To end world hunger once and for all?

More than 100 aid organizations and charities have come together to launch a campaign which they say aims to 'end world hunger' once and for all.

The campaign is called "Enough Food for Everyone If..." It’s already got some high-profile backing. Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Bill Gates have both stepped forward to articulate their support. But how realistic is it all? Kathleen Spenser Chapman is a Senior Policy Advisor to the campaign. She explained why she felt this was worth pursuing:

The fact is that there’s enough food in the world to feed everyone by taking these steps. It’s about making sure that the food gets to the people who need it and that people are able to grow enough food that they need to feed their families or to sell to make a living. There’s a great population, more food is going to be needed in future, but that just makes it even more important that we do tackle these issues.

The question of demographic is central to this issue. Global population is growing as never before. Many believe that problems with poverty and food will not stop unless there’s a significant population decrease. I put it to food security specialist Dr. Ruth Kattumuri, Co-Director of the Asia Research Center at the London School of Economics.

I won’t say the world population is too big, I’d take the view that we’re producing enough food in the world to feed the people. I’ve got numbers for 2010 – 3.95 billion tones were produced. We do have enough food in the world. We have problems such as obesity – 343 million are obese in the world. There are 1.5 billion who are overweight in the world and there are 1.3 billion people who are undernourished in the world, when there’s enough food! So I think the biggest challenge for us is the distribution of food.

The Prime Minister David Cameron gave his full support to the campaign in Parliament earlier today.

Some of the leading non-government organizations like “Save the Children” have quite rightly launched this campaign today. Above all, what Britain will be doing is meeting the commitment we made to 0.7% of our growth national income spent on aid – a commitment that we’ve made, that we’ve kept, whereas many other countries have broken their promises. We’ll be using that money to make sure we focus on the issues of malnutrition, under-nutrition, because it’s not acceptable in 2013 that there are millions of families in the world that go hunger every day and every night.

It’s hard not to be reminded of his predecessor Tony Blair’s similar infused commitment to end the global poverty in 2005. This clearly was not achieved. Surely the public must feel a little skeptical. Kathleen Spenser Chapman from “Enough Food for Everyone If…” campaign disagreed.

What we’re saying in the campaign is that hunger is not going to be eradicated in 2013. Of course, it’s a bit challenged, but really significant steps can be taken toward ending hunger. We’re not being unrealistic. If government acts and if other people act and we all get together in the U.K. to take actions, then we really can make a difference.

According to the campaign, nearly 1 billion people go to bed hungry each night. 2 million children die from malnutrition each year. Easter and Western Africa have been the worst-affected areas in recent years. The campaign has a number of specific aims. It wants government to redirect aid and ensure that companies are paying their taxes properly to governments in developing countries. It also wants farmers to grow crops for food rather than fuel production. And it’s called generally for better transparency. There’re a number of events planned over the next year with particular energy being focused on the U.K. budget. David Cameron will be showing his commitment by sharing a Hunger Summit to coincide with Britain hosting the G8 Summit in June.