Sunday, November 29, 1998 Published at 15:36 GMT
Urban growth means more hunger, UN says
City dwelling: Unfulfilled hopes of jobs and better life
The United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), has issued a warning that the growth of huge cities in the developing world will be accompanied by worsening food shortages.
The infrastructure needed for feeding massive populations - involving co-ordination between producers, transporters and sellers - is not keeping up with urban expansion.
The number of impoverished city dwellers will have risen from 400m in 1990 to 1bn, and there will be an "anarchic spread" of shanty towns, sickness, corruption and inflation.
At the FAO world food summit in Rome two years ago, agriculture ministers said they aimed to halve the number of people going hungry by the year 2015.
These latest statistics show the trend is already in the opposite direction.
Soon, the world's urban population will exceed the number of people living in rural areas.
The FAO also warned that poor city infrastructure is linked to the costs of food.
Poor people spend up to 80% of income just on food, much more than rural families.
Wholesale food markets are also often badly sited, costly and unfit for their purpose, the FAO said.
In Africa, they lack basic equipment, such as refrigeration, and in Latin America, markets pollute the environment with their waste and block city centres with delivery trucks.
The FAO stressed the important role played by small markets and street vendors who provide food for the poorest people.
In Caracas, Venezuela, for example, produce bought on the street represents a quarter of total household expenditure on food.