Financial markets have helped humanity do a reasonably good job at addressing one of its greatest problems. Yes, you read that right. The problem is hunger, once unavoidable but now truly unnecessary since global food production and transport links are more than adequate to nourish everyone alive.
The news is not so much good as less bad. The Food and Agriculture Organisation this week estimated that the number of people falling chronically short of their minimum daily energy requirement dropped by almost 100m between 2009 and 2010. But 925m undernourished souls is too many, and still 75m more than were counted in the 2005-07 survey.
What is positive is that an almost 60 per cent rise in the FAO’s food price index in the past five years – wheat is up 135 per cent – only increased the hungry portion of the world’s population from 13 to 14 per cent. By contrast, the first modern FAO survey in 1969-71 showed that 24 per cent of a much smaller world population were hungry.