A/HRC/22/61 through reduction of income from animal production, reduction of yields of food and cash crops, lowered forest productivity, changes in aquatic populations and increased incidence of infectious disease. According to the most recent Report on the World Nutrition Situation: “demand for biofuel may divert land away from food cropping and increase risk of harmful production practices and environmental degradation. Reducing gender inequity is an important part of the solution to global hunger.”20 III. Conditions and human rights of the urban poor A. Right to food 12. Low incomes, unemployment, volatile food prices and subsequent inability to access adequate supplies of safe and nutritious food threaten food and nutrition security.21 Ninetyseven per cent of urban households are net food buyers, yet urban-dwellers tend to pay higher prices that incorporate the cost of transportation along complex distribution chains. 22 The urban poor‟s dependence on cash-based incomes increases together with a decrease in reliance on surrounding natural resources. Therefore, having adequate access to foodproducing resources and to healthy ways of acquiring staples are crucial for their food security. The recent food crisis not only disproportionately affected the urban poor but also showed the critical need to reduce the urban poor‟s dependency on imported food and vulnerability to food prices.23 Sharp rises in food prices since 200624 have led to an increase in the number of hungry people to more than one billion.25 Food prices have the largest direct impact on poverty because many poor households depend on agricultural income and have larger shares of expenditure on food. The 2010 increase in food prices may have raised poverty by 43.7 million globally and disproportionately affected those who are already poor.26 The availability of biofuels, fluctuating oil prices and inappropriate policy responses exert pressure on commodity prices and increase price volatility.27 13. Since the urban poor rely almost entirely on cash transactions to obtain food, high food prices force the poor to turn to alternatives with little or no nutritional value. 28 The right to food as defined above encompasses not just access to sufficient caloric intake but 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 6 Standing Committee on Nutrition (SCN), 6th Report on the World Nutrition Situation: Progress in Nutrition (2010), p. 77. See ibid. See Alberto Zezza and Luca Tasciotti, “Urban agriculture, poverty, and food security: Empirical evidence from a sample of developing countries” in Food Policy, vol. 35, No. 4 (2010). Preliminary study of the Human Rights Council on discrimination in the context of the right to food, A/HRC/13/32, para. 30. For example, in 2010 a series of weather shocks combined with subsequent market tensions and export restrictions curtailed food supply and doubled global wheat prices between June 2010 and year end. Global maize prices also rose about 73 per cent in the six months after June 2010. See also Armando Mendoza and Roberto Machado, “The escalation in world food prices and its implications for the Caribbean”, Caribbean Development Report, vol. 2 (Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, 2009). See World Bank, “Food Price Watch” (Washington, D.C., 2012) and International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), “Living in the City: Challenges and Options for the Urban Poor” (2002). Maros Ivanic, Will Martin and Hassan Zaman, “Estimating the Short-Run Poverty Impacts of the 2010–11 Surge in Food Prices”, Policy Research Working Paper, No. 5633 (Washington, D.C., World Bank, 2011), p. 11. See World Bank and others, “Price Volatility in Food and Agricultural Markets: Policy Responses” (Washington, D.C., 2011). See IFPRI, “Living in the City”.