Widespread rural hunger has a cancerous effect on political stability and national security around the world. Long and terrible conflicts in hunger-ridden rural areas of countries such as Angola, Colombia, the Philippines, Rwanda and Somalia are demonstrating the vulnerability of poor rural societies to anomie, the meltdown of law, order and hope. Eighty percent of the world's poorest countries today have suffered from a major conflict in the past 15 years," calculates the World Bank. "In Sub-Saharan Africa, conflicts have taken an increasing toll on development projects, with almost half of all countries and one in five African people directly or indirectly affected by conflict."

Now industrialized nations, which until recently seemed so secure in the post-Cold War period, are increasing threatened by terrorism spawned by the hunger and poverty of destitute people far away. As a result, the U.S. and its industrial allies must send soldiers to developing-country backlands and build their anti-terrorist systems at home.

Less developed country (LDC) farmers are the ones most likely to be hungry. Of the nearly 800 million developing-country hungry people, most live in rural areas. Simply put, in a world that produces sufficient food to feed everyone these people cannot obtain enough food to meet minimum nutritional standards.

There are many determinants of hunger, but one, poverty, relates to them all. If people have money, they usually can find a way to buy food. Globally, an estimated 1.2 billion live on less than $1 daily and three-quarters of these poor people live and work in rural areas; 44 percent of them live in South Asia, 24 percent in sub-Saharan Africa, 24 percent in East Asia, and 6.5 percent in Latin America and the Caribbean. The very poor use nearly 75 percent of their income on food, and only obtain two-thirds their needed calories.

Trapped by poverty, rural folks have little access to education, good land, credit, government and healthcare. In addition, population growth, 95 percent of which occurs in LDCs, divides poor farmer's tiny holdings and incomes. The international pledge to cut in half by 2015 the number of people living on $1 a day is falling far behind schedule.

There is no silver bullet to cure the problems of the poorest of poor farmers living in the world's bankrupt nations. There has been, however, a long series of grand international conferences and studies on food, poverty, population, rural poverty, water, housing, women, trade, aid, foreign investment, employment, health and all the other factors that go into the volatile settings of developing-country farmers. The conferences are now routinely revisited to ascertain progress on targets set and promises made.

In the Millennium Summit Declaration of September, 2000, 147 heads of state and 191 nations consolidated and expanded all of the goals set in the high-level conferences of the 1990s. Essentially, the problems addressed apply to hunger and all its determinants, most acutely found in poor rural areas. The Millennium leaders specifically pledged, among other things, to:

• cut in half the proportion of people suffering from hunger by 2015;
• cut in half the proportion of people living on less that $1 dollar daily by 2015;
• cut in half the number of people without access to safe drinking water by 2015; and
• achieve universal completion of primary education by 2015.  

In virtually every case progress has been far short of the agreed upon goals and expectations. Failure is widely attributed to lack of political will and economic commitment. Our theme this year, Hungry Farmers: A National Security Issue for All, outlines all the elements generally associated with hunger in the backlands: Autocratic governance, environmental degradation, natural disasters, poor health, gender discrimination, lack of education, unequal land ownership, lagging agricultural production, closed off agricultural markets.

The theme gives special attention to the role globalization plays in the state of the rural poor. The World Bank estimates that two billion people live in countries that have been bypassed by globalization. The economies of the bypassed poor nations have contracted, poverty reduction has stagnated and education levels have risen only slowly. The poorest of the poor nations, many observers fear, haven't the markets, resources or skilled labor force to pull themselves out of the hole without substantial assistance and effort.

International capital has gone to a limited number of middle-income developing countries. Small, under-developed, poor agrarian nations hold few attractions for foreign investors. Conversely, free trade brings in imports that compete with local agricultural production. In addition, the strictures of globalization demand that developing countries rationalize their economies, reducing bloated bureaucracies and excessive welfare obligations. The process, however, pulls the rug from under millions of poor people who depend on government largess, such as it is. While laying off excess government workers and rationalizing public services might be good for the national budget in the long run, it can mean the immediate loss of a lifeline for many people who aren't likely to be absorbed by the private sector.

A decade ago donor nations promised to dedicate 0.7 percent of their Gross National Product to foreign aid. "Had they met this target," Oxfam says, "they would now be spending an extra $114 billion. Instead they have cut their aid budgets to 0.22 percent of GNP." The region that is calculated to have lost the most is sub-Saharan Africa, the region that needs it most. At the Monterrey, Mexico International Conference on Financing for Development last March, President George W. Bush proposed a 50 percent increase in core U.S. development aid over the next three years, amounting to a $5 billion annual increase over current levels. While the new "Millennium Challenge Account" was warmly welcomed, it remains to be seen exactly how the new aid will be distributed.

Finally, we review recommended actions: accelerated debt relief, investments targeted at poor people, access to land, water and credit, a recognized human right to food, people's participation in decision making-and all the other initiatives the world has promised to implement. Ending hunger will be costly, but not ending it will be even more so.