HERE’S some good news. The proportion and number of people without enough to eat is falling rapidly, says the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

Since 1990, the number of people who are chronically undernourished has fallen by 209 million to 805 million. And the fraction of the population that this affects has dropped from 18.7 to 11.3 per cent. The fraction in developing countries has almost halved, from 23.4 to 13.5 per cent.

“This is proof that we can win the war against hunger,” says the report, released on 16 September.

Places like Latin America and China have made rapid progress. But Asia has 526 million people who are chronically hungry, and hunger affects a quarter of people in sub-Saharan Africa. Economic growth is “probably the key” to ending hunger there, says Jomo Kwame Sundaram of the FAO.

This article appeared in print under the headline “Hunger in retreat”