Yesterday, October 16, was celebrated as World Food Day. In Ghana, Oxfam and its partners organized a news conference last Friday in which they highlighted key issues such as hunger in the face of changing climate; rising food prices, population growth, and competition for land from bio-fuel, industry and urbanization.

They also focused on the need for constant interaction with farmers and producer organisations on their perspectives on the issues of agriculture development and food security in Ghana.

The celebration of this year?s World food Day, the group observe, is happening against the backdrop of famine in the Horn of Africa and a silent increasing of food prices globally. According to them, it has been estimated that current cereal food prices are about 18% higher than that of a year ago and future prospects confirm that food prices are set to remain high and volatile.

Decades of hard won progress in the fight against hunger are at risk of retrogression. Several millions of people go to bed without eating, not because of lack of food, but because of major imbalance in terms of resource access and control that impact seriously on women.

The United Nations also share similar concerns. According to the world body?s Secretary General, in the Horn of Africa today, more than 13 million people are affected by one of the region?s worst droughts in 60 years. Famine grips swathes of southern Somalia. Yet, drought does not need to become famine ? nor should it ever be allowed to, either through system failure or through the kind of deliberate deprivation we are seeing in areas controlled by Al-Shabaab.

The hunger in the Horn of Africa is but a fraction of a needless global menace. There is more than enough food on the planet to feed everyone, yet today nearly one billion people will go hungry. I urge world leaders in rich and poor countries alike to invest the energy and resources necessary to win the battle against hunger a key pillar of our efforts to achieve the Millennium Development Goals. Lasting solutions must cover the full spectrum of food security ? from improving the resilience of smallholder farmers to deploying safety net programmes that help protect the most vulnerable.?

This year?s World Food Day highlighted the issue of price volatility. For the world?s poorest people, many of whom spend up to 80 per cent of their income on food, this can be devastating. In 2007-2008 food price inflation pushed some 80 million people into hunger. Recent food price hikes have propelled another 70 million people into extreme poverty.

We need to break the links between poverty, food insecurity and malnutrition. Families impoverished by price volatility risk seeing their babies? minds and bodies permanently damaged by malnutrition; their children being taken out of school and put to work, and their income-producing livestock slaughtered for food.

The answer is to put in place policies, like those advocated by the Scale Up Nutrition movement, to ensure all people have access to sufficient nutrition,? Mr. Ban Ki-moon emphasized.

This month the world?s population, he reminds the world, will top seven billion people. The world has the knowledge and the resources to end hunger; we have the tools to ensure that the poorest are buffered from the impact of rising prices. Let us use them ? now ? to conquer hunger, he called the world to action.