IRIN reports on how the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) “us[ed] a new set of indicators in its annual report, ‘State of Food Insecurity in the World,’ prepared jointly with the World Food Programme and the International Fund for Agricultural Development.” According to the news service, “The report revises the number of hungry down to 870 million people, saying the number used after the 2007-2008 food price spike — one billion — was inaccurate because of a lack of updated country data and faulty methodology.” While the new methodology takes into account factors such as food distribution and undernourishment, the report authors acknowledge limitations in the new data because it is based on national surveys, which “are not readily available or of uncertain quality,” according to IRIN. “Still, the new methodology does not capture the short-term effects of food price surges or other economic shocks,” the news service writes, adding, “FAO says it is working to develop a wider set of indicators to capture a better sense of the quality of food people have access to as well as other dimensions of food security” (10/11).