Nearly one billion people suffer from hunger and malnutrition, a root cause of poverty, illiteracy, disease, and mortality. While the global development community is making efforts to address this problem through numerous programs, including the Millennium Development Goals (the first goal calls for the eradication of complete poverty and hunger by 2015), two reports released in the past month underscore the challenges to achieving food security worldwide.

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations' Crop Prospects and Food Situation reports that world cereal production is set to drop in 2006. While production in Latin America and Asia is expected to increase, a major decrease in production is forecast for Sub-Saharan Africa. The World Bank's Agriculture and Achieving the Millennium Development Goals stresses that agriculture-led growth will be vital for reducing hunger in less developed countries, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa. Securing such growth will require the promotion of civil society groups which are able to bring about improvements in governance.

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Country-level and regional agricultural data are available from 1961-2005 in the EarthTrends searchable database of Agriculture and Food. The EarthTrends Poverty Resource shows subnational nutritional indicators in its country profiles. In addition, FAO's annual State of Food Insecurity in the World report provides a wealth of data and analysis on world hunger.