A child in East Timor leans on a sack of flour from the United States, which is the world's largest food donor. Pressure is growing from the U.S. government and anti-hunger campaigners for more American food aid to be sent as cash, rather than surplus farm production. (Mark Baker/Associated Press)

Every year, more than 800 million people around the globe go hungry. Tens of millions die from malnutrition. Yet the world produces more food than it needs — waste, obesity and spurious use of food products are rampant in well-off societies.

Since the late 1960s, wealthy countries have been obligated by international law to feed the hungry. The Food Aid Convention (FAC) is the only global treaty that spells out how much signatories must do to help the needy.

It acts as a "food safety net for the world, according to Stuart Clark of the Winnipeg-based Canadian Foodgrains Bank, the country's largest non-governmental collector and distributor of food aid.

Why hunger persists in the face of surplus production and sustained food aid is a vexing and complex question — controversial, too.

It's an issue that policy-makers, humanitarian workers and politicians need to resolve if widespread world hunger is ever to be alleviated — especially now, as the world's remaining arable farmland comes under increasing pressure from climate change and the development of biofuels.

Expensive delivery exacerbates hunger

Part of the problem is the nature of food aid itself.

Different countries approach their FAC obligations in different ways.

Europe and Japan send cash to the United Nations World Food Program and other agencies, to help them buy food to feed the hungry.

Canada divides its aid between cash and food bought in this country.

The United States has traditionally bought vast amounts of its own surplus production for use as food aid.

Americans also take as gospel the idea that U.S. farms feed the world. After all, the country provides 60 per cent of the world's food aid — more than twice what Europe gives.

But the U.S. Congress has also insisted that all American food aid must come from American farmers or — increasingly — American-owned agribusinesses, and must be shipped on U.S. vessels to recipients.

Nearly half of the costs of U.S. food aid was eaten up by transportation, according to a recent report by the General Accounting Office (GAO) of the U.S. Congress. Obviously that reduces the amount of badly needed food that gets to the world's hungry.

Often better to buy food locally

But even more worrisome for those who directly battle famine and malnutrition, sending food from a donor country — rather than giving cash to buy it locally — is rarely the quickest or the most appropriate way to feed starving people.

"Let's say we have hunger in Malawi or Zimbabwe, do we send them corn from North America that takes months to get there by sea, and happens to be something that they haven't eaten before?" Clark of Winnipeg's Foodgrains Bank told CBC News Online.

"Or do we buy African white corn from South Africa — a few days away by road, cheaper, and culturally appropriate."

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization says all food aid should be supplied as cash.

About a third of all global food aid — some $600 million US — is wasted because of excess shipping and purchases costs in home markets, according to a recent report from the UN organization.

Bush proposal blocked by special interest lobbying

Those pushing for more cash, and less surplus grain, to feed the world's hungry have recently acquired an unlikely ally — the U.S. government.

President George W. Bush's administration has proposed changes to agricultural policy that would allow 25 per cent of U.S. food aid to be sent as cash.

In April 2006, Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns told a conference of agricultural experts and industry representatives in Kansas City, Mo., that the change would save money and lives.

But the Bush administration has been struggling to get the cash quota into U.S. food aid for three years.

It has already failed twice as Congressional representatives from farm states and lobbying from the shipping industry managed to kill proposed changes to legislation.

"It's up to Congress: the government is proposing a solid step in the right direction," said Laura Rusu of Oxfam America, a charity and anti-poverty organization.

"Now Congress has to ask itself whether it wants to feed the hungry or cater to special interest groups."

Workers unload cans of cooking oil, as part of a food ration that the UN World Food Program is distributing to Iraqis. Global food aid needs are expected to grow, not diminish, in the coming years. (Samir Mezban/Associated Press)

The 'monetization' of food aid

Another controversy revolves around a process known as "monetization," whereby charities and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) sell food aid — mostly supplies donated by the U.S. government — in developing countries to raise money for the needy.

Most of these organizations defend the procedure as a pragmatic necessity, saying they're forced to do it because they cannot get the funds they need from cash-strapped government budgets.

Economists and food policy advocates say this is the worst possible use of food aid.

Selling large quantities of donated food can distort local markets, lower prices and discourage farmers in developing countries from growing the crops needed in future.

"It also means teaching new skills to food-aid providers," said Clark of the Foodgrains Bank.

"Instead of directly battling hunger, they have to become merchants and traders, learn how to sell things. It doesn't work."

Different uses for food aid

Most Canadians probably think the food aid that their country sends, for example, to Darfur or southern Africa's drought-stricken lands is given straight to hungry people — but that's not always the case.

Often, famine has more to do with disease, low birth weights or war than with actual food shortages. So the judicious use of food aid and other supports can help communities avoid the worst impacts of conflict or natural catastrophe.

For example, it can assist populations where disease has decimated income-earning strata of society — young adults affected by HIV/AIDS who are too ill to earn a living.

In countries where malnutrition is rife but there's just enough to eat to avoid starvation, pregnant women can be given supplemental food to ensure viable birth weights. That way, babies don't start life already set back by a previous generation's hunger.

Food aid can also be used to encourage school attendance by providing free lunches to students. That helps parents choose to send their children to classes rather than making them work on the farm.

Children from Darfur in a refugee camp depend on donated food aid for their daily meals. They are just a few of the more than 2.5 million refugees driven from their homes by the crisis in the region. (Stephanie Jenzer/CBC)

The looming impact of climate change, biofuels

Two relatively new issues could have a major impact on the world's food supply in coming years.

As concern grows over greenhouse-gas emissions and dwindling petroleum supplies, plant-derived fuels like biodiesel and ethanol are capturing international attention.

But environment and food security campaigners warn that the expected switch from food crops to biofuel crops could have a devastating effect for the world's hungry population.

"The impact on global food supply will be catastrophic: [it will be] big enough to tip the global balance from net surplus to net deficit," British activist George Monbiot wrote of biofuel development.

"If, as some environmentalists demand, it is to happen worldwide, then most of the arable surface of the planet will be deployed to produce food for cars, not people."

Crop losses due to climate changes are also expected to increase in coming years, especially in already arid agricultural regions.

The violence in Sudan's Darfur region and neighbouring areas is generally blamed on food shortages exacerbated by endemic drought.

Scientists are predicting more Darfur-type situations as greenhouse gases make the world warmer and drier.

In short, it's likely the coming years will bring more mouths to feed, and less land to grow the food.