An article in NBC News reports on dramatic warnings issued by executives of the World Food Program and the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) about the ongoing energy and food crisis resulting from the Iran war.
WFP Deputy Executive Director Carl Skau told reporters in Geneva last week that “an extra 45 million people are projected to be pushed into acute hunger because of rises in food, oil and shipping costs, putting the global tally above its current record level of 319 million…. This would take global hunger levels to an all-time record and it’s a terrible, terrible prospect,” he said. “Already, before this war, we were in a perfect storm where hunger has never been as severe as now, in terms of numbers and how deep that hunger is,” he added.
Similarly, Máximo Torero, the chief economist of the FAO, is warning that, reports NBC, “the duration of the war will be pivotal to maintaining global food stocks…. A short-term disruption of up to one month could be absorbed, he told a U.N. briefing last week, but if the disruption persists for three months or longer, the risks escalate significantly and impact farmers globally, affecting planting decisions across the globe for this year and beyond.”
