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Guatemala latest country to declare food crisis: nearly half a million families face food shortages Jeremy Hance mongabay.com September 10, 2009 "There is food, what is lacking is the money for the affected people to buy food," President Colom said. "We are not going to wait until we've reached starvation levels to act." Colom's announcement allows Guatemala to buy emergency rations of food. Colom has announced that his government will bring food to more than 400,000 families in need. The global downturn has also played a role. Families say they are receiving less money from relatives in the United States, while a UN official has said that Guatemala's unequal wealth distribution has led to this crisis. The UN's World Food Promgram (WFP) is set to distribute 20 tons of biscuits to the hardest-hit areas. Estimates before the food crisis found that nearly 50 percent of children under five in Guatemala suffer from malnutrition. Related articles Record hunger: one billion people are going hungry worldwide (06/22/2009) A new estimate by the UN FAO estimates that one billion people are currently going hungry: the highest number in history. Largely exacerbated by the global economic crisis, the number of the world’s hungry has risen by 100 million people. Record food prices to climb through 2010 (03/06/2008) The U.N. expects record high food prices to continue through 2010, driving hunger and poverty in the world's poorest countries, said a top U.N. official Thursday. UN: biofuels are starving the poor by driving up food prices (02/14/2008) Echoing sentiments increasingly expressed by politicians, scientists, and advocates for the poor, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization warned that the world's poorest people are suffering as a result of the push to use food crops for biofuel production. Global warming to hurt agriculture in world's poorest regions (01/31/2008) Global warming wil cause severe crop losses in some of the poorest parts of Africa and Asia by 2030, reports a study published in tomorrow's issue of the journal Science. 80% of world's undernourished children live in 10% of countries (01/17/2008) Worldwide, undernutrition is responsible for more than a third of all deaths of children under the age of five. If a child survives past this age, he or she is much more likely than a child adequately nourished to demonstrate lower educational achievement, be of below-average height, and give birth to smaller infants.
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