The charts above show the new estimates (left hand panel) compared with those for 2010 (right hand panel). Detailed comparisons are complicated by the fact that many of the plots are for slightly different periods. But the big change is clear: instead of a sharp rise and fall in 2008-10, tracking the world food-price spike, the number of hungry people stayed stable throughout the 2000s. For developing countries, the new hunger estimates are lower after the price spike than they had been before it, falling from 885m in 2004-05 to 852m in 2010-12.
2010年，由于粮食价格在三年内第二次飞速上涨，各国政府，有关国际机构和非政府组织都高调宣布了一个有力的新事实：世界饥饿人口已达10亿人，而他们认为，这种情况出现在世界粮食产量充足的时期是一种耻辱。联合国粮食和农业组织曾在一次年度报告中估计出了这个数据，他们甚至做了一个长达50英尺的标语，上面写着“十亿饥民”，然后把它悬挂在位于罗马的总部大楼上。全世界饥饿人数多达十亿的确不是一件光彩的事，但是准确的数据却指出：“十亿”并不是事实。本周，在2012年度世界粮食安全状况报告中，联合国粮食和农业组织悄悄的把饥民人数下调至8.68亿，使其从2008-10年的激增中回落。上表显示了与2010年（右侧）相比最新的一组估计数据（左侧）。具体的对照由于两图中有些折线不表示同一时期而显得有些复杂，但大体的变化却是清晰明了的：跟踪世界粮价走势就可发现，尽管在2008-10年间粮价出现了较大幅度的涨落，但全球饥饿人口的数量却在21世纪头十年保持在一个相对平稳的水平。在发展中国家，粮价飙升后对世界饥饿人口数据的最新估计反而略低于价格上涨以前，从2004-05年的8.85亿下降到2010-12年的8.52亿。
There are statistical and methodological explanations for the change. The 2010 report used the computer model of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) to estimate the impact of high food prices. The USDA model is primarily designed to calculate how much food countries need to import. So it pays a lot of attention to trade and to importing nations but does not do such a good job of explaining what is going on in countries that are self sufficient or which use price and other controls to reduce the impact of world-price movements on domestic prices. These include China, India and Indonesia, the three largest developing countries. There, increases in staple-food prices were very small in 2007-10. In contrast, the new methodology pays more attention to daily diets and habitual consumption. This means it provides better estimates of chronic undernourishment but, as the report itself says, “does not fully capture the effects of price spikes.”
从统计学和方法论的角度可以解释这种变化。2010年的报告采用了美国农业部的电脑模型来推测高粮价的影响。这个模型设计的初衷是用来计算国家所需进口的粮食数量，所以它更加关注粮食贸易和粮食进口国家的情况，而没能很好的解释那些粮食能够自给自足或采用了价格或其他手段抵御国际粮价波动对国内粮价冲击的国家粮价的变动情况。其中包括中国、印度和印度尼西亚这三个最主要的发展中国家，这三国在2007-10年间主要粮食价格的增幅很小。与旧模型相比，新的估算方法更关注目标国的日常饮食和粮食的习惯性消耗。这意味着它可以更好的推测国民慢性营养不良的情况，但是，正如报告中所指出的，这种方法”不能完整的解释粮价飙升的影响“。
The FAO has also improved its data collection. New figures for the vast amount of food that gets wasted on farms and in shops pushed up the figures for the number of hungry people in 1990 (from 850m to 1 billion) but not in 2010-12. This alone accounts for much of the decline in hunger numbers in the past 20 years.
联合国粮食和农业组织也改进了它的数据收集方法，1990年，在农场和商店大量粮食被浪费，从而导致了饥饿人口数量的增长（从8.5亿到10亿），但是2010-12年这种浪费并没有发生。这是过去20年间饥饿人数下降的主要原因。
At the same time, there is a “real” reason for the lower estimates of hunger (ie, independent of methodological or statistical changes). The great recession of 2008-09 resulted in only mild slowdowns in most developing countries, so incomes were less affected than was expected: people could afford to keep buying food. At the same time the spread of conditional-cash transfers and other programmes to help the poor seems to have been remarkably effective at sheltering the worst off from the impact of price rises. In short, poor countries turned out to less vulnerable to food crises than previously thought.
同时，世界饥饿人口数估值的下降还有一个“真正”的原因（除了统计方法改变以外）。2008-09年的世界经济大衰退对大部分发展中国家来说只造成了经济的小幅下降，所以其对居民收入的影响要小于预估：人们仍然可以承受粮食的消费。此外有条件的现金转移支付计划和其他旨在帮助贫困人口的项目的推广极大的帮助了社会最底层人的生活不受粮价上涨的冲击。 总之，贫困国家在应对粮价危机上并没有我们想象的那样脆弱。
The new estimates have significant implications. The world is not doing quite such a bad job of feeding itself as many people fear. At the moment, food prices are rising again for the third time in five years, leading to renewed worries about a food crisis and to demands for drastic intervention in world food markets (banning exports or taxing “commodity speculators”, for example). The new figures suggest the worries may be overdone and so are the demands that accompany them. The supply response to high prices seems to be better than expected. Social-protection measures seem to work. A simple measure of how well the world is doing is the first millennium development goal which calls for halving the proportion of people who suffer from hunger between 1990 and 2015, ie from 23% in 1990 to 11.5% in 2015. The proportion now is 14.9, only slightly above target.
新的估计数据意义重大，它表明全世界减少饥饿的工程并不像很多人担心的那样浩大。目前，世界粮价在五年内第三次上涨，从而引起了人们对世界粮食危机的新一轮担忧和对粮食市场采取强硬干预手段（例如禁止粮食出口或开征“农产品投机税”）的呼吁。最新数据表明这种担忧和随之而来的呼吁可能是一种过度反应。社会保障看起来是一种有效的措施。能够衡量世界各国在减少饥饿方面所取得的优异成绩的一个简单方法就是“新千年发展目标”，这个目标要求各国在1990-2015年间将世界饥饿人数减半，也就是将世界饥饿人口比例从1990年的23%下降到2015年的11.5%。目前这个比例是14.9%，只略高于既定目标。
That said, hunger is still high and, in two parts of the world, is growing. In sub-Saharan Africa, the number of hungry people rose by 1m a year in 2000-05 but by more than 6m a year between 2007-09 and 2010-12. In the Middle East and North Africa, there are almost twice as many hungry people now as there were in 1990-92 (41m compared with 22m). It is also worth saying that undernutrition may not have spiked, the world still faces a big problem of poor nutrition (lack of micro-nutrients, as opposed to lack of calories). So the news is good on average, but not everywhere.
即便如此，世界饥饿人数仍然很多。同时，世界上有两个地方，这个数字还在上升。一个是撒哈拉以南的非洲地区，这里的饥饿人口数在2000-05年间每年增加100万，但是在2007-09年和2010-12年间每年增加超过600万。另一个是中东和北非地区，这里现在的饥饿人数几乎是1990-92年的两倍（410万和220万）。另外值得一提的是虽然世界营养不良人口数可能也没有激增，但我们仍然面临着营养不良的严峻挑战（缺乏微量元素，还有与之相对的缺乏卡路里等）。所以总体看来情况在好转，但并不是所有地区都是这样。
It may still take some time to be believed. The notion that there are a billion hungry people was so widely trumpeted that it has taken on a life of its own. On the very day the new FAO figures appeared, Gordon Conway, a professor at Imperial College London, published a (very good) book on food called—you guessed it—One Billion Hungry. Even the UN’s own food bureaucracies have not caught up with the new facts. The same report that details the new numbers also contains a contribution from four UN food agencies (including the FAO) to the big environmental conference held in Rio de Janeiro this July (the Rio +20 meeting). It refers to the old numbers.
人们还需要一些时间去接受这个结论，“世界上有十亿饥民”这个概念已经被如此广泛的宣传以至于它已经深入人心成为一个公认的结论。就在联合国粮食和农业组织公布新数据的那天，高登康维，一名伦敦帝国学院的教授出版了一本（出色的）书叫——正如你猜的那样——十亿饥民。甚至联合国自己的粮食机构都没有及时采用这个新的数据。这份详细分析了新的世界饥饿数据的报告也包含了联合国四个粮食机构（包括粮食和农业组织）对今年7月在里约热内卢举行的大型环境会议的贡献。它提到了旧数据。
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