Global Food and Nutrition Security

Small-scale family farms of less than two hectares produce one-third of the world’s food (32%), while farms of up to five hectares located in developing countries account for more than half of the global production of nine staple crops – rice, peanut, cassava, millet, wheat, potato, maize, barley and rye – and grow almost three- quarters of the coffee and 90% of the cocoa.

As the world gears up for the 2023 United Nations Climate Change Conference, or COP28, in a year with soaring temperatures and progressive extreme weather events, attention is turning towards innovative solutions to address the climate crisis.

The Hunger Hotspots report by WFP and FAO identifies 18 hunger “hotspots” in a total of 22 countries where food security is expected to significantly deteriorate, and the outlook for the next six months from November 2023 to April 2024.

The EU and its Member States signed today a new Partnership Agreement with the Members of the African, Caribbean and Pacific States (OACPS) that will serve as an overarching legal framework for their relations for the next twenty years.

Progress was made in Latin America and the Caribbean in the fight against hunger and food insecurity, driven by improvements in South America. Between 2021 and 2022, a decrease was observed in the prevalence of both conditions in South America, while in Mesoamerica the prevalence of hunger remained the same and the prevalence of moderate or severe food insecurity increased slightly. In the Caribbean, the prevalence of both conditions increased.

Agriculture, and more broadly food systems, play a central role in plans and programs to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Paris Agreement’s objectives of climate mitigation, adaptation, and resilience.

Today, Cindy McCain, the Executive Director of the World Food Programme (WFP) and Dr. Sultan Al Jaber, the President of the UN Conference on Climate Change (COP28), called for urgent action to scale up climate action in fragile and conflict-affected settings.

Production prospects across most basic foodstuffs are favourable, but extreme weather events, rising geopolitical tensions and sudden policy changes pose risks for global food production systems and could potentially tip delicate demand-supply balances and dampen prospects for trade and global food security, according to a new report from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).

Amid the looming threat of El Niño expected to severely affect millions of people, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has launched an updated Anticipatory Action and Response Plan to reduce the projected impacts of this climate phenomenon on agricultural livelihoods and food security of the most at-risk and vulnerable populations.

The Global Food and Nutrition Security Dashboard enables humanitarian and development agencies along with governments to quickly get an overview of the food and nutrition insecurity situation worldwide.

This edition of The State of Food and Agriculture focuses on the true cost of agrifood systems. By introducing the concept of the hidden costs and benefits of agrifood systems and providing a framework through which these can be assessed, this report aims to initiate a process that will better prepare decision-makers for actions to steer agrifood systems towards environmental, social and economic sustainability.

This annual report monitors and evaluates agricultural policies in 54 countries, including the 38 OECD countries, the five non-OECD EU Member States, and 11 emerging economies. It finds that support to agriculture has reached record levels amidst subsequent crises, although the increase in support has been less than the sector’s growth. After COVID-19, governments have taken significant action to limit the impacts of the war in Ukraine on the farming sector and markets.

The collective open letter included signatures from the WWF, Global Alliance of the Future of Food, Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition, The Food System Partnership and the Food and Land Use Coalition.

Reading time: 8 minutes.

The paper explores the impact of recent spikes in food prices on poverty in lower-middle income countries (LMICs). It is often claimed that food price increases negatively affect the poor because they already spend a higher proportion of their total income on food.

Defined as serious disruptions to the functioning of a community or society, disasters are producing unprecedented levels of damage and loss in agriculture around the world. Their increasing severity and frequency, from 100 per year in the 1970s to around 400 events per year in the past 20 years, affect agrifood systems across multiple dimensions, compromising food security and undermining the sustainability of the agriculture sector.

2023 has been a difficult year for activity in sub-Saharan African economies. The inflationary shock following Russia’s war in Ukraine has prompted higher interest rates worldwide, which has meant slowing international demand, elevated spreads, and ongoing exchange rate pressures. As a result, growth in 2023 is expected to fall for the second year in a row to 3.3 percent from 4.0 percent last year.

Growth in the Middle East and Central Asia (ME&CA) is slowing, with growth for the region projected at 2.0 percent in 2023 (down from 5.6 percent last year) before increasing to 3.4 percent in 2024.

Over the last 30 years, an estimated $3.8 trillion worth of crops and livestock production has been lost due to disaster events, corresponding to an average loss of $123 billion per year or 5 percent of annual global agricultural gross domestic product (GDP), according to a new report released today by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).

To make more progress in the fight against hunger, the world needs to make at-risk communities less vulnerable to climate shocks and other emergencies, the UN World Food Programme said today.