The year 2025 upended many of the assumptions underpinning global food systems. Foreign aid budgets shrank sharply, long-standing institutions such as the U.S. Agency for International Development were forced into retrenchment, and governments signaled that the era of predictable, rules-based food assistance is over.
What comes next is not simply a question of replacing lost funding. It is about whether food aid — and the food systems it sustains in regions prone to conflict, extreme weather, or other disasters — can withstand a period of sustained instability.
“As we commence 2026, the question for global food systems is not whether the pressure will intensify, but whether we will respond with the urgency and coordination the context demands,” AGRA President Alice Ruhweza told Devex.