This Summit is a wake-up call the world has long needed. In the past the world food problem has been dramatically presented and then quietly allowed to drift from the minds of those who were concerned. This Summit has before it the challenge that this does not happen again, that the world's attention will be constantly focused on the need to make fundamental improvements, that ways to achieve sustainable and universal food security will receive full attention at all times of governments and institutions.
Hunger is still rampant but it often remains invisible.
Hunger becomes globally visible when images of starving refugees flash across our television screens. We hear about hunger when urban populations revolt against hikes in the price of food. The face of hunger lies concealed behind the faces of poverty, war, desertification and degradation of land. Hundreds of thousands of people are hungry because some disaster has uprooted them from their homes, but mostly they are hungry because they are poor and their land cannot produce enough food. Indeed, drought, war and other cataclysms only serve to magnify food insecurity.