Bloomberg News made the story its "chart of the day". Comedian Sarah Silverman came up with a tongue-in-cheek answer - sell the Vatican - that had been viewed on YouTube a half million times when I last checked.
But the disturbing number, which came on World Food Day, is deadly serious. As Eleanor Roosevelt remarked, "The first great human right to most of the people of the world is the right to eat." And that's a right and a goal that is ingrained in many religious traditions. Feeding the hungry is right up there with loving God and caring for one's neighbor.
The one billion number is the tragic result of two facts. The financial and economic crisis has combined with sharp increases in food prices, so many more people can't afford to buy enough to feed their families. And many have lost jobs, so the estimates of hungry and malnourished people have shot up. But there are deeper problems at work that demand financial resources (the G20 promised $22 billion), intellectual investment and some true moral leadership.
Investments in African agriculture collapsed, I believe, because problem-ridden programs led to a collective cynicism and depression. So there's a huge catch-up needed all around. Money is needed for research, for on-the-ground programs, and for training.
Intellectual input is needed because these are tough problems that have defeated many dedicated people in the past. I worked on agriculture in Africa for two decades and can attest to how heartbreaking it can be when Murphy's Law creeps in and everything that can go wrong - including locusts, plagues, drought, corruption and so on - does. The chronic difficulty of implementing programs is already more difficult because climate change is upon us. Droughts and floods are early but unmistakable signs of things to come.
Even when funds are available, debates rage around the right course of action to help agriculture, which results in no action being taken at all.
One source many look to is the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. In a speech last week, Bill Gates called small-holder farmers, especially in Africa, "the world's single most powerful lever for reducing hunger and poverty." And, he promised, "the world's attention is back on your cause". He acknowledged one of the raging debates: "this global effort to help small farmers is endangered by an ideological wedge that threatens to split the movement in two. On one side is a technological approach that increases productivity. On the other side is an environmental approach that promotes sustainability. Productivity or sustainability - they say you have to choose."
Gates regards the choice - benefit from science by using improved farming methods or seek safety from genetically modified crops by "going natural" - as far too simplistic. And in related debates about large farm versus small farm, local versus multinational, his foundation is clearly steering towards small farmers and respect for local tradition and knowledge. He's right on both points. But that does not mean dialogue is unnecessary. Respected religious leaders all over Africa, supported by many in richer countries, preach fervent sermons about the evils of the recipes for reviving agriculture and see devious motives behind much of the aid and the solutions that are on the table. They deserve a hearing and we need to engage them if they are to be part of the solution, as they must be.
These are ancient problems with a modern face. With the great strides made in agricultural research, there was real hope some years ago that hunger could be conquered. It didn't happen, but the hope is still alive. And Sarah Silverman is absolutely right to point out that the resources are there. Eleanor Roosevelt hit the moral imperatives hard: "This should be one of the aims- to show that our conception of freedom and the rights of men includes the responsibility of their government to see that no man, woman or child starves and that, as far as we are able, we extend that guarantee to the nations of the world because of the greatness and generosity of our spirit." She added that "We have been blessed by the Almighty with a land that provides us with a surplus of food and yet we have not learned how to share this surplus with the people of the world."
This is a ferociously complex problem. I don't agree with Roosevelt's suggestion that only when people have enough to eat -"only after that is gratified can we offer cultural and spiritual leadership." We need that spiritual leadership now. Hopefully, with collective outrage at the reality that a billion people are hungry, we can focus at least as much concern and attention on the world's hungry that we lavished on little Falcon, the balloon boy.
