4. Issues

Issues

After decades of steady reduction, the number of people who are hungry – as measured by the incidence of undernourishment – began to steadily rise again in 2015. According to current estimates, approximately 690 million people, or 8.9% of the world's population, are hungry, rising 10 million in a year and nearly 60 million in five years.By 2030, the world is not on pace to achieve Zero Hunger. By 2030, the number of people impacted by hunger would have risen to 840 million if current trends continue.

According to the World Food Programme, 135 million people are suffering from severe hunger, owing to a combination of man-made wars, climate change, and economic downturns. By the end of 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic might have doubled that amount, placing another 130 million people at danger of starvation.With almost a quarter of a billion people on the verge of famine, immediate action is required to deliver food and humanitarian assistance to the most vulnerable areas.

Simultaneously, if we are to feed the more than 690 million people who are hungry now – and the additional 2 billion people the globe will have by 2050 — a fundamental transformation of the global food and agriculture system is required. To help lessen the dangers of hunger, increased agricultural productivity and long-term food production are 

Participants in Concern’s LEAF Project tend their crops in Tana River County, Kenya. For the first time in three decades, there was no need for 

food aid distribution in the communities where LEAF was active.

During the dry season in Ale, Ethiopia, there is no water in the river and Manase must dig through the sand until she hits water to collect for her family’s needs. “The water problem in our village is very serious,” she says. Photos: Ezra Millstein/Mercy Corps

The value chain between production, consumption, and nutrition is broken: existing agricultural production patterns are unsustainable, unlikely to attain required growth rates, and do not provide the correct balance of nutrients for a nutritious diet. Consumers are frequently uninformed of their food options and adhere to dietary patterns that are unsuitable for an urbanised lifestyle.Poor people's diets are still unduly reliant on a few basic foods that are deficient in critical nutrients and minerals; at the same time, the newly wealthy are becoming more prone to obesity and other health problems.