Food security - WikiHQ

thumb|Women selling [[produce at a market in Lilongwe, Malawi]]

Food security is the state of having reliable access to a sufficient quantity of affordable, healthy food. The availability of food for people of any class, gender, status, ethnicity, or religion is another element of food protection. Similarly, household food security is considered to exist when all the members of a family have consistent access to enough food for an active, healthy life. Food-secure individuals do not live in hunger or fear of starvation. Food security includes resilience to future disruptions of food supply. Such a disruption could occur due to various risk factors such as droughts and floods, shipping disruptions, fuel shortages, economic instability, and wars. Food insecurity is the opposite of food security: a state where there is only limited or uncertain availability of suitable food.

The concept of food security has evolved over time. The four pillars of food security include availability, access, utilization, and stability. In addition, there are two more dimensions that are important: agency and sustainability. These six dimensions of food security are reinforced in conceptual and legal understandings of the right to food.

Food insecurity goes beyond hunger; it includes people who do not have regular access to nutritious and sufficient food, even if they may not necessarily be suffering from hunger. In 2024, an estimated 28.0 percent of the world population, or 2.28 billion people, has experienced food insecurity at moderate or severe levels. There are many causes of food insecurity. The most important ones are high food prices and disruptions in global food supplies for example due to war. There is also climate change, water scarcity, land degradation, agricultural diseases, pandemics and disease outbreaks that can all lead to food insecurity. Additionally, food insecurity affects individuals with low socioeconomic status, affects the health of a population on an individual level, and causes divisions in interpersonal relationships. Food insecurity due to unemployment causes a higher rate of poverty.

The effects of food insecurity can include hunger and even famines. Chronic food insecurity translates into a high degree of vulnerability to hunger and famine. Chronic hunger and malnutrition in childhood can lead to stunted growth of children. Once stunting has occurred, improved nutritional intake after the age of about two years is unable to reverse the damage. Severe malnutrition in early childhood often leads to defects in cognitive development.

About 2.3 billion people in the world are estimated to have been moderately or severely food insecure in 2024. The global prevalence of moderate or severe food insecurity has declined gradually since 2021, reaching 28.0% in 2024. Food insecurity is on the rise in Africa and falling in Latin America and the Caribbean; it has been decreasing gradually in Asia for several consecutive years, while in Oceania and in Northern America and Europe, new estimates point to a slight decline from 2023 to 2024 following a several-year rise. Globally and in almost every region, food insecurity is more prevalent in rural areas than in urban areas and affects more women than men.

Definition

Food security, as defined by the World Food Summit in 1996, is "when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life".

Food insecurity, on the other hand, as defined by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), is a situation of "limited or uncertain availability of nutritionally adequate and safe foods or limited or uncertain ability to acquire acceptable foods in socially acceptable ways."

At the 1974 World Food Conference, the term food security was defined with an emphasis on supply; it was defined as the "availability at all times of adequate, nourishing, diverse, balanced and moderate world food supplies of basic foodstuffs to sustain a steady expansion of food consumption and to offset the fluctuations in production and prices." Later definitions added demand and access issues to the definition. The first World Food Summit, held in 1996, stated that food security "exists when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life."

It is also related to the concepts of nutrition education and nutritional deficiency.

Measurement

thumb|The gender gap narrowed at the global level from 2021 to 2023, but increased slightly in 2024, with the prevalence of food insecurity remaining consistently higher among women than among men, globally and in all regions

Food security can be measured by the number of calories to digest per person per day, available on a household budget. In general, the objective of food security indicators and measurements is to capture some or all of the main components of food security in terms of food availability, accessibility, and utilization/adequacy. While availability (production and supply) and utilization/adequacy (nutritional status/ anthropometric measurement) are easier to estimate and therefore more popular, accessibility (the ability to acquire a sufficient quantity and quality of food) remains largely elusive. The factors influencing household food accessibility are often context-specific.

FAO has developed the Food Insecurity Experience Scale (FIES) as a universally applicable experience-based food security measurement scale derived from the scale used in the United States. Thanks to the establishment of a global reference scale and the procedure needed to calibrate measures obtained in different countries, it is possible to use the FIES to produce cross-country comparable estimates of the prevalence of food insecurity in the population. Since 2015, the FIES has been adopted as the basis to compile one of the indicators included in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) monitoring framework.

thumb|Food insecurity levels based on the food insecurity experience scale by region (2015–2024)

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the World Food Programme (WFP), the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), the World Health Organization (WHO), and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) collaborate every year to produce The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World, or SOFI report (known as The State of Food Insecurity in the World until 2015).

The SOFI report measures chronic hunger (or undernourishment) using two main indicators, the Number of undernourished (NoU) and the Prevalence of undernourishment (PoU). Beginning in the early 2010s, FAO incorporated more complex metrics into its calculations, including estimates of food losses in retail distribution for each country and the volatility in agri-food systems. Since 2014, it has also reported the prevalence of moderate or severe food insecurity based on the FIES.

The report plays a critical role in tracking global progress toward Sustainable Development Goal 2 (Zero Hunger), identifying emerging crises, and shaping international policy responses by providing reliable, comparable data across regions and over time.

Several measurements have been developed to capture the access component of food security, with some notable examples developed by the USAID-funded Food and Nutrition Technical Assistance (FANTA) project. These include:

Household Food Insecurity Access Scale – measures the degree of food insecurity (inaccessibility) in the household in the previous month on a discrete ordinal scale.
Household Dietary Diversity Scale – measures the number of different food groups consumed over a specific reference period (24hrs/48hrs/7days).
Household Hunger Scale – measures the experience of household food deprivation based on a set of predictable reactions, captured through a survey and summarized in a scale.
Coping Strategies Index (CSI) – assesses household behaviors and rates them based on a set of varied established behaviors on how households cope with food shortages. The methodology for this research is based on collecting data on a single question: "What do you do when you do not have enough food, and do not have enough money to buy food?"

Prevalence

alt=|right|300x300px|Updated global estimates point to a decrease in world hunger in recent years following the sharp increase from 2019 to 2021

thumb|300x300px|Global food insecurity levels declined gradually from 2021 to 2024, with Latin America and the Caribbean showing notable progress

thumb|330x330px|Food insecurity levels by region and sex (2024)

thumb|Globally and in most regions, the prevalence of food insecurity has remained consistently higher in rural areas than in urban areas since 2022.

Close to 12 percent of the global population was severely food insecure in 2020, representing 928 million people -148 million more than in 2019. A variety of reasons lie behind the increase in hunger over the past few years. Slowdowns and downturns since the 2008–9 financial crisis have conspired to degrade social conditions, making undernourishment more prevalent. Structural imbalances and a lack of inclusive policies have combined with extreme weather events, altered environmental conditions, and the spread of pests and diseases, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, triggering stubborn cycles of poverty and hunger. In 2019, the high cost of healthy diets together with persistently high levels of income inequality put healthy diets out of reach for around 3 billion people, especially the poor, in every region of the world.

Inequality in the distributions of assets, resources and income, compounded by the absence or scarcity of welfare provisions in the poorest of countries, is further undermining access to food. Nearly a tenth of the world population still lives on US$1.90 or less a day, with sub-Saharan Africa and southern Asia the regions most affected.

High import and export dependence ratios are meanwhile making many countries more vulnerable to external shocks. In many low-income economies, debt has swollen to levels far exceeding GDP, eroding growth prospects.

Finally, there are increasing risks to institutional stability, persistent violence, and large-scale population relocation as a consequence of the conflicts. With the majority of them being hosted in developing nations, the number of displaced individuals between 2010 and 2018 increased by 70% between 2010 and 2018 to reach 70.8 million.

Recent editions of the SOFI report (The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World) present evidence that the decades-long decline in hunger in the world, as measured by the number of undernourished (NoU), has ended. In the 2020 report, FAO used newly accessible data from China to revise the global NoU downwards to nearly 690 million, or 8.9 percent of the world population – but having recalculated the historic hunger series accordingly, it confirmed that the number of hungry people in the world, albeit lower than previously thought, had been slowly increasing since 2014. On broader measures, the SOFI report found that far more people suffered some form of food insecurity, with 3 billion or more unable to afford even the cheapest healthy diet. Nearly 2.37 billion people did not have access to adequate food in 2020 – an increase of 320 million people compared to 2019.

FAO's 2021 edition of The State of Food and Agriculture (SOFA) further estimates that an additional 1 billion people (mostly in lower- and upper-middle-income countries) are at risk of not affording a healthy diet if a shock were to reduce their income by a third.

The 2021 edition of the SOFI report estimated the hunger excess linked to the COVID-19 pandemic at 30 million people by the end of the decade – FAO had earlier warned that even without the pandemic, the world was off track to achieve Zero Hunger or Goal 2 of the Sustainable Development Goals – it further found that already in the first year of the pandemic, the prevalence of undernourishment (PoU) had increased 1.5 percentage points, reaching a level of around 9.9 percent. This is the mid-point of an estimate of 720 to 811 million people facing hunger in 2020 – as many as 161 million more than in 2019.

In 2023, the Global Report on Food Crises revealed that acute hunger affected approximately 282 million people across 59 countries, an increase of 24 million from the previous year. This rise in food insecurity was primarily driven by conflicts, economic shocks, and extreme weather. Regions like the Gaza Strip and South Sudan were among the hardest hit, highlighting the urgent need for targeted interventions to address and mitigate global hunger effectively.

By way of comparison, in one of the largest food producing countries in the world, the United States, approximately one out of six people are "food insecure," including 17 million children, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture in 2009. A 2012 study in the Journal of Applied Research on Children found that rates of food security varied significantly by race, class and education. In both kindergarten and third grade, 8% of the children were classified as food insecure, but only 5% of white children were food insecure, while 12% and 15% of black and Hispanic children were food insecure, respectively. In third grade, 13% of black and 11% of Hispanic children were food insecure compared to 5% of white children.

Households with children are also more susceptible to being food insecure. In 2016, 16.5% of families with children under the age of 18 did not have food security. According to a report from American Journal of Nursing, there are times where parents will reduce their own food intake in order to let their children be more food secure. However, this does not always protect the children, leaving many children of larger families to be vulnerable to food insecurity. A U.S. Department of Agriculture report in 2016 showed that half of the children in food insecure households were also food insecure themselves.

At the global level, the gender gap in the prevalence of moderate or severe food insecurity grew even larger in the year of COVID-19 pandemic. The 2021 SOFI report finds that in 2019 an estimated 29.9 percent of women aged between 15 and 49 years around the world were affected by anemia.

Women play key roles in maintaining all four pillars of food security: as food producers and agricultural entrepreneurs; as decision-makers for the food and nutritional security of their households and communities and as "managers" of the stability of food supplies in times of economic hardship. Households led by individuals identifying as American Indian and Alaska Native experienced a food insecurity rate of 23.3%, while those identifying as Multiracial, American Indian-White reported a rate of 21.7%.]]

Famines have been frequent in world history. Some have killed millions and substantially diminished the population of a large area. The most common causes have been drought and war, but the greatest famines in history were caused by economic policy. One economic policy example of famine was the Holodomor (Great Famine) induced by the Soviet Union's communist economic policy resulting in 7–10 million deaths.

In the late 20th century the Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen observed that "there is no such thing as an apolitical food problem." While drought and other naturally occurring events may trigger famine conditions, it is government action or inaction that determines its severity, and often even whether or not a famine will occur. The 20th century has examples of governments, such as Collectivization in the Soviet Union or the Great Leap Forward in the People's Republic of China undermining the food security of their nations. Mass starvation is frequently a weapon of war, as in the blockade of Germany in World War I and World War II, the Battle of the Atlantic, and the blockade of Japan during World War I and World War II and in the Hunger Plan enacted by Nazi Germany.

Pillars of food security

thumb|Growth in food production has been greater than population growth. Food per person increased since 1961. Data source: [[Food and Agriculture Organization.]]

thumb|Growth of World Food Supply (caloric base) per capita

The WHO states that three pillars that determine food security: food availability, food access, and food use and misuse. The FAO added a fourth pillar: the stability of the first three dimensions of food security over time.

Availability

Food availability relates to the supply of food through production, distribution, and exchange. Food production is determined by a variety of factors including land ownership and use; soil management; crop selection, breeding, and management; livestock breeding and management; and harvesting. Crop production can be affected by changes in rainfall and temperatures. Land used for agriculture can be used for urbanization or lost to desertification, salinization or soil erosion due to unsustainable agricultural practices. and Singapore.

Food security improves as the degree of urbanization increases: in 2024, moderate or severe food insecurity affected 32.0% of adults living in rural areas compared with 28.6% in peri-urban areas and 23.9% in urban areas. Per capita world food supplies are more than adequate to provide food security to all, and thus food accessibility is a greater barrier to achieving food security. Poverty can limit access to food, and can also increase how vulnerable an individual or household is to food price spikes. Households with enough resources can overcome unstable harvests and local food shortages and maintain their access to food.

Utilization

The next pillar of food security is food utilization, which refers to the metabolism of food by individuals. Access to healthcare is another determinant of food utilization since the health of individuals controls how the food is metabolized. Education about nutrition and food preparation can affect food utilization and improve this pillar of food security.

Sustainability

Sustainability refers to the long-term ability of food systems to provide food security and nutrition in a way that does not compromise the economic, social, and environmental bases that generate food security and nutrition for future generations. The International Food Policy Research Institute expressed concerns that the increased connections between markets and the complexity of food and economic systems could cause disruptions to food systems during the COVID-19 pandemic, specifically affecting the poor.

The Ebola outbreak in 2014 led to increases in the prices of staple foods in West Africa. Stringent lockdowns, travel restrictions, and disruptions to labor forces resulted in bottlenecks affecting the production and distribution of goods. Notably, the food supply chain experienced significant disruptions as the pandemic strained logistics, labor availability, and demand patterns. While progress in combating COVID-19 has provided some relief, the pandemic's lasting effects persist, including shifts in consumer behavior and the ongoing necessity for health and safety measures.

Fossil fuel dependence

thumb|[[World population supported with and without synthetic nitrogen fertilizers]]

Between 1950 and 1984, as the Green Revolution transformed agriculture around the globe, world grain production increased by 250%. The energy for the Green Revolution was provided by fossil fuels in the form of fertilizers (natural gas), pesticides (oil), and hydrocarbon-fueled irrigation.

Natural gas is a major feedstock for the production of ammonia, via the Haber process, for use in fertilizer production. The development of synthetic nitrogen fertilizer has significantly supported global population growth — it has been estimated that almost half the people on Earth are currently fed as a result of synthetic nitrogen fertilizer use.

Agricultural diseases

Diseases affecting livestock or crops can have devastating effects on food availability especially if there are no contingency plans in place.

For example, Ug99, a lineage of wheat stem rust, which can cause up to 100% crop losses, is present in wheat fields in several countries in Africa and the Middle East and is predicted to spread rapidly through these regions and possibly further afield, potentially causing a wheat production disaster that would affect food security worldwide. As of 2025, the Avian Flu has plagued the U.S. poultry industry, resulting in rapidly increasing egg prices for consumers and farmers unable to keep up with demand. U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), looks for solutions to combat increasing prices and the spread of pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI). Proposed solutions include, increasing investments in biosecurity to stop the spread of HPAI, extending relief to poultry farmers impacted, and removing unnecessary regulatory burdens to expand the commercial market for eggs.

Disruption in global food supplies due to war

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has disrupted global food supplies. The conflict has severely impacted food supply chains with noteworthy effects on production, sourcing, manufacturing, processing, logistics, and significant shifts in demand among nations reliant on imports from Ukraine.

Environmental degradation and overuse

Land degradation

Intensive farming often leads to a vicious cycle of exhaustion of soil fertility and a decline of agricultural yields. Other causes of land degradation include for example deforestation, overgrazing, and over-exploitation of vegetation for use. Approximately 40 percent of the world's agricultural land is seriously degraded.

While the Green Revolution was critical in supporting a larger population through the mid-1900s to now by increasing crop yields, it has also resulted in environmental degradation particularly through land use, soil degradation, and deforestation. Over-farming of agricultural land due to the Green Revolution has caused contamination and erosion of soil, and a reduction in biodiversity due to pesticide usage (as well as deforestation). Malnutrition rates and food insecurity could increase again as land and water resources are depleted.

Water scarcity

Regionally, Sub-Saharan Africa has the largest number of water-stressed countries of any place on the globe, as of an estimated 800 million people who live in Africa, 300 million live in a water-stressed environment. It is estimated that by 2030, 75 million to 250 million people in Africa will be living in areas of high water stress, which will likely displace anywhere between 24 million and 700 million people as conditions become increasingly unlivable. water scarcity translates to a loss of food security.

Overfishing

The overexploitation of fish stocks can pose serious risks to food security. Risks can be posed both directly by overexploitation of food fish and indirectly through overexploitation of the fish that those food fish depend on for survival. In 2022 the United Nations called attention "considerably negative impact" on food security of the fish oil and fishmeal industries in West Africa.

Food loss and waste

thumb|Food recovered by food waste critic [[Robin Greenfield in Madison, Wisconsin, from two days of recovery from dumpsters]]

Food waste may be diverted for alternative human consumption when economic variables allow for it. In the 2019 edition of the State of Food and Agriculture, FAO asserted that food loss and waste have potential effects on the four pillars of food security. However, the links between food loss and waste reduction and food security are complex, and positive outcomes are not always certain. Reaching acceptable levels of food security and nutrition inevitably implies certain levels of food loss and waste. Maintaining buffers to ensure food stability requires a certain amount of food to be lost or wasted. At the same time, ensuring food safety involves discarding unsafe food, which then is counted as lost or wasted, while higher-quality diets tend to include more highly perishable foods.

How the impacts on the different dimensions of food security play out and affect the food security of different population groups depends on where in the food supply chain the reduction in losses or waste takes place as well as on where nutritionally vulnerable and food-insecure people are located geographically. These compounding pressures underline the crucial need for urgent global action to adapt to and mitigate climate impacts to protect food sources. Recent climate modeling suggests that, even when accounting for farmer adaptation, global yields of calories from six major staple crops are projected to be 24% lower by 2100 under a high-emissions scenario than they would be without climate change.

Compounding factors

Vulnerability to food insecurity can be increased by exposure to multiple, often simultaneous hazards that create complex emergencies, which ultimately challenge established risk management approaches. For example Iin 2020, East Africa faced a “triple threat” of the COVID-19 pandemic, flooding and desert locusts, creating a complex emergency that reactive disaster management practices struggled to address The compounding effects of these simultaneous crises led to a 20% increase in acute food insecurity in the region.Similarly, Cyclone Idai, which struck Southern Africa in 2019, did not just destroy 780,000 hectares of crops on impact, but it also triggered cholera outbreaks and created conditions for increased pest infestations, affecting 3 million people across Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Malawi.20 The interaction between these different types of crises created effects that exceeded what any single hazard might have produced.

Effects of food insecurity

Famine and hunger are both rooted in food insecurity. Chronic food insecurity translates into a high degree of vulnerability to famine and hunger; ensuring food security presupposes the elimination of that vulnerability.

The International Monetary Fund cautioned in September 2022 that "the impact of increasing import costs for food and fertilizer for those extremely vulnerable to food insecurity will add $9 billion to their balance of payments pressures – in 2022 and 2023." This would deplete countries' foreign reserves as well as their capacity to pay for food and fertilizer imports."

Stunting and chronic nutritional deficiencies

left|thumb|A child in Dolo Ado facing malnutrition

Many countries experience ongoing food shortages and distribution problems. These result in chronic and often widespread hunger amongst significant numbers of people. Human populations can respond to chronic hunger and malnutrition by decreasing body size, known in medical terms as stunting or stunted growth. Once stunting has occurred, improved nutritional intake after the age of about two years is unable to reverse the damage. Severe malnutrition in early childhood often leads to defects in cognitive development.

Worldwide, the prevalence of child stunting was 21.3 percent in 2019, or 144 million children. Central Asia, Eastern Asia, and the Caribbean have the largest rates of reduction in the prevalence of stunting and are the only subregions on track to achieve the 2025 and 2030 stunting targets. Between 2000 and 2019, the global prevalence of child stunting declined by one-third.

Data from the 2021 FAO SOFI showed that in 2020, 22.0 percent (149.2 million) of children under 5 years of age were affected by stunting, 6.7 percent (45.4 million) were suffering from wasting and 5.7 percent (38.9 million) were overweight. FAO warned that the figures could be even higher due to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. For depression and anxiety, food-insecure individuals have almost a threefold risk increase compared to food-secure individuals. Adolescents experiencing food insecurity are more likely to experience suicidal ideation, suicide planning and suicide attempts than those who are food-secure. This is more common in countries where food insecurity is less common, potentially because it indicates a reduced standard of living and low social standing within that country.

Individuals who are pregnant and suffer from HFI (Household Food Insecurity) have a higher likelihood of experiencing symptoms of depression and possibly anxiety. Data from 18 observational studies involving over 27,000 participants, the analysis found that pregnant individuals experiencing HFI had significantly higher odds of reporting depressive symptoms. While the association with anxiety symptoms was noted, there was insufficient data for a full meta-analysis. The prevalence of HFI among pregnant individuals ranged from 12.6% to 62.1%. Depressive symptoms were reported in 18% to 49% of cases, while anxiety symptoms ranged from 23% to 34%.

Approaches to food security

Agrifood systems resilience

Resilient agrifood systems can achieve food security. The resilience of agrifood systems refers to the capacity over time of agrifood systems, in the face of any disruption, to sustainably ensure availability of and access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food for all, and sustain the livelihoods of agrifood systems' actors. Truly resilient agrifood systems must have a robust capacity to prevent, anticipate, absorb, adapt and transform in the face of any disruption, with the functional goal of ensuring food security and nutrition for all and decent livelihoods and incomes for agrifood systems' actors. Such resilience addresses all dimensions of food security, but focuses specifically on stability of access and sustainability, which ensure food security in both the short and the long term.

integrating humanitarian, development and peacebuilding policies in conflict-affected areas;
scaling up climate resilience across food systems;
strengthening resilience of the most vulnerable to economic adversity;
intervening along the food supply chains to lower the cost of nutritious foods;
tackling poverty and structural inequalities, ensuring interventions are pro-poor and inclusive; and
strengthening food environments and changing consumer behaviour to promote dietary patterns with positive impacts on human health and the environment.

Approaches by FAO

thumb|right|A liquid [[manure spreader is used to increase agricultural productivity.]]Over the last decade, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has proposed a "twin track" approach to fight food insecurity that combines sustainable development and short-term hunger relief. Development approaches include investing in rural markets and rural infrastructure.

FAO has noted that some countries have been successful in fighting food insecurity and decreasing the number of people suffering from undernourishment. Bangladesh is an example of a country that has met the Millennium Development Goal hunger target. The FAO credited growth in agricultural productivity and macroeconomic stability for the rapid economic growth in the 1990s that resulted in an increase in food security. Irrigation systems were established through infrastructure development programs.

FAO urged governments to make nutrition a central plank of their agricultural policies, investment policies and social protection systems. It also called for measures to tackle food loss and waste, and to lower costs at every stage of food production, storage, transport, distribution and marketing. Another FAO priority is for governments to secure better access to markets for small-scale producers of nutritious foods. The Rome Declaration called for the members of the United Nations to work to halve the number of chronically undernourished people on the Earth by 2015. The Plan of Action set several targets for government and non-governmental organizations for achieving food security, at the individual, household, national, regional, and global levels.

Another World Summit on Food Security took place at the FAO's headquarters in Rome between November 16 and 18, 2009.

FAO has also created a partnership that will act through the African Union's CAADP framework aiming to end hunger in Africa by 2025. It includes different interventions including support for improved food production, a strengthening of social protection and integration of the Right to Food into national legislation.

Improving agricultural productivity to benefit the rural poor

thumb|A farmer holding up [[onions he has grown on his farm near Gilgil, Kenya]]

According to the Comprehensive Assessment of Water Management in Agriculture, a major study led by the International Water Management Institute (IWMI), managing rainwater and soil moisture more effectively, and using supplemental and small-scale irrigation, hold the key to helping the greatest number of poor people. It has called for a new era of water investments and policies for upgrading rainfed agriculture that would go beyond controlling field-level soil and water to bring new freshwater sources through better local management of rainfall and runoff. Increased agricultural productivity enables farmers to grow more food, which translates into better diets and, under market conditions that offer a level playing field, into higher farm incomes.

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) proposes several key steps to increasing agricultural productivity, which is in turn key to increasing rural income and reducing food insecurity. They include:

Boosting agricultural science and technology. Current agricultural yields are insufficient to feed the growing populations. Eventually, the rising agricultural productivity drives economic growth.
Securing property rights and access to finance
Enhancing human capital through education and improved health
Conflict prevention and resolution mechanisms and democracy and governance based on principles of accountability and transparency in public institutions and the rule of law are basic to reducing vulnerable members of society.

Development aid activities

In September 2022, the United States announced a $2.9 billion contribution to aid efforts of global food security at the UN General Assembly in New York. $2 billion will go to the U.S. Agency for International Development for its humanitarian assistance efforts around the world, along with $140 million for the agency's Feed the Future Initiative. The United States Department of Agriculture will receive $220 million to fund eight new projects, all of which is expected to benefit nearly a million children residing in food-insecure countries in Africa and East Asia. The USDA will also receive another $178 million for seven international development projects to support U.S. government priorities on four continents.thumb|right|Fight Hunger: Walk the World campaign is a United Nations [[World Food Programme initiative.]]

The World Food Programme (WFP) is an agency of the United Nations that uses food aid to promote food security and eradicate hunger and poverty. In particular, the WFP provides food aid to refugees and to others experiencing food emergencies. It also seeks to improve nutrition and quality of life to the most vulnerable populations and promote self-reliance. An example of a WFP program is the "Food For Assets" program in which participants work on new infrastructure, or learn new skills, that will increase food security, in exchange for food.

In April 2012, the Food Assistance Convention was signed, the world's first legally binding international agreement on food aid. The May 2012 Copenhagen Consensus recommended that efforts to combat hunger and malnutrition should be the first priority for politicians and private sector philanthropists looking to maximize the effectiveness of aid spending. They put this ahead of other priorities, like the fight against malaria and AIDS.

Alternative diets

Food security could be increased by integrating alternative foods that can be grown in compact environments, that are resilient to pests and disease, and that do not require complex supply chains. Foods meeting these criteria include algae, mealworm, and fungi-derived mycoprotein. While unpalatable on their own to most people, such raw ingredients might be processed into more palatable foods.

thumb|Many different [[Edible insects|insects are edible; Grasshoppers, silkworms, and bamboo worms (some of the insects in the picture) are just a few of the options.]]

With over 2000 identified edible insects, there are many options for consumption. Insects may provide a sustainable option for protein sources containing 13-77% protein by dry weight. The energy obtained by eating insects can be similar to other food sources like beef and chicken depending on what kind of insect is eaten. Insects may be a sustainable commercial farming option to support populations struggling with food security due to their nutrition and farming capacities, taking less room to cultivate than other protein sources.

Food Justice Movement

The Food Justice Movement is a multifaceted movement with relevance to the issue of food security. It has been described as a movement about social-economic and political problems in connection to environmental justice, improved nutrition and health, and activism. Today, a growing number of individuals and minority groups are embracing the Food Justice due to the perceived increase in hunger within nations such as the United States as well as the amplified effect of food insecurity on many minority communities, particularly the Black and Latino communities.

Controlled Environmental Agriculture

Controlled Environmental Agriculture (CEA) is a system that uses hydroponics and vertical farming that provides a solution to water scarcity and food insecurity, especially in arid regions like the Mediterranean. This system uses significantly less water and land compared to traditional farming making them highly efficient to areas with limited resources. Regions with strong infrastructure and skilled labor are particularly well-suited for CEA, which can enhance local food production and contribute to long-term food security.

Digital Technologies

The adaptation of digital technologies such as artificial intelligence, blockchain, and the Internet of Things (IoT) in agriculture enable farmers to access real-time data, optimize resource use, and improve decision-making, leading to increased productivity and reduced environmental impact. For instance, precision agriculture tools allow for targeted application of inputs, minimizing waste and preserving natural resources.

By country

Afghanistan

In Afghanistan, about 35.5% of households are food insecure (as of 2018). The prevalence of underweight, stunting, and wasting in children under five years of age is also very high. In October 2021, more than half of Afghanistan's 39 million people faced an acute food shortage. On 11 November 2021, Human Rights Watch reported that Afghanistan is facing widespread famine due to collapsed economy and broken banking system. The UN World Food Program has also issued multiple warnings of worsening food insecurity. As of 2025 it is estimated that 22.9 million Afghans, that is more than half of the population, is in need of humanitarian aid, this includes 12.6 million at "crisis" or "emergency" levels of acute food insecurity.

Australia

In 2012, the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) conducted a survey measuring nutrition, which included food security. It was reported that 4% of Australian households were food insecure. 1.5% of those households were severely food insecure. Financial issues were cited as the main cause of food insecurity. Increased extreme weather is projected to affect crops, livestock, and soil quality. Wheat production, one of Australia's main food exports, is projected to decrease by 9.2% by 2030. Beef production is also expected to fall by 9.6%. Contributing factors include extreme weather events, economic shocks, and high levels of domestic food inflation.

Brazil

In 2023, approximately 27.6% of Brazilian households, equating to 21.6 million homes, experienced some level of food insecurity. This included 18.2% facing mild food insecurity, 5.3% moderate, and 4.1% severe.

On an individual level, remarkably severe food insecurity saw a significant decline, dropping from 8% of the population in 2022 to 1.2% in 2023 according to the Brazilian government. This reduction lifted 14.7 million people out of severe hunger conditions.

Food insecurity has been associated with a poorer quality of diet including a significant difference in micronutrient intake which varies across age and sex. In a 2015 study, the caloric intake was higher in severely food insecure households however with fewer micronutrients indicating a shift towards less nutrient-dense food options. In addition to micronutrient deficiencies across all age groups, food insecurity is correlated with higher rates of chronic disease biomarkers. In Canada, food insecurity is associated with worse mental health and higher mortality rates. particularly in Chinese cities. The influence of wet markets on urban food security includes food pricing and physical accessibility.

Calling food waste "shameful", General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, Xi Jinping, launched the Clean Plate campaign. Xi stressed that there should be a sense of crisis regarding food security. In 2020, China witnessed a rise in food prices, due to the COVID-19 outbreak and mass flooding that wiped out the country's crops, which made food security a priority for Xi. As part of its goals of ensuring food security, the Chinese Communist Party emphasizes agricultural research, including at the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Democratic Republic of Congo

In the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), about 33% of households are food insecure, and nearly 60% in eastern provinces. Millions of DRC inhabitants are living below the poverty line, contributing to this widespread hunger in the country that in some cases is so severe, that families can't afford to eat everyday. A study showed the correlation of food insecurity and its negative effects on at-risk HIV adults in the Democratic Republic of Congo, exacerbating the vulnerability of these populations even further.

Furthermore, the nation has an influx of imported food products that are often of poor nutritional quality, but are placed at competitive prices that the nation can afford. This results in the majority of households turning to cheaper, high-calorie food products over more healthy, unaffordable, high-protein foods that are not as accessible to them. This then results in unbalanced and unhealthy diets that contribute to poor health outcomes for these populations. Furthermore, many urban areas are forced to turn to mainly consume bushmeat as their primary source of protein, because they cannot afford to access other types of safer, healthier and even more legal options.

India

Mexico

Pakistan

According to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (ITC), Between April and October 2023, nearly 10.5 million people in Pakistan, or 29% of the analyzed population, were experiencing high levels of acute food insecurity. This includes approximately 2.1 million people in IPC Phase 4 (Emergency) and around 8.4 million in IPC Phase 3 (Crisis). These conditions contribute to a high rate of food secure individuals, about 92.5% of the population have experienced no food security concerns. A challenge with this structure is that importing food leaves the country's food supply chain vulnerable to price changes in the global food market from factors such as, disease (like Coronavirus) and climate change which can cause droughts and floods disrupting agriculture in countries like Thailand which Singapore relies on.

South Africa

In South Africa, between a quarter and a third of households are food insecure. Following the COVID-19 lockdowns, child and household hunger have not decreased. In contrast, hunger has stabilized at a higher rate than pre-pandemic rates. This increase in hunger may be due to slow economic growth, low employment and a loss of government financial support following the pandemic. The social grants given by the government along with the child support grants, school food initiatives, and the Integrated Food Security and Nutrition Programme have all been influential in lowering the food insecurity rate particularly before the Coronavirus outbreak.

Sudan

Syria

The 2025 hunger crisis in Syria is one of the country's worst humanitarian disasters, with over 14.5 million people facing food insecurity. A severe drought, the harshest in 36 years, slashed wheat production by 40%, while years of war, the 2023 earthquake, and the return of refugees devastated agriculture and infrastructure. Economic collapse, soaring food and fuel prices, and reduced subsidies left families unable to afford essentials, with basic food costs nine times higher than the minimum wage. Political instability after Assad's fall further disrupted supply chains and aid delivery, while international support waned; the World Food Programme reported a funding gap of $335 million. Despite reaching 1.5 million people monthly, relief efforts remain far below the scale of need, leaving millions at risk of famine and malnutrition.

United States

In 2023, data showed that undergraduates attending colleges and universities with a high percentage of minorities such as HBCUs, TCUs, and MSIs faced greater food insecurity compared to other institutions. Same date also showed high levels of needs being reported during COVID-19 pandemic in these types of institutes as well

Uganda

In 2022, 28% of Ugandan households experienced food insecurity. This insecurity has negative effects on HIV transmission and household stability. In the wetland-associated system in Uganda, 93% of families are food insecure with 75% of inhabitants eating two meals and 8% eating only one meal a day. This may be made worse by socioeconomic factors like disease (HIV/AIDS), poverty, and agricultural reasons like land degradation or land management issues (regulation of food production using wetlands).

Yemen

Food insecurity is highly prevalent in Yemen, with 60% of the population being affected by agricultural decline. The Integrated Security Phase Classification system places 53% of Yemenis as at risk (36%) or as an emergency (17%). Between 23 and 30% of Yemenis must change their choice of food and compromise on the quality of their food to account for food shortages while 8 to 13% of Yemenis admit to decreasing the number of meals they eat. The state of nutrition is most dire for vulnerable populations like children who face developmental issues like stunting or wasting as a result of malnutrition. Over 462,000 Yemeni children are severely acutely malnourished which increases their risk of disease. In a 2019 study, children with severe acute malnutrition were reported to have an increased rate of measles, diarrhea, fever, and cough when compared to non-severely acutely malnourished children.

Society and culture

October 16 has been chosen as World Food Day, in honour of the date FAO was founded in 1945. On this day, FAO hosts a variety of events at its headquarters in Rome and around the world, as well as seminars with UN officials.

Human rights approach

The United Nations (UN) recognized the Right to Food in the Declaration of Human Rights in 1948,

United Nations Goals

thumb|The Zero Hunger SDG, Goal 2 represented in Arabic. Goal 2 focuses on reducing hunger and poverty, as an international agreed upon goal and agenda.

The UN Millennium Development Goals were one of the initiatives aimed at achieving food security in the world. The first Millennium Development Goal states that the UN "is to eradicate extreme hunger and poverty" by 2015.

Multiple different international agreements and mechanisms have been developed to address food security. The main global policy to reduce hunger and poverty is in the Sustainable Development Goals. In particular Goal 2: Zero Hunger sets globally agreed targets to end hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition, and promote sustainable agriculture by 2030. Although there has been some progress, the world is not on track to achieve the global nutrition targets, including those on child stunting, wasting and overweight by 2030.