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The world food crisis is getting more serious with each passing day.

The World Food Programme (WFP) recently stated that about 345 million people have faced food shortage in 82 countries. It said that though the demand for food is growing, the available resources are limited, expressing concern over it.

Last year, 310 million people were reportedly hit by food crisis in Africa and six million people suffered from extreme hunger.

As the grain production drastically fell in Somalia due to natural disasters and for other reasons, about 6.6 million people suffered food shortage in late April and 39 percent of the population have been driven into a position to receive emergency aid.

An increasing number of people suffer malnutrition due to food shortage.

At present, over seven million children under 5 suffer from malnutrition in the Horn of Africa where 23 million people experience food shortages and 1.9 million of them are in the jaws of death.

UNICEF said that the number of pregnant women and nursing mothers suffering malnutrition increased from 5.5 million to 6.9 million between 2020 and 2022 in 12 countries including Afghanistan and Ethiopia.

At least 1.5 million children suffer from malnutrition due to food shortage in several regions of Pakistan hit by flash flood in the rainy season last year.

In particular, extreme weather conditions like heat, drought, heavy rain and flood swept almost all parts of the world, including China, India, Europe, Africa, North America and Australia, posing a grave threat to global agricultural production.

To cope with the situation, many countries ban or restrict food export. This is also a factor that further aggravates the food crisis.

According to the International Food Policy Institute, the number of countries which announced restrictions on food export has increased from three to 16 in a little over a year.

Public opinion warns that such situations will adversely affect food security in many countries and regions, including African countries.

Meanwhile, armed conflicts raging in different parts of the world also seriously hamper food production and export.

Long-running disputes in Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia, Yemen and many other countries in Africa and the Middle East lead to a decrease in agricultural production in these countries and military confrontation in Europe has created an obstacle to global wheat production and export.

The situation is getting more serious due to the growing moves of the impure forces to abuse the food problem to serve their interests.

To cite a few examples, the US and its followers were bitterly criticized for having reduced the capacity of many countries to respond to food crisis through unilateral sanctions moves at the 52nd UN Human Rights Council meeting and the Russian president said that the food situation in Africa has worsened due to the trickery of the US and the West.

The global food crisis, whose prospects for solution are becoming bleaker with the passage of time, urgently demands all countries make more positive efforts to attain self-sufficiency in food.