UN report: Hunger faced 828 mi people worldwide in 2021

The total number of people affected by hunger worldwide has increased by 150 million since the beginning of the pandemic of the novel coronavirus, and reached 828 million in 2021.

The figures can be found in the report The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2022, launched Wednesday (Jul 6) by five United Nations (UN) agencies: the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the UN World Food Program (WFP), and the World Health Organization (WHO).

In it, UN agency leaders list the aggravating drivers behind food insecurity and malnutrition—“conflict, climate extremes, and economic shocks, combined with growing inequalities.”

The document points out that the world is moving further and further away from the goal of putting an end to hunger, food insecurity, and malnutrition in all its forms by 2030. After remaining relatively unchanged since 2015, the proportion of people affected by hunger—around 8 percent in 2019—rose to 9.3 percent in 2020 and continued to rise in 2021, reaching 9.8 percent of the world’s population.

Also alarming is that approximately 2.3 billion people across the world (29.3 percent of the total) faced moderate to severe food insecurity last year—up 350 million from before the pandemic started. Some 924 million people (11.7 percent of the global population) faced food insecurity at severe levels, up 207 million people in two years.

War

Today, as the report is being published, a war is raging in Ukraine involving two of the world’s top producers of staple grains, oilseeds, and fertilizers, UN representatives noted. The conflict has been disrupting international supply chains and driving up prices of grains, fertilizers, energy, and therapeutic foods ready for use by severely malnourished children.

Supply chains are already being harmed by increasingly common extreme weather events, particularly in low-income countries, with severe implications for global food security and nutrition, the agencies noted.

The UN agencies argue that, given the threats of an impending global recession and its implications for government revenues and expenditures, one way to bolster economic recovery is to revamp food and agricultural assistance in order to target nutritious foods wherever individual consumption does not yet meet recommended levels for healthy diets.

Governments must rethink the allocation of resources used to encourage the production, supply, and consumption of nutritious foods in order to make healthy food cheaper, more accessible, and equitable, the text reads. Authorities could reduce trade barriers for nutritious foods such as fruits and vegetables.

Future

The projected scenario for 2030 is not optimistic. Some 670 million people—eight percent of the world’s population—are likely to face hunger in 2030, “even if a global economic recovery is taken into account.” The figure is similar to that of 2015, when the goal of ending hunger, food insecurity, and malnutrition by the end of this decade was launched under the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

Brazil

In Brazil's case, the document indicates that the prevalence of severe food insecurity rose from 3.9 million—1.9 percent of the population—between 2014 and 2016, to 15.4 million (7.3%) between 2019 and 2021. The prevalence of moderate to severe food insecurity relative to the total population surged from 37.5 million people (18.3%) between 2014 and 2016 to 61.3 million people (28.9%) between 2019 and 2021.