If you read this blog often, you will have realized that we like to use a lot of stats. Statistics help us to conceptualize an issue; they help us better understand what we are reading about and they are just more interesting. Statistics regarding food security are also extraordinarily important to the professionals that are working to address issues of hunger and food insecurity.

The United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) is working to find a more efficient way to gather reliable information and stats about food security and world hunger. Much of the verified information that is used today is old data from two to five years ago. This data, just like data from the U.S. national census is so rarely collected because of the immense effort required to reach out to the hungry and appropriate officials around the world. Today, the FAO is working on a project titled “Voices of the Hungry” that aims to gather data about food security and hunger much, much faster than traditionally. Voices of the Hungry involves surveying candidates with audio recordings over the phone as well as in person. These interviews will offer more than simple statistics; they will also record the human stories and give greater insight into the problems of each region. FAO is partnering with Gallup to help make the program a success and will be testing the process in Angola, Ethiopia, Malawi, and Niger.

When the Voices of the Hungry program is fully operational, it will only be 3 months between the date of an interview to the final data being analyzed and organized with information from 150 countries. Such a change in the accuracy and quickness with which we can collect information will be very helpful in the quest to fight world hunger.

– Kevin Sullivan

Source: Voice of America