Growth in world population does not lead to more hunger, says FAO director

Vatican City, Oct 14, 2009 / 11:29 am

During his remarks at the Synod of Bishops of Africa taking place at the Vatican, the Director of the United Nations Organization for Food and Agriculture (FAO), Jacques Diouf, rejected the myth that the increase in hunger is directly related to the increase in world population.
 
In an interview with L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican’s Permanent Observer at the FAO, Archbishop Renato Volante, said Diouf made his remarks in response to a question posed to him by the synod fathers.
 
Archbishop Volante said this myth is “certainly a false problem.”
 
Already in 1996, he reminded, John Paul II clearly pointed out: “It would an illusion to think that an arbitrary stabilization of world population could directly resolve the problem of hunger.”
 
Thus, Archbishop Volante said, “Mr. Diouf clearly and synthetically repeated the same concept: it is not the amount of people that creates hunger in the world.”
 
What creates hunger, he said, “is the lack of water, the differences between an opulent world that throws food away, and a poor world that has no food; it is the scandal of the destruction of food in rich countries that cannot be donated to countries suffering from hunger because of legal reasons.”
 
These “are the elements that create hunger in the world, and not the population,” Archbishop Volante said.  “And these elements must often be attributed to the lack of solidarity and to the selfishness of many of us.”