Some 828 million people suffer from hunger in the world, progress towards zero hunger is reversed by 2030

“The world is going backwards in their efforts to end hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition by 2030, a goal set by the United Nations in 2015,” states the 2022 edition of the State of Food Security and Nutrition in the Worldpublished this Wednesday by five UN agencies.

Prepared by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), the World Food Program (WFP), the World Health Organization (WHO) and the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the study also highlights the advance of extreme poverty and growing chronic malnutrition.

The report indicates that the number of people affected by hunger in the world reached 828 million in 2021 – 9.8% of the world’s population-, an increase of 46 million since 2020 and 150 million since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The text laments the projections by 2030, which point to almost 670 million people – 8% of the world’s population – still hungry, even calculating a global economic recovery. The number is not far from the number of hungry people in 2015, when the goal of ending hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition by the end of this decade was set under the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

Women and food insecurity

The study details that in 2021 some 2.3 billion people were moderately or severely food insecure, 350 million more than at the beginning of the pandemic; and almost 924 million -11.7% of the world population-, faced it at severe levels, an increase of 207 million in two years.

The disaggregated figures show that the 31.9% of women suffered food insecurity, a higher proportion than the 27.6% of men affected by the same scourge. The numbers represent a gender gap of 4 percentage points, in 2020 the difference was 3 points.

The agencies report that about 3.1 billion people could not afford a healthy diet in 2020, 112 million more than in 2019, reflecting the effects of inflation on consumer food prices stemming from the economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and the measures put in place to contain it.

© UNICEF/Ismail Taxta

This severely malnourished one-year-old is receiving care at a hospital in Dolow, Ethiopia.

emaciated children

Also, almost 45 million children under the age of five they presented emaciation, the most lethal form of malnutrition since it increases up to twelve times the risk of dying; while 149 million children under the age of five were stunted in growth and development due to a chronic lack of essential nutrients in their diets. On the other hand, 39 million were overweight.

The study cites advances in exclusive breastfeedingwith nearly 44% of the world’s babies under six months of age being exclusively breastfed in 2020. The figure is still short of the 50% target for 2030.

© WFP/Tsiory Andriantsoarana

Poverty and drought have caused a serious increase in hunger in southern Madagascar.

food crisis

The organizations explain that there is a food crisis due to the affectation of the supply chains by the increasingly frequent extreme weather eventsespecially in low-income countries.

to this situation the war in Ukraine is added, which involves two of the world’s largest producers of basic grains, oilseeds and fertilizers. The conflagration disrupts international supply chains and raises the prices of cereals, fertilizers, energy and prepared products, such as therapeutic formula for severely malnourished children.

© Pep Bonet/NOOR for FAO

Some children eat their lunch at a school in Guatemala.

Nutritious food for everyone

The authors of the report consider that, given the threat of a global recession at the door, and the implications that this has on public income and spending, one way to support the economic recovery would be redirecting food and agricultural support to focus on nutritious foods as per capita consumption of these does not match recommended levels for healthy diets

“Evidence suggests that if governments redirect the resources they are using to incentivize the production, supply and consumption of nutritious food, they will contribute to make healthy diets less expensivemore affordable and equitable for all”, maintain the UN agencies.

To conclude, they argue that governments could do more to reduce trade barriers to nutritious foodsuch as fruits, vegetables, and legumes.

Many children suffer from malnutrition in Guatemala. File photo: Jonathan Levinson/IRIN

Serious situation in Latin America and the Caribbean

The state of hunger and nutrition in Latin America and the Caribbean It is no better than the rest of the world.

According to the report, between 2020 and 2021, four million people joined to all the hungry in the region.

The pullback comes after an already dismal increase of nine million people between 2019 and 2020.

Regarding the undernourished people, the number stood at 56.5 million in 2021, 8.6% of the regional population.

The FAO representative for the region described the situation as “extremely serious”.

“Only two years, thirteen million people have fallen into hunger. And four out of ten live with food insecurity, while we still have to prepare for the impacts of the current food crisis, including the war in Ukraine”, said Julio Berdegué.

According to the report, in Latin America and the Caribbean 7.4% of the world’s population suffers from hunger; more than half of the hungry people live in Asia, and more than a third in Africa.

The organizations highlighted that hunger has almost doubled in South America since 2015 and that, with more than 16%, the The Caribbean has the highest proportion of hungry population in the region. In Central and South America, that number is 8%.

“We are facing a complex crisis and of proportions, which requires unprecedented actions, not only from governments but from all the actors of the regional agri-food system”, considered Berdegué.

The food insecurity also continues to worsen in the region. In 2021, 40.6% of the population, 268 million people, faced moderate or severe food insecurity, 1.1% more than the previous year.

severe food insecurity affected 93.5 million people in 2021, after increasing 1.4%, to 14.2%, an increase of almost 10 million people in one year, and almost 30 million more compared to 2019.

Berdegué argued that the number of people in a situation of food insecurity in the region suggests that the problem is no longer limited to social groups who have lived in poverty for a long time.

“Food insecurity has reached the citiesand tens of thousands of homes that had not experienced it before,” he said.