World View : Three Faces of Hunger : It’s not just Somalia. Hundreds of millions go hungry even though the world has the resources to feed them.

WASHINGTON —  At the end of the 20th Century, an era marked by space exploration, computer wizardry and test-tube babies, the status of the human race may more accurately be reflected in a sobering statistic: 786 million people--almost one in every six on the globe--are suffering from acute or chronic hunger. More than a billion more face various forms of serious malnutrition.

“Somalia is a drop in the bucket,” said Marc Cohen, one of the authors of “Hunger 1993,” a publication of the Bread for the World Institute.

Despite mankind’s advances, one of its biggest problems is primordial. And while the hardest-hit areas are in South and East Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, the trend is not limited to underdeveloped countries.

“Hunger and malnutrition remain as the most devastating problems facing the majority of the world’s poor. Despite general improvements in food availability, health and social services, hunger and malnutrition exist in some form in almost every country,” concluded a recent survey by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization.

Experts refer to the three faces of hunger--acute, as in Somalia, where large numbers face imminent starvation; chronic, as in poverty-stricken, overpopulated and resource-poor countries like Bangladesh, and the “hidden” hunger that is worldwide, plaguing even industrialized nations.

Even the United States has a growing problem. Between 1985 and 1992, the number of Americans suffering from hunger rose from 20 million to 30 million, the Tufts University School of Nutrition reported. It called the trend an epidemic.

Over the past three years, hunger has also become widespread in Eastern European countries, especially Russia, Bulgaria and Romania, while hunger in Albania has reached the level of sub-Saharan Africa, according to David Beckmann, president of Bread for the World, a grass-roots lobbying group on hunger issues in Washington.

But unlike previous periods, when famine fueled the cycles of starvation, the current crisis is all the more tragic because it is unnecessary.

“The world is capable of feeding decently all its inhabitants. That it is conspicuously not doing so at present is the product not of necessity but of choice,” concludes a report in the “New State of the World Atlas,” a survey of worldwide political and economic change.

There have been major changes over the past 40 years in the problem of hunger--including advances and setbacks.

“Despite the enormous problem in Somalia and a number of other countries, the long-term trend since 1950--of the numbers suffering from hunger--is clearly downward,” said Robert Kates, director of Brown University’s World Hunger Program.

In 1969-’71, more than 940 million people in the developing world--or 36% of its population at the time--were chronically undernourished, compared with 20% in 1990, according to the U.N. food agency.

The good news can be traced to breakthroughs in the 1970s and early 1980s. “Over the course of the 1970s, new governments did something about food security. Places like Niger and Indonesia invested real resources in producing food and becoming more self-reliant,” Cohen said.

China and India, the world’s most populous countries, which also had the largest numbers suffering from hunger, also made major strides through better food production and distribution and by introducing work-for-food programs.

As a result, economists and relief agencies doubt China will again experience the kind of major starvation witnessed in 1958-’62, when 15 million to 30 million people are estimated to have died.

“It was a real turning point when one of the two most populous countries in the world, which had been famine-prone, learned to successfully deal with famine and prevent famine-related deaths,” Kates said.

The United States also made striking gains in reversing hunger and malnutrition in the 1970s, largely through federal food programs.

The second breakthrough evolved during the last cycle of African drought in the early 1980s, particularly in Ethiopia, when the international community learned how to provide and distribute mass aid. Early warning systems were also developed to detect weather patterns, so relief organizations and donor nations could remain one step ahead of new famines.

The improvements in dealing with food production, aid logistics and weather mean that epidemics of hunger are now mostly “man-made. Starvation is now often a political problem,” said James T. Hill, economist with the U.N. food agency.

“The world now has systems in place that mean the only times people starve is when someone wants them to starve,” Beckmann said.

But there were also setbacks in the 1980s, as the hunger crisis became more complex, weaving together such disparate factors as birthrates, debt crises, ancient ethnic or clan rivalries, misuse of land and water resources, and even political change.

“The 1980s were tough times, particularly in Africa and Latin America. In 1983, we had the longest recession since the Great Depression, which provoked the debt crisis from which many have still not recovered,” Beckmann said.

To deal with their financial crises, many countries in the mid- and late 1980s either opted or were forced to cut the very programs--notably in nutrition and health--developed in the 1970s to counter hunger. Third World governments were often more willing to cut welfare services than defense expenditures, just as many donor nations favored military aid over social programs.

That shift coincided with a period when the global population neared 5 billion--compared with 2 billion in 1930--and began to threaten the “caring” capacity of the land, said J. Joseph Speidel, president of the Population Crisis Committee.

By the end of the decade, political and economic frustrations were also spawning unprecedented global change. But as whole political systems--from apartheid to Marxism--collapsed, the new openings also freed up old animosities among religious, tribal, national and clan groupings.

In 1990, all of those factors exploded in Somalia--as per capita annual income sunk to $150, as a soaring birthrate (the average family exceeded six children) meant a doubling of the population within 24 years, and finally as the political system dissolved into the anarchy of clan warfare.

All of those factors also do not bode well for the three faces of hunger in the early 1990s.

The worst crises of acute hunger in southern Africa have been eased somewhat by recent rains and decent harvests, while the U.S. and U.N. missions will eventually help Somalia.

But other acute cases--the vast majority in strife-torn areas--have almost no imminent prospects of relief. “The only places on Earth where people are dying of famine is where there is a simultaneous famine and war, like in Mozambique, Sudan and potentially Liberia and Afghanistan,” Kates said.

Economists and relief agencies say that the major remaining hurdle in dealing with acute hunger is finding a mechanism, forum or force to deal with the strife that prevents aid distribution.

Various attempts to create humanitarian space within the context of armed conflicts, such as “corridors of tranquillity,” have been successful in Sudan and Angola but haven’t worked in Yugoslavia. “We’re making hesitating and slow progress,” Kates said, “to what would be a major human achievement.”

The overall forecast for chronic and hidden hunger and malnutrition may be bleaker, largely because poverty, high birthrates and poor use of resources have created a vicious cycle.

“People are getting poorer, and the rate of development growth, food production and wealth are not keeping up with the population,” said Bronek Szynalski, director of emergency relief for the U.N. World Food Program in Rome.

Indeed, the gap between rich and poor nations grew to new extremes over the past decade. In 1981, the GNP per capita in the developed world was $8,600, compared with $700 in poor countries. By 1990, per capita income in the developed world more than doubled to $17,900, while in poor countries income rose by only $110, reports the Population Crisis Committee.

And lowering birthrates would take time to make a difference. “Even if we immediately went to a two-child family around the world, the population would still grow by 3 billion people until it stabilized,” Speidel said.

Population growth strains already limited land available for agriculture.

The bottom line is that many developing nations have no prospects of restoring programs to deal with chronic or hidden hunger and malnutrition anytime soon. Meanwhile, “the international community is not able to cope with all the crises. Everybody wants the United Nations to do something, but it has limited resources,” Szynalski said.

But developing countries are not alone. For similar reasons, Eastern Europe has become one of the fastest-growing regions of hidden and potentially chronic hunger and malnutrition.

Albania, a largely agricultural country, now depends on foreign aid for 75% of its food, while 30% of children outside the capital suffer from malnutrition. Families unable to feed their children are now surrendering them to orphanages, according to Bread for the World.

In Bulgaria, 60% of the average household’s expenditures went for food last year, while food prices in Czechoslovakia went up 70% between 1989 and 1991. And even in areas of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union where there is more food, free markets have often made it too expensive.

Neither is the United States exempt. “1992 has been a bad year for hungry people in this country,” Beckmann said.

“The U.S. recession and structural changes in the economy led to a 26% increase in requests for emergency food assistance in major cities last year. And as of April, 1992, a record number of Americans--23 million, or 10%--were dependent on food stamps.”

In response to the soaring need in the United States, more than 55,000 private agencies now sponsor food programs, compared with only a few in the early 1980s, according to Bread for the World.

“Yet,” Beckmann noted, “they can’t keep up.”

The fight to feed the needy stretches far from Africa’s crisis points. About 2 billion of the world’s 5.5 billion people are malnourished in some way, according to the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization. Experts divide the underfed into three categories: CHRONIC HUNGER

People who daily food intake is inadequate for health, growth and minimum energy needs and with potential to endanger life. The bulk in this category, estimated to number at least 750 million, are in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. Among the affected countries are Bangladesh, Pakistan, India and Sri Lanka.

CASE: BANGLADESH Population: 110.7 million People per sq. km: 768,750 Life expectancy: 51 Birth rate (per 1,000 population): 37 Infant mortality rate (per 1,000 live births): 106 Daily calorie supply (per capita): 1, 925 Typical diet: Rice and fish, served together in curry sauce; limited fruits and vegetables. tea. ACUTE HUNGER

People threatened with imminent death because of an absolute shortage of food. Up to 35 million are at risk in this category, including many in Africa, including Somalia and the drought-stricken southern states such as Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Malawi.

CASE: SOMALIA Population: 6.1 million People per sq. km: 9,561 Life expectancy: 48 Birth rate (per 1,000 population): 48 Infant mortality rate (per 1,000 live births): 128 Daily calorie supply (per capita): 1,736 Typical diet: Corn, sorghum, limited amounts of vegetables and fruits, fish (along coast only), milk, coffee, tea.

HIDDEN HUNGER

People unable to meet requirements for an adequate diet on a prolonged basis and with the potential to shorten their lifespan. Virtually every country, including the United States, has pockets of malnutrition. About 192 million children suffer from protein-energy malnutrition, for example, while 1.5 billion people suffer from iron-deficient anemia.

CASE: UNITED STATES Population: 248.8 million People per sq. km: 26,544 Life expectancy: 76 Birth rate (per 1,000 population): 15 Infant mortality rate (per 1,000 live births): 10 Daily calorie supply (per capita): 3,666 Typical diet: Wide variety of meats, fruits, dairy products and vegetables. Source: World Bank World Development Report 1991; U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization; “Hunger 1993” by the Bread for the World Institute; Robert Kates, director of the Alan Shawn Feinstein World Hunger Program at Brown University; Area Handbook for Somalia.

What the Body Needs

THE IDEAL DAILY DIET Here are the U.S. government’s recommendations for a proper diet. Milk, Yogurt and Cheese Group: 2 to 3 servings Vegetable group: 3 to 5 servings Fats, oils and sweets: Use sparingly Meat, Poultry, Fish, Dry Beans, Eggs and Nut Group: 3 to 5 servings

Fruit Group: 2 to 4 servings Bread, Cereal, Rice and Pasta Group: 6 to 11 servings

HITTING 2,000 The U.S. Department of Agriculture suggests that a 10-year-old consume 2,000 calories per day. An unbalanced diet notwithstanding, he or she would have to eat roughly the following amounts of each food to reach the 2,000 mark. 4 pounds of boiled white rice 14 1/2 cups cooked corn 3 1/2 pounds pasta 2 2/3 pounds of skinless chicken breast 3 2/3 Big Macs 12 scoops of chocolate ice cream from Baskin Robbins 9 glazed donuts from Dunkin Donuts 10 3/4 tacos from tacos from Taco Bell. 12 3/4 cans of Pepsi Source: AID; UNDRO; World Resources Institute; World Bank; The Calorie Factor; Margo Feoden, 1989.

The Big Picture: Third World Progress

The Somalian tragedy belies the real progress made in reducing global hunger. Starting in the 1970s, Third World governments created programs in nutrition and health that reduced the toil. Only recently have soaring populations, poverty, budget cuts and warfare threatened that progress. Source: U.N. FOOD AND AGRICULTURE ORGANIZATION