It's been a hard year for Andrea Daquilema.
As a single mother of four living in a small community in the Chimborazo province of Ecuador, she's become accustomed to hard times. But the rapidly rising price of food is making it difficult to keep her family fed.
She values education, telling us of her dream for her children to graduate and get good jobs to help the community. But without any attempt to mask her disappointment, she admits that three have already been forced to leave school and go to work.
She worries that if the food crisis continues much longer, her youngest won't be far behind.
All around the world, families are making similar sacrifices. An estimated 100 million people have fallen into poverty over the last two years, as a worldwide food crisis washes out the progress made in the fight against global poverty.
"This is not just about meals forgone today or about increasing social unrest. It is about lost learning potential for children and adults in the future, stunted intellectual and physical growth," said World Bank president Robert Zoellick at a press conference earlier this year. "Even more, we estimate that the effect of this food crisis on poverty reduction worldwide is on the order of seven lost years."
In North America, people spend roughly 10-20 per cent of their income on food. To us, the higher grocery bills come as a minor annoyance. But in the developing world, where food already accounts for as much as 80 per cent of their budget, the repercussions are dire.
Families are taking drastic measures to provide temporary relief. They start by pulling their children out of school and putting them to work. Then they stop visiting health clinics in an effort to save money. Finally they sell-off their assets; first their livestock, and then their plows and other farming tools.
Arif Husain, Programme Advisor for the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP), explained how this exacerbates the problem.
"This really puts them into economic destitution, so even when things come back to normal, they cannot remain productive members of society," he said.
The WFP feeds 73 million people in 78 countries, but higher food prices are threatening many of their projects.
For some children, the organization's school feeding programs provide their only meal of the day. But the WFP has already suspended that service to 450,000 children in Cambodia, and warns they face similar difficult choices in many more countries.
In March, the organization asked governments for an additional $500 million (US) on top of its normal budget for 2008. Since then, revised estimates show a shortfall of $755 million.
Emergency funding is urgently needed to keep projects like school feeding afloat and to keep people from going hungry. But as Mr. Husain points out, long-term initiatives are the key to ending the crisis.
"You have to ensure that there is investment in the agricultural sector. You have to ensure that agricultural productivity is increasing. These things need to be started now, so that in five years we will see progress. But if we don't start now, this thing will continue."
Andrea Daquilema's three oldest children have started to adjust to life outside school. They take pride in helping their mother and keeping the family fed.
But in her youngest child lies a world of opportunities: a good education, a good job and the chance to break the cycle of poverty.
The global food crisis poses an immediate threat to millions of people around the world, and to a mother's dream for a better future.
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