How we got here: The origins of the global food and nutrition crisis

Today an estimated 828 million people are unsure about where their next meal is coming from, while 900,000 people worldwide are battling famine-like conditions, according to the World Food Programme — a number 10 times higher than five years ago. As a result, some 25,000 people, including more than 10,000 children, are dying each day from hunger and related causes such as undernourishment. The world is in the throes of a global food and nutrition crisis that’s expected to only get worse, as supplies are projected to hit a three-year low this year. While many of the root causes of the current crisis have been simmering for decades under a blanket of inaction, recent events including COVID-19, increasing impacts of climate change, and conflicts such as the war in Ukraine have put the severity of the situation into stark relief. Overlapping factors “It's multifaceted, it's interlinked, and a lot of these factors are often mutually reinforcing,” said Yuve Guluma, senior officer for food security, resilient livelihoods and social protection at the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. “We talk a lot about conflict, an increase in political instability, an economic crisis, the climate crisis … but since 2019, we’ve also seen an economic downturn. It's a series of events that have been happening that have led to a breaking point,” Guluma told Devex. “We've … lost transparency in the food supply chain and so we don't know exactly who benefits from the prices around the food, the real price we pay, what's behind that cost, and actually who pays that cost.” --— Francesca Re-Manning, program manager, Cambridge Global Food Security The number of people affected by hunger has increased by 150 million since 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic, which affected income levels and disrupted global supply chains. The war in Ukraine — a country that is a major supplier of wheat, corn, oil, and barley — created further supply issues, which triggered price hikes on food items globally. According to the World Bank, food inflation currently sits above 5% in most low- and middle-income countries, making the basics unaffordable for many. Hunger hot spots “Then, you have the complete inability of governments to roll out social protection or safety nets,” Guluma said. Around $4.3 billion has been spent in low-income countries for social protection measures, compared to $507.6 billion in high-income countries. This contributed to a situation in 2022 where a person died every four seconds from hunger while others experienced stunting and wasting alongside other consequential health issues. The highest levels of hunger are being experienced in 24 countries, including Afghanistan, Syria, Haiti, Ethiopia, and Yemen, which the Food and Agriculture Organization and WFP call “hunger hotspots.” The majority of the most affected countries are on the African continent. “In countries like Burkina Faso, you have huge parts of the population who have not planted their fields or harvested … We see markets that are not functional, and we're seeing that in Nigeria and other countries in the Sahel and elsewhere in the world,” Guluma said. Amid climate disasters and debt, as well as displacement and loss of income, the current climate has created the perfect storm for an unprecedented food crisis that could have ramifications on health, education, and economic well-being for decades. Enough food for all Yet technically food insecurity should not exist, at least in terms of the food that is actually available. “If we look around the world, there is an abundance of food,” said Francesca Re-Manning, program manager at Cambridge Global Food Security, an interdisciplinary research center at the University of Cambridge. In fact, research shows the world produces enough food for 10 billion people, while the current population is only 8 billion. While disasters, disease, and conflict play a role in exacerbating fragile food systems, Re-Manning blames excessive food waste, poor distribution, and a focus on producing food that’s detrimental to both health and the environment. Over 930 million metric tons of food waste was generated in 2019, with food production accounting for over a third of global greenhouse gas emissions, and every year an estimated 12 million hectares of productive land is lost, which is related to land degradation and climate change. “Food has become a commodity. We've moved away from producing in connection with the environment and with the community and just a few players have control of what we eat,” Re-Manning explained. “We've also lost transparency in the food supply chain and so we don't know exactly who benefits from the prices around the food, the real price we pay, what's behind that cost, and actually who pays that cost.” Re-Manning added that she believes there needs to be a global shift away from an overly complex food supply chain to something altogether different, more resilient to shocks, and more sustainable. Increasing need But looking ahead, the situation is set to get worse before it gets better, Jyotsna Puri, associate vice president of the strategy and knowledge department at the International Fund for Agricultural Development, told Devex in an email. “Unfortunately in the context of the food price increases that we’ve been witnessing, the prediction is that more people will go hungry. With an increase in indebtedness that the International Monetary Fund has predicted, globally, the ability of governments to feed their own people from their own resources is also declining,” she said. It’s expected that in 2023, 345.2 million people are projected to be food insecure. At the same time, projects to remedy this are only receiving less than half the money they need, according to the Action Against Hunger 2023 Hunger Funding Gap Report. Guluma said IFRC is “struggling to respond, like everyone else, to save lives.” The outlook is bleak, but Puri said there’s hope as global grain and oilseed prices slowly decline and the Black Sea Grain Initiative — a United Nations-brokered deal between Russia, Ukraine, and others focused on addressing certain food and fertilizer shortages as well as inflation — was renewed last month, albeit only for a set amount of time of at least 60 days. “Donor countries are also being far more proactive with wanting to deal with the causes of protracted food insecurity and are thinking far more about infrastructure investments and investments in productivity, reduced loss and waste,” Puri said. Call for transformation Guluma described the world’s approach to the situation as “reactive.” “We're constantly putting these fires out without using funds optimally because they're not sufficient and because we're not able to address the underlying structural causes, which are so complex,” she said. She called for more focus on addressing root causes, strengthening resilience, and sourcing innovative solutions while transforming entire food systems around the localization agenda. “But again, the funding and technical institutional support to enable them to better respond, to prepare to deal with these structural issues, is just not happening,” she shared. “We need a donor system that adapts to this rapidly changing and challenging environment we're seeing.” Puri suggested countries regroup to consider what’s needed for a food system transformation both domestically and internationally. In what she called a “wishlist,” Puri suggested a focus on building local and regional markets; a reduction in food loss and waste; a redirection of food-related subsidies and incentives; the building of climate-resilient infrastructure and practices; and an amplification of multilateral investments. “There has to be a real awareness among governments, a real understanding of the complexity and the seriousness of where we are,” Re-Manning said. “If we don't change things reasonably rapidly … I'm afraid we won't be able to rescue the food system.” Visit Food Secured — a series that explores how to save the food system and where experts share groundbreaking solutions for a sustainable and resilient future. This is an editorially independent piece produced as part of our Food Secured series, which is funded by partners. To learn more about this series and our partners, click here.