In June 2009, it was announced that over one billion people in the world now suffer from hunger. Prices of agricultural commodities have gone down on the international markets since they peaked in the summer of 2008 and in the past, we have tended to use this indicator to measure the extent of the problem of hunger. It is now high time to move away from commodity exchange boards to the real lives of people. The first questions to ask are: Who are those one billion people?

What are their lives like? And what is the composition of those groups who suffer various kinds of malnutrition? This figure of one billion results from the steady annual increase in the numbers suffering from hunger. Remember that in 2004-2005 the figure was about 850 million, in January 2008 it had risen to 923 million and it has been going up ever since. To understand the situation of these people, it is important to make a distinction between the groups affected by hunger.