Devex Dish: It’s time to move beyond food security

A critical message emerged on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly last week: Food security is not enough. Leaders and policymakers need to also be thinking about nutrition security. That means not just producing enough food for everyone, but making sure that food is nutritious.

As part of a Devex panel during UNGA, Cary Fowler, the U.S. special envoy for global food security, explained that he didn’t want to diminish the importance of food security. But there is a need to simultaneously consider proper nutrition, he said, including the vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients needed to prevent stunting, wasting, and the micronutrient deficiencies that can affect cognitive development, particularly in children.

Worryingly, the number of children experiencing stunting and wasting is actually set to rise, according to the Gates Foundation, from the 148 million who experienced stunting and the 45 million who experienced wasting in 2022.

Climate change is the critical factor in all of this, as it destroys food supplies and wreaks havoc on harvests and livestock. The growing recognition of the impact of climate change on food security offers an important opportunity to also inject nutrition into these discussions, explained Afshan Khan, the coordinator of the Scaling Up Nutrition Movement. Khan was also part of the Devex panel discussion.

That means going beyond conversations about healthy crops and soils to look at issues such as improved market access and better systems for transporting food, to make sure that it is reaching people when it is at its most nutritious.

“If we think about creating nutrition security, not just food security. … It changes your prescription of what needs to be done. It changes your time frame,” Fowler said.

Read: Fixing food security isn't enough. Nutrition security needs solving, too

And recap: Everything you missed at the 79th United Nations General Assembly

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Revenge of the superbugs

When it comes to antimicrobial resistance, the focus is usually on what happens to humans when bacteria, viruses, and parasites no longer respond to treatments. But AMR also represents a serious threat to livestock, with the potential to undermine the food security of billions of people.

If nothing is done to address the current rise of AMR, the losses in livestock production will add up to the consumption needs of 746 million people each year, according to a new report series called EcoAMR. That’s the equivalent of $575 billion in losses to gross domestic product by 2050.

But as Devex reporter Ayenat Mersie spells out, there are even worse scenarios: If drug resistance doubles for the diseases that most affect livestock, the food supply of 2 billion people could be in jeopardy. And that would add up to $1 trillion in global GDP losses.

These outcomes are avoidable, if farmers would cut down on their use of antibiotics. Just a 30% reduction within five years would reduce the GDP losses by $120 billion by 2050 compared to doing nothing. But will it happen?

At least the issue is starting to get some attention. At last week’s UNGA high-level meeting on antimicrobial resistance, world leaders acknowledged the toll that AMR is taking on livestock. And though they stopped short of making specific commitments, the leaders did pledge to “meaningfully reduce” the amount of antimicrobials used in the agrifood system by 2030. We’ll have to wait and see how that pledge translates into action.

Read: AMR in livestock could threaten food security for 2 billion by 2050

ICYMI: Antimicrobial resistance is a ‘solvable problem’ but needs momentum

Weapons of war

Enough humanitarian aid is making its way into Gaza to stave off a famine, but just barely, according to the latest report from a network of experts on food insecurity. The report arrives just ahead of Monday’s one-year anniversary of Hamas’ attack on Israeli civilians, which precipitated Israel’s bombing and subsequent invasion of Gaza. While the evidence indicates that famine may have been averted through August, hunger and malnourishment are rampant, in large part because Israeli forces continue to limit the flow of food aid to the territory.

This is only the latest example of how the weaponization of starvation and the unlawful denial of humanitarian access persist despite international laws prohibiting the practices.

Experts at a Devex-hosted panel on the sidelines of UNGA agreed that donors and humanitarian players have a role to play in challenging the groups or countries that are weaponizing food aid, even if it comes with a political cost.

“We cannot be neutral,” said Abdulwasea Mohammed, the advocacy, campaigns and media manager for Oxfam Yemen. “We will have to side with the vulnerable, and we need to push.”

That may mean taking steps to hold those who engage in these practices accountable, even if justice is not delivered until years after the conflict is over.

Meanwhile, chef and entrepreneur José Andrés called for more flexibility in thinking about how to provide food aid. Rather than going the costly route of shipping in prepackaged foods from the outside, his World Central Kitchen works with local communities and restaurants to provide culturally relevant meals, as he explained to Devex’s Kate Warren on a special episode of our This Week in Global Development podcast.

But that means having people in-country to provide support, which brings its own risks. WCK has lost employees working in both Gaza and Ukraine.

Read: How humanitarians can better prevent weaponization of food aid

Listen: Why ‘boots on the ground’ are key to food aid, according to José Andrés

Related: How 7 deaths changed aid work in Gaza

Going hungry

Gaza is far from the only hunger hotspot. In Sudan, famine has already been confirmed in one location and 13 other parts of the country are at risk of it, according to the World Food Programme. At least 26.6 million people — more than half the country’s population — currently don’t have enough to eat.

“There is now a growing likelihood that the humanitarian catastrophe that has enveloped the Sudan since April of last year will become even worse over the coming period,” U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres wrote in a letter to U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken that Devex’s U.N. correspondent Colum Lynch saw. “The end of the rainy season [this] month may bring with it yet another escalation of the shocking violence, compounding the already intolerable risks civilians face and further complicating aid operations.”

“It is critical that the Sudan remains at the top of the international agenda,” he added. “I will continue to press, through all available channels, for safe, unhindered and sustained humanitarian access.”

Meanwhile, 50 U.S. lawmakers recently wrote a letter to Blinken and USAID Administrator Samantha Power urging the country to do more to help Sudan. The U.S. is the country’s largest donor, providing more than $1 billion in aid since the current war began, Devex reporter Elissa Miolene writes. It has contributed nearly half of the U.N.’s total humanitarian appeal for Sudan this year alone while also trying to mediate talks between Sudan’s warring parties.

In a PBS NewsHour interview with Power last week, it was clear that Sudan — and the starvation across the country — was top of mind. “We cannot humanitarian-aid our way out of the kind of widespread famine that is at risk of breaking out across Sudan,” Power said from UNGA.

Read: US lawmakers push for more funding — and leadership — for Sudan (Pro)

See also: New Sudan coalition aims to channel help to local responders

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Chew on this

At least 5 million Haitians — almost half the country’s population — are facing acute hunger insecurity or worse, according to a new analysis. [Mercy Corps]

As part of an effort to downplay the dangers of pesticides, industry advocates built a private social network that traded derogatory profiles of critics. The profiling was funded, in part, by U.S. taxpayers. [The Guardian]

The World Bank-housed Consultative Group to Assist the Poor is calling for public and private financiers to channel more climate funds to local communities and smallholder farmers. [Devex]

More than 100 experts and organizations criticize the Food and Agriculture Organization over failure to withdraw a livestock emissions report that two of its cited academics said contained “multiple and egregious errors.” [The Guardian]