Meredith Alexander, Head of Trade and Corporates

How important is global hunger to the UK government? I’m pleased to report that I think the UK government is paying much more attention to the billion people going hungry today than they were this time last year.

I attended several meetings today about the G8/G20 summit in June and the Millennium Development Goal meeting in September. These pre-G8 meetings happen every year so that the government can outline its plans for development at the summit and hear feedback from groups like ActionAid.

Last year, it felt like a real uphill struggle to get hunger on the government’s agenda for these meetings. Today there was a hunger specialist in the room!

In addition, the Department for International Development has singled out hunger as one of the key issues for its conference on the Millennium Development Goals. This is a massive step forward. There are some strong elements in the paper. For example, it highlights that 70 per cent of farmers are women and stresses the need to involve farmers' groups in setting policy.

Overall though, the level of ambition needs to be higher if we are going to make real progress on hunger.