Estimated 852 million hungry people in the world 2004
The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2004, page 6: FAO estimates that 852 million people worldwide were undernourished in 2000-2002. During the second half of the decade [nineties], the number of chronically hungry in developing countries increased at a rate of almost 4 million a year, wiping out two thirds of the reduction of 27 million achieved during the previous five years. [due to slow down in progress in China and India and an increase of 34 million in the rest of the developing world].