Achieving Household Food Security: How Much Land is Required?

Global hunger is on the rise (FAO, 2009). The number of those that are undernourished has increased steadily over the past decade reaching 1.02 billion people in 2009 (FAO, 2009), and remaining near this total over the past two years. The Millennium Development Goal to reduce world hunger by half by 2015 will likely not be met with current observed trends according to a recent UN report on food insecurity and world hunger (FAO, 2009). Limited land and growing population (Gerbens-Leenes and Nonhebel, 2005), global yield decline (Alston et al., 2009), financial resources and the economic downturn in 2008 are a few reasons that have led to the recent trend in world hunger.