marginalization of the developing countriesit would be necessary:- to implement technologies and economic andorganizational systems that foster the associationsand the transfer of know how to increase the agri-cultural productiveness with the aim of achievingthe economical and feeding self-sufficiency;- to contrast those local economic and social phe-nomena that inhibit the growing of incomes, suchas the lands’ allotment;- to strengthen the infrastructures and theexchanges in a biunique way in order to allow aneasier access to fertilizers;- to promote the differentiation and rotation ofthe crops to limit the impoverishment of the soil;- to sustain the selection of more productive ormore resistant varieties also for primary local food(for example, Manioca).

The technologies for water supply, for exam-ple, would be available at a low cost, but the lackof technical knowledge and infrastructures for theexchanges delay the development in this sense.Thus, once more the aids to the developing coun-

Tab. 1 - Nutritional and food availabilities (FAO data, 1994-1996).

C. Cannella & G. Costa 123

tries must be addressed to those interventions thatcan foster self-sufficiency such as the strengthen-ing of the infrastructures and of local technologieswith the aim of ensuring the access to theresources and competitiveness in the production.Finally, it is clear that the access to food comesfrom the development of the local revenues com-ing from, in its turn, the valorisation of local agri-culture through the improvement of the access tothe know how, to the technological and energeticresources, to fertilizers and to water.

This kind of actions would allow the growth ofthe quality of life in these countries, creating suchprices that allow an adequate income for smallfarmers and to increase in this way the discharge-able demand in these social classes, with the aim oflimiting the phenomena of the abandonment ofagriculture – even though this aim is often in con-trast with the direct interests of the Governmentswhich power depends essentially from the votescoming from the towns.

A further essential step for the development of

local revenues is the transfer of technologies andknowledge to allow the developing countries toproduce and eventually export semi-manufacturedand finished products, as well as raw material. Inthis way they can increase the added value to theproduction and, as a consequence, they canincrease their margins and revenues. Many FAOprojects are addressed and aimed at this.

Furthermore, the interventions to reducepoverty must not be limited to increasing the tech-nical knowledge and the logistic infrastructures,but must operate a revision of the support politicsand of international trade, in order to promote afree market that is effectively accessible to every-body. In a wider view, the fight against hungerand misery passes through economical and politi-cal systems, through education, freedom ofthought and of the press.

Of course such activities require strong goodwill of the governments and of the public opin-ion, as well as the real awareness that hunger andmalnourishment are “the result of one of the

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Tab. 2 - Factors conditioning the availabilities of food consumption in the phases going from theproduction to the consumption (Cresta, 2000).

most complex underdevelopment conditions,caused by inertia or by men’s egoism”, as it ispointed out by the Pope in his message to the rep-resentatives of the world Countries meeting inRome in 2002 for the second World FoodSummit.

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