David Beasley, the head of the World Food Program, explained to TIME why it’s 2023.
Ten years ago, TIME asked its predecessor if the planet would still produce enough food for everyone. She said yes.
I think we will fight to have enough food in the future. We may not have enough food for everyone in 2023. No there is a doubt that we can produce enough food for the world’s population; Humanity is strategic enough to achieve this. The question is whether, because of wars, conflicts, corruption and destabilization, we do. Look, two hundred years ago, there were 1. 1 billion people on planet Earth, and 95% of them lived in extreme poverty. Today, less than 10% live in extreme poverty. But in the last five years, we’ve absolutely gone backwards, and it’s not just a little bit either. That scares anyone.
Why are we going backwards?
When I took on this task six years ago, there were 80 million people starving. That number rose to 135 million just before COVID, [due to] man-made conflicts and climate crises. COVID arrives and the number rises to 276 million. This is before Ethiopia. That before Afghanistan. That before Ukraine. Ukraine produces enough food to feed 400 million more people. It went from the largest barn in the world to the longest queues. Combined with fertilizer prices, droughts, supply chain disruptions, fuel costs, food costs, shipping costs, we now have 349 million other people starving.
Your term expires in April 2023. What do you want to do before you leave?
I have worked to awaken world leaders to the truth that food security is the crisis of fashionable times. If you need to know which countries in the next 12 to 18 months could have destabilization and mass migration, start with the 49 that are calling. The door of hunger at this time. And the new figures are coming in about wheat production, grain production, grain production in India, Argentina, Brazil, and it’s going down, down, down, down. The consultation now is how to move this forward. . Because it’s not a quick fix.
Have you ever been bothered that the United States has sent $17. 5 billion to Ukraine and not even a portion of the burdens of millions of other starving people?
Leaders don’t have enough cash to fund all desires. They will have to prioritize what is imperative for stability on earth, to things that are in their interest to national security. Many leaders say: Why do I send cash to Guatemala or Chad when I have infrastructure, education, and physical care needs in Michigan or Bavaria?I’m saying that a child from Guatemala or Honduras who is in a shelter at the U. S. border is not in the U. S. In the U. S. , it costs $4,000 per week, I can set up a resilience program so that the child is food secure at home.
Would you like to see a negotiated settlement in Ukraine?
I’m very much with world leaders. Everyone runs while playing Whac-a-Mole and does not solve the serious disorders in the world. Slow down, solve Yemen, solve Ethiopia, solve Ukraine, solve one of them.
You argue that if we are food secure, other people will stay where they are and it is less destabilizing. Is it keeping up with climate change?
If you do research in places like Somalia and the Sahel (Niger, Mali, Chad, Burkina Faso), where we have been able to put resilience programs in place, the impact of recent crises on those communities is smaller and require less support. We can stabilize the population. This also applies to Heads of Government. I tried to get donors to give progression dollars to, say, Syria. If I can create food security for smallholder farmers, they will be more self-sufficient and able to make independent decisions about their future.
Won’t climate replacement drive Somalis off their farms?
We cannot blame the Somalis for this, although we can blame them for many other things. I tell leaders that if, frankly, industrialized countries have contributed to climate change, they have a legal and ethical responsibility to provide adaptation responses on the ground. . Do you do what you say or not? And if not, get ready for a big migration that will charge you a thousand times more.