The United Nation’s Food And Agriculture Organization’s 2022 report on food security paints a grim picture. Frighteningly, the report says, “the world is moving backwards in its efforts to end hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition in all its forms”.
The report titled The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2022 says, “Food and agricultural output goals remain unrealistic”. They seem unachievable despite concerted global efforts. Just eight years remain to the 2030 goalpost of Sustainable Development Goal 2 [SDG 2] targets.
The Executive Summary of the 260-page report exposes the world’s failure to progress towards the sustainable food security goals. Denouncing the world for “moving in the opposite direction”, the report says, “World hunger rose further in 2021, following a sharp upturn in 2020 in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic.
“Disparities in the impact of the pandemic and the recovery, with the limited coverage and duration of the social protection measures, led to widening inequalities that have contributed to further setbacks in 2021 towards achievement of the Zero Hunger target by 2030.”
The report indirectly censures governments grappling with food shortages. The report indicts them for not aligning their food and agricultural policy with the objectives of pushing healthy diets and, in fact, “undermining food security and nutrition outcomes”. Whatever little support exists lacks equitable distribution, distorts market and environmentally harmful, the report says.
The report suggests governments could assign public budgets more cost-effectively and efficiently to help reduce the cost of healthy diets, thus improving their affordability, sustainably and inclusively.
The UN report cites perturbing data. Prevalence of undernourishment jumped from 8.0 in 2019 to around 9.3 per cent in 2020. It continued to rise in 2021, though slowly, to around
9.8pc.
The report authors estimate between 702 and 828 million people in the world or 8.9 and 10.5pc of global population, respectively faced hunger in 2021. Adding the lingering consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic, hunger affected 46 million more people in 2021 compared to 2020, and 150 million more people since 2019, before the pandemic.
One in five people in Africa, or 20.2pc of the population, faced hunger in 2021, compared
to 9.1pc in Asia, 8.6pc in Latin America and the Caribbean, 5.8pc in Oceania, and
less than 2.5pc in Northern America and Europe.
The report highlights the growing gender gap in food insecurity. In 2021, the world’s 31.9pc women faced moderate to severe food insecurity compared to 27.6pc men. A gap of more than 4 percentage points, compared to 3 percentage points in 2020.
Further distressing data comes from the World Food Programme. It says in the past two years, the number of severely food‑insecure people around the world has more than doubled to 276 million.
Apart from the expert opinions and data-based analyses cited in the UN FAO report, many issues and ground realities, evident even to the layperson, show the prevalence of global food crises. Hyper-inflation tops this list. A majority of the countries currently face high inflation, high fuel and commodity prices, unemployment, job redundancy because of technology takeover, bad governance, and poor policies.
Other causes for food crises include wars, regional conflicts, climate change, floods, droughts, locusts, earthquakes, inequality, and Covid-19 pandemic. All these issues added means one person in nine people goes to bed hungry globally.
Food crises continue to gnaw the world since the middle of previous decade – 2000 to 2010. Food and commodities issues grew worse by the recession caused by the global financial crises in 2008. Intervention by central banks of many countries controlled the damage. Even as the global economy was reviving the Arab Spring started from Tunisia in December 2010 and spread to other countries in the Middle East. It lasted over two years and before it ended the Syrian Civil War started which saw more than 6.7 million Syrian refugees flee to Europe. Then the economic slowdown hit again followed by the pandemic late in 2019.
All these upheavals have derailed SDG2 food security plans. Hope global leaders realise peace, harmony and joint efforts are vital for sustainable growth and development.
[Sudeep Sonawane, an India-based journalist, has worked in five countries in the Middle East and Asia. Email: [sudeep.sonawane@gmail.com]
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