--  Bernd Debusmann is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his own. --

Call it a paradox of plenty. In the world's wealthiest country, home to more obese people than anywhere else on earth, almost 50 million Americans struggled to feed themselves and their children in 2008. That's one in six of the population. Millions went hungry, at least some of the time. Things are bound to get worse.

This the bleak picture drawn from an annual survey on "household food security" compiled by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and released in mid-November. It showed the highest level of food insecurity since the government started the survey, in 1995, and provided a graphic illustration of the effect of sharply rising unemployment.

This year's picture will be even bleaker - the unemployment rate more than doubled from the beginning of 2008 to now, at 10.2 percent the highest in a quarter century. It is still climbing, and for many the distance between losing a job and lack of food security is very short.

In keeping with the American predilection for euphemisms, the word "hunger" does not appear in the report which classes food security into several categories, from "marginal" and "low" to "very low."

Marginal food security means, in the lexicon of the USDA, "anxiety over food shortages or shortage of food in the house." The second category, low, means "reduced quality, variety or desirability of diet," but not necessarily less food.

The most severe category, "very low," used to be labeled "food insecurity with hunger" and is defined as "disrupted eating patterns and reduced food intake." That applied to around 17 million people, up from 12 million in 2007. Black and Hispanic families and single-parent households are the most affected.

It is not the kind of hunger -- think African famines, skeletal babies with distended bellies -- that brought world leaders to a U.N. food summit in Rome this month to boost aid from rich countries for agricultural development in the Third World. The U.S. is a land of plenty, so much so that a study by the University of Arizona a few years ago found that the average household wastes about 14 percent of their food purchases.

Food is so abundant that overeating is more of a problem, numerically and in terms of public health, than under-nutrition. The Food Research and Action Center, a Washington-based advocacy group, makes the point that "poverty can make people more vulnerable to hunger as well as obesity," one of the reasons being that food high in calories is cheaper than healthy food. For many  Americans, hunger and obesity are two sides of the same poverty coin.

(International health statistics put the United States at the top of the obesity league. Two-thirds of Americans are overweight and a third of these are obese.)

INEQUALITY OF THIRD WORLD PROPORTIONS

Vicki Escarra, head of Feeding America, a hunger relief charity that runs 200 food banks in the U.S., has likened the growing difficulties of those on the lower rungs of the socio-economic ladder to conditions in the Third World. She is right in more ways than one.

The USDA report reflects inequality of Third World proportions. While the Great Recession has culled the ranks of American millionaires -- by 22 percent according to a September study by the Boston Consulting Group -- the gap between rich and poor is not shrinking.

Last year, according to a report by the census bureau, the wealthiest 10 percent of Americans made 11.4 times more than those living on the poverty line. The year before, the ratio was 11.2. At the far end of the economic scale, America's six largest bank holdings have set aside $112 billion in salaries and bonuses during the first nine months of the year. By year's end, bonuses might exceed the almost $164 billion paid in 2007, before the credit bubble banks had helped to inflate burst and millions of Americans lost their jobs and savings.

Banks and other financial institutions were rescued by a $700 billion infusion of taxpayer money and news of the bonuses coincided with reports that U.S. wages were at a 19-year low. Which helps explain growing anger among a public long famous for lacking the resentment of the rich that is common in other parts of the world.

After all, a bedrock belief in America held that this is the land of unlimited opportunities where every citizen has an equal chance to succeed and become rich. That requires an assumption that the system is fair. How many Americans still believe that? Last summer, a pair of political scientists, Benjamin Page and Lawrence Jacobs, published a study whose findings included that just 28 percent thought the present distribution of wealth is fair.

More evidence that the gap between myth and reality is shrinking comes from the American Human Development project, a research group which found that "social mobility is now less fluid in the United States than in other affluent nations...a poor child born in Germany, France, Canada or one of the Nordic countries has a better chance to join the middle class in adulthood than an American child born into similar circumstances."

A better chance to avoid food insecurity, too.

You can contact the author at Debusmann@Reuters.com

More than a billion people go hungry each day -- about the same number as did in the late 1950s. That's both a "tragedy on a grand scale" and an "astounding success," according to a new report called "Millions Fed," produced by the International Food Policy Research Institute and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
    
While the absolute number of hungry people is the same as it was 40 years ago, the proportion is dramatically smaller -- one in six today, compared to one in three then, the report said. It illustrates 20 successful case studies where progress has been made in the fight against hunger.

Some solutions come from science: new varieties of wheat, rice, beans, maize, cassava, millet and sorghum. Others deal with markets, government policies, or the environment.
    
Two farmers from the Sahel region of Africa, oft plagued by drought and famine, visited Washington last month to talk about solutions they found close to home -- one of the success stories trumpeted in "Millions Fed."
    
Almost 30 years ago, farmers in Burkina Faso experimented with a traditional technique called "zai," digging pits in their plots and adding manure to improve soils before the rainy season, resulting in dramatically better yields.
    
"There was a long period of drought in my village," Yacouba Sawadogo told reporters. "Many people left because their life was very, very difficult. But I decided to stay," he said, explaining how he taught others the technique.
    
In Niger, farmers manage trees on their land to prevent erosion, improve yields, and provide livestock fodder. Before, women had to walk 6 miles to get firewood, but now they have enough for themselves and to sell to others, said Sakina Mati, who coordinates tree projects in six villages.
    
The projects have improved 13 million acres of farmland and fed 3 million people, said Oxfam America, a development group that works with the farmers.
    
It's food for thought as rich nations ramp up efforts to help small farmers grow more food in poor countries. "In our approach toward solutions and programs, we really need to listen as well as talk," said Gawain Kripke of Oxfam.
    
"Solutions don't always come from us."

PHOTO CREDIT: Yacouba Sawadogo on his farm in Burkina Faso /Courtesy of Oxfam America

KOSSE, Texas – By the time the mobile food pantry rolls to a halt in this struggling rural community of 479 people, the parking lot of the local social hall is already full and a line of people snakes out of the door.

Half a dozen ladies in their 50s and 60s swarms the truck and within minutes they have set up tables and are bagging up food with an efficiency and single-mindedness that is impressive to watch.

The Capital Area Food Bank of Texas, which covers 21 counties and an area twice the size of the state of Massachusetts, makes monthly visits to Kosse. Every month this year it has set new records for the amount of food it hands out -- currently about 2.2 million tons. CEO David Davenport said he expects that number to rise as unemployment forces ever more people to become “food insecure.”

“The makeup of the hunger line has changed a great deal over the past two years,” he said. “We’re seeing more educated people and those who have been laid of in well-paying industries like the tech sector.”

“These are people we would never have expected to see lining up for food two years ago,” Davenport added.

The food bank has seen a 60 percent increase in demand for free food and in some places, including parts of the state capitol Austin, demand is up 300 percent.

Jason Steelman, 32, who is here with his girlfriend Amber Nash, 22, was a computer software analyst – a trade he picked up in the armed forces – but hasn’t worked in his chosen field for more than three years. He managed to make ends meet working as a truck driver, but the recession put paid to that job.

“All the work that’s left in this area is either seasonal jobs on the farms or working at gas stations,” he said. “We have three kids between us to feed and it’s tough to put enough food on the table.”

As Texas does not support the government food stamp program, the food bank is reliant on the U.S. Department of Agriculture and local donors like supermarket chain HEB.

“Without HEB we’d have problems finding enough food to hand out,” Davenport said. “On the state government level there is an unbending political belief in Texas that when you’re in trouble you have to pull yourself up by your boot straps.”

“That’s assuming that you’re not too hungry to pull them up,” he added. “Or that you even have boots.”

The first time the food bank came here six months ago, 60 families showed up for food. That number has now reached nearly 170.

According to the most recent statistics from the USDA, more than one in 10 Americans had low or very low “food security” in 2007, even before a the recession that began in December of that year. The recession may have ended in the third quarter of this year, according to recent U.S. government statistics, but one in five Texans are now hungry, as are one in four children in the Lone Star state.

“It comes down to economic hardship,” said Kosse mayor Ben Daniel. “There aren’t many jobs in this area right now. It’s hard times for folks around here.”

Danee Binion, 21, here with her seven-month-old daughter Madison, looks after her disabled mother and mentally disabled sister. Her husband works on a ranch, but the full household has stretched their means.

“We need some help to get by,” she said.

Janice Procter, 49, said that he husband, 66, is retired and just had knee surgery, and they have two children at home under the age of 18.

“We’re finding it tough to make ends meet and every little helps,” she said.

Democratic Senator Kirk Watson said that “Texas could do better in providing for its people," and that the state government must take action as the level of hunger in parts of the state has reached crisis proportions.

“Our political leadership should be ashamed of itself,” he said. “Here we are in a state that produces enough food to supply the entire country. Yet we can’t even feed our own people.”

Photos by Lucy Nicholson

The world needs to spend $83 billion a year to ensure it can produce enough food amid a changing climate for its growing population by 2050, the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization estimates.
    
Rich countries have pledged more than $22 billion over three years to help small, impoverished farmers grow and sell more by investing in seeds, fertilizer, roads and marketing infrastructure.
    
Philanthropists have thrown their weight behind the goal. Bill Gates challenged research companies last week to make new technologies available to small farmers without charging them royalties. (Click on the link at the bottom to see his full speech to the World Food Prize forum.)

Corporations have said they see themselves as part of the fight too, particularly when it comes to research. But Robert Thompson, a former World Bank official, says he's pessimistic the private sector will be able to contribute enough. "Their shareholders won't stand for them solving all the problems of the developing countries, and giving it away," he told Reuters.
    
"It's going to take subsidies or at least a public sector contribution to engage their research horsepower," said Thompson, now an agriculture professor with the University of Illinois, who has pushed for more spending on agricultural development for 40 years.
    
Agribusiness should be motivated to get involved in developing countries because they represent a future growth market for their products, Thompson said. "They should be willing to accept lower return on their own investments as an investment in the longer term, but we have to keep the short time horizon of the U.S. investment community in mind," he said.
    
"Shareholders are brutal on companies that don't meet their short-term profit expectations. In that sense, perhaps some of the European companies like Syngenta, BASF or Bayer ... may have a little more license, if you will, to take a longer-term perspective than some of the U.S. publicly traded companies."

Below: Bill Gates addresses World Food Prize forum in Des Moines, Iowa.

World Food Day is Friday, and on opposite sides of the developed world, two large groups of experts have gathered to talk about the risks of food insecurity and what should be done to reduce hunger. In Rome, the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization is mulling how to feed the world in 2050, and in Des Moines, Iowa, the World Food Prize forum will focus on the role of food in national security.

Last year's spike in food prices raised the political profile of food security. G8 nations and the United States have pledged money and action. I spoke with Per Pinstrup-Andersen, an agricultural economist at Cornell University and a Food Prize laureate, to get his take on what that means. Here are some excerpts. 
     
Q. What do you think is different now in terms of the political will to address this problem? 
A. I think there is an increase in the political will. However, past initatives or past rhetoric of that kind didn't really result in much action. I'm very concerned that we're going to see a lot of additional rhetoric and a lot of plans being designed and discussed during the next year or so, but probably not very much action. Insofar as developing country governments are concerned, I doubt if the political will has changed at all. There is a lot of talk. But unless the developing country governments decide to prioritize the eradication or at least the amelioration of poverty, hunger and malnutrition, not much is going to happen.

The best way of doing that in the long run is to invest in rural areas, in infrastructure, in agricultural research, in primary health care. Look, we know what needs to be done, it's not a big secret, it's just that the governments have other priorities. The World Bank can put in a lot of money, and so can the bilaterals, but for this to have a sustainable impact, the governments of these countries have to step up to the plate. 
 
Q. What can be done to encourage that to happen? 
A. I wish I knew. The governments of most developing countries -- and it's not all of them -- are ignoring the Millenium Development Goals, they're ignoring the World Food Summit goals. Their main concern is to maintain legitimacy so they can hold on to power, and the rural poor are not threatening them. 
     
Q. In the face of that, what can donor countries do to make the best of their investment? 
A. I think all we can really do from the outside is to try to make up for the deficiencies of the national governments by bringing some money and some technical assistance to bear on these problems and to try to convince governments to work with us on this so that over a period of time the government will gradually take over these things. 
     
Q. How do you think the new U.S. food security initiative will play into global efforts to address hunger? 
A. One of my concerns is that we once again are going to spend a lot of time and effort and money on developing plans. We've got so many plans developed for almost every country in the world. We now need to pick them up and put them into action.

I think (the U.S. initiative) is better than ignoring (food security), as we have tended to do in the past. Money may convince national governments to change their priorities, as long as the money keeps flowing. I think we should be prepared to stay in this kind of thing for at least 25 years, which of course is not the way things are usually done. If we are thinking in terms of a five-year time horizon for this food security initiative, it's not going to be sustainable.

Photo credit: REUTERS/Roberto Schmidt (Hillary Clinton in Goma, Democratic Republic of Congo, August 11, 2009)

Exotic animals trapped in net of Mexican drug trade - From the live snakes that smugglers stuff with packets of cocaine to the white tigers drug lords keep as exotic pets, rare animals are being increasingly sucked into Mexico's deadly narcotics trade.

End of an era for the Amazon's turbulent priests - They avoid taking buses, make sure friends know their schedules, and rarely go out when it's dark. For the three foreign-born Roman Catholic bishops under death threat in Brazil's northeastern state of Para, speaking out against social ills that plague this often-lawless area at the Amazon River's mouth has come at a price.

West risks repeating Soviet mistakes in Afghanistan - The foreign warplanes swooped in just as the Afghan village of Ali Mardan was celebrating a wedding. Bombs slammed into the crowded village square, killing 30 men, women and children. After the smoke cleared and the dead were buried, all the able-bodied men left alive took up arms against the invaders. That was 1982...

Drought starts to bite in northern Kenya - Clouds of dust rising above the harsh scrub herald the arrival of more livestock at a borehole in northeastern Kenya, the end for some of a 45 km (28 mile) trek for water that must be repeated every few days. Drought is starting to bite into east Africa's biggest economy and the government says 10 million people may face hunger and starvation.

World's largest wetland threatened in Brazil - Jaguars still roam the world's largest wetland Hyacinth Macaws nest in its trees, but advancing farms and industries are destroying Brazil's Pantanal region at an alarming rate. "It's a type of Noah's Ark but it risks running aground," biologist and tourist guide Elder Brandao de Oliveira says of the Pantanal.

Indonesian city grapples with quake threat - Remember the name Padang. Geologists say this Indonesian city of 900,000 people may one day be destroyed by a huge earthquake. "Padang sits right in front of the area with the greatest potential for an 8.9 magnitude earthquake," said Danny Hilman Natawidjaja, a geologist at the Indonesian Science Institute.

'Protest TV' tries to bring down Georgian leader - It's been dubbed "Protest TV". A man in an improvised prison cell under the 24-hour gaze of television cameras, promising to stay put until Georgia's president quits. Four cameras and a microphone on the ceiling capture his every shuffling move and political rant.  An edited version is broadcast in the evening, before Gachechiladze goes live all night, often with guests.

U.S. farmland fetches top dollar despite recession - On a chilly day in January, more than 200 investors gathered in west central Illinois to haggle over 4,000 acres of prime farmland called the Kilton Farm in the heart of U.S. Corn Belt. The auction came during the most depressing climate for the U.S. economy in decades. But when the hammer fell...

Sunken Green treasures at risk from scuba looters - A corroded mechanism recovered by sponge divers from a sunken wreck near the Greek island of Antikythera in 1902 changed the study of the ancient world.  Hundreds more wrecks beneath the eastern Mediterranean may contain treasures, but a new law opening Greece's coastline to scuba diving has experts worried that priceless artifacts could disappear into the hands of treasure hunters.

In the north, Afghans fight hunger, not the Taliban - The United States' decision to send more troops to Afghanistan will mean little to the people of northern Sang-i-Khel village, whose fight is not against Taliban insurgents but against hunger. "Life is not good. There was nothing last year. No water. No wheat. If there is no water this year, I will have to leave..."

Job losses and rising costs for food and housing are driving up demand for emergency meals from charities and food pantries around the United States. But donations aren't keeping up.

Demand in the Los Angeles area has risen 41 percent from a year ago, said Michael Flood, president and chief executive at the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank.

The food bank currently provides the equivalent of 560,000 meals a week to local charities, said Flood. Compared with last year, the LA Food Bank is delivering 33 percent more food to the 875 charitable agencies it serves, but that's still falling short of need by 8 percent.

Such supply and demand imbalances are being seen around the country as the economic downturn triggered by the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression is also resulting in fewer donations from companies and individuals.

"It's ironic and sad that in this land of plenty, so many people have to make due with so little," said Dr. Jonathan Fielding, director of the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health.

In 2007 -- before the economy took a sharp turn for the worse -- some 36.2 million Americans, or 11.1 percent of households, struggled to get enough food to eat. About one-third of the people in that group went hungry from time to time, according to a report issued this week by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Economic Research Service.

"This is a problem that is only going to get worse," Fielding said of the nation's growing hunger issues. "Things are moving rapidly in the wrong direction as we get more unemployment."

U.S. jobless claims, which hit a seven-year high of over 500,000 last week, are expected to continue to rise and the newly unemployed are among the new faces seen at food pantries.

"More people are reaching out for help, including many middle-class families who are experiencing tough times because of the declining economy," Flood said. "Our challenge is helping local pantries to continue serving the growing number of people seeking assistance."

"There is no easy solution," said Fielding. "It's likely that we are going to need help at a national level to deal with this crisis."

(Photos: LA Food Bank, Reuters)

G8 leaders are debating the interconnected themes of climate change, food and fuel. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has called for less food waste in the rich world. The World Bank has said rising food prices threaten 30 million Africans with poverty. VIP menus at the G8 summit in Japan have been lavish -- hairy crab, asparagus, lamb, all manner of vegetables and wild leaves.  And of course regional sake rice wine. Newspapers printed the menu in full. Britain's The Guardian heaped scorn: "the most powerful bellies in the world were last night compelled to stave off the Hokkaido Hunger by fortifying themselves with an eight-course, 19-dish dinner prepared by 25 chefs." Is it fair criticism?

Rich countries look set to fall roughly $40 billion short of the amount they had pledged to give to Africa by 2010. So says a report released on Monday by the panel set up to monitor commitments made amid much fanfare at the Group of Eight summit in 2005.

The panel said G8 countries were not keeping their promises at the very moment rising food prices threaten to increase hunger and child mortality. The report also calls for a rethink of trade policies to help African countries and urges rich nations to spend more on renewable energy sources there.

But how important is aid for Africa?

Africa's economies have been growing at their fastest in decades -- the International Monetary Fund estimates African growth at well over 6 percent in 2007 and expects similar this year.

Not so long ago, net private capital flows to Africa were negligible or even negative.

But investment has soared, with China leading a rush to develop sources of raw materials. Globally, investors have been looking at Africa more seriously in the hope of potentially higher returns than in more developed markets that now face uncertainty.

Emergency aid has certainly helped to save lives during wars, famines and natural disasters, but has aid helped Africa overall? Has it held it back? Does Africa need aid now?

Have your say.

Highlights of Reuters coverage of the second full day of the Cannes film festival.