The world food security conference in Rome, Italy closed 18 November with promises to invest more in agriculture and “to eradicate hunger at the earliest date”, according to the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), which hosted the three-day event. FAO Director-General Jacques Diouf expressed his disappointment at the lack of measurable targets and specific deadlines.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said that each day 17,000 children die of hunger in the world. He urged immediate action on long-term remedies to hunger in the world, noting that there was enough food in the world for everybody.

The Minister for Food and Agriculture of Ghana, Kwesi Ahwoi, reminded the conference that the last food security summit in 1996 had pledged to cut the world’s hungry by half, to 420 million by 2015. The conference was told that more than one billion people go to bed hungry every night.

Links to other sites:FAO media site, Ghana Broadcasting Corporation, Guide2.co.nz