World Hunger Down Since 1990

World hunger has declined despite population growth, the United Nations reported Wednesday. Around one billion people were declared hungry in 1990, according to the report; that number is down to 795 million today—roughly one in every nine people. Moreover, the UN report found that 72 of the 129 countries it monitored halved their rates of hungry people—and that developing regions nearly met their Millennium Development Goals targets. “The near-achievement of the MDG hunger targets shows us that we can indeed eliminate the scourge of hunger in our lifetime,” said Food and Agriculture Organization Director General José Graziano da Silva.