The international official said the funds from donor countries, including the United States, Canada, and the European Union, will be channeled by the world body based in Rome, Italy.

Rizzo, who was appointed to the post by President Porfirio Lobo Sosa earlier this year, said that these resources are in addition to the annual contributions that FAO Honduras intended for food and agricultural projects in various urban and rural areas.

He recalled that the FAO has had a presence in Honduras for 25 years and in 2010 spent more than one hundred million dollars to fund various agricultural programs such as “Lempira Sur” and “Women Entrepreneurs”, both in the Department of Lempira.

“FAO and the World Bank have designed double investment in new projects. It is about a billion dollars to be implemented over the next four years,” said the representative.

The resources will be available in 2011, which was declared as the “Food Safety Year” by President Lobo as part of the Millennium Development Goals to eradicate hunger by 2015.

Rizzo said that this strategy is accompanied by a legal framework that includes the national congressional approval of the Food Security Act, which once in place will be unique in Central America.

Also included are other programs such as the “Bono ten thousand” for some 600,000 poor families in the country, and “School Lunch” for more than a million public school students with support from the World Food Programme and the International Foundation for Agricultural Development (IFAD).

Rizzo said the latest official investigations placed Honduras among the countries with the worst nutrition on the planet, for more than five million people live on a plate of food a day.

He also lamented the current paradox of food security: While the world produces more food, there is more hunger, which is undoubtedly due to climate change, and lack of pension plans of successive governments to deal with natural phenomenas.