Why are there so many different measures of food insecurity?

A year ago, multibillionaire Elon Musk took to Twitter — before he owned it — to challenge the numbers on world hunger. Musk was responding to a statement from David Beasley, chief of the World Food Programme, who said in a CNN interview that $6 billion is needed to address the needs of 42 million people in danger of starvation, and that this was just a fraction of the wealth of the world’s richest people. CNN reported the story under the headline “2% of Elon Musk’s wealth could solve world hunger.” Musk never made that donation, but the exchange did highlight the confusing and often contradictory statistics and terms surrounding the problem of how to feed the world; a problem which is only getting worse as the war in Ukraine and the last effects of the COVID-19 pandemic put increasing pressure on global food security. For example, according to the Global Report on Food Crises, or GRFC, 193 million people were “acutely food insecure” in 2021. However, WFP says a significantly higher number — currently 349 million — are facing acute food insecurity. Yet another United Nations report puts the number of people affected by hunger globally at 828 million in 2021. So why are these figures so different and how are they calculated? Definitions The numbers on food security can be divided into two broad categories: chronic and acute food insecurity. These two categories measure different things but can sometimes get confused and conflated, according to Luca Russo, FAO’s lead analyst on food crises and chair of the IPC steering committee. “These numbers are utilized by everyone [in the food sector] … and there is no confusion. But for busy decision-makers, understanding the difference between chronic and acute food insecurity remains an issue and there is a tendency to mix numbers,” Russo said. Chronic food insecurity refers to a persistent, long-term inability to be sure of putting enough food on the table, while acute food insecurity is more immediate and severe, linked to short-term events such as drought or conflict. It means that lives are in danger, and humanitarian assistance is needed. The number of people classed as chronically food insecure tends to be higher and is calculated using a different methodology to acute food insecurity. The global figure on chronic food insecurity is covered by the annual State of Food Security and Nutrition report, or SOFI, led by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Agency, alongside the International Fund for Agricultural Development, WFP, UNICEF, and the World Health Organization. For 2021, SOFI reported 828 million as chronically food insecure. SOFI uses two indicators; the prevalence of undernourishment — an estimate of whether the population gets enough calories based on food produced, imported, and exported — and the FIES, or food insecurity experience scale, which involves surveying a sample of the population. “The figures often tell the same story. There’s a huge need, mostly concentrated in conflict and humanitarian countries. And there’s not enough funding.” --— Dan Walton, senior analyst, Development Initiatives Meanwhile, acute food insecurity is generally measured by the U.N. Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, or IPC, also part of FAO. IPC data gets fed into the annual Global Report on Food Crises, which is part of the Global Network Against Food Crises, a network of humanitarian groups working on food crises that was founded in 2016 by the European Union, FAO, and WFP. The GFRC only covers countries needing humanitarian assistance and helps prioritize where that assistance is provided. The most recent GFRC, which covers 2021, stated that 193 million people were “acutely food insecure,” much lower than the 828 million reported to be chronically food insecure. IPC is seen as the gold standard within the food security sector. It was set up in 2004 in response to famine in Somalia to provide a standardized way of measuring and classifying the severity and magnitude of food insecurity across different regions or countries. IPC produces current and forward-looking assessments based on existing data gathered from regional assessments, climate projections, and on-the-ground information. IPC countries and regions are then classified into one of five “phases” with a sliding scale from Phase 1 — no or minimal food insecurity — to Phase 5 — catastrophe or famine. For an area to reach Phase 5 famine, at least 20% of households will face an extreme lack of food, at least 30% of children will be acutely malnourished, and two people in every 10,000 will die each day “due to outright starvation or to the interaction of malnutrition and disease.” The system is intended to guide policymakers and agencies toward an appropriate response. IPC does not gather data itself but instead sets up multipartner technical working groups in-country — which includes U.N. agencies, NGOs, and other groups — to feed in their data and carry out analysis along IPC guidelines. The process places a big emphasis on consensus building and collaboration with key decision-makers to ensure buy-in for the final classification. IPC classification is a “complex process” and is based on a “convergence of evidence,” according to FAO’s Russo. “Lack of food has a number of effects on the household and for this reason you cannot base your assessment on just one indicator alone. You have to understand the impact on individual children [of malnourishment], and also the livelihoods of people, so it’s quite a complex process,” he said. IPC is not present in every country where food insecurity is an issue. This is down to a number of issues — the complex processes mentioned above, the political nature of food insecurity, with some governments resisting IPC classification, and also the challenges of gathering robust data in conflict-affected countries. Notable absences include Syria and Eritrea. IPC vs. WFP Alongside the different numbers for acute and chronic food insecurity, there are also discrepancies between the statistics covering acute food insecurity. While the most recent GFRC says that 193 million people were “acutely food insecure” in 2021, WFP says 349 million are facing acute food insecurity in 2022. The main reason why WFP’s figure is higher is that it includes data from more countries than GFRC. In 2021, GFRC assessed 53 countries experiencing acute food insecurity and needing humanitarian assistance to cope, while WFP has operations in 79 countries and uses survey data and modeling from these countries to come up with its own total. The GFRC gets most of its numbers from IPC, which has been rolled out in 32 countries to date, although it does not cover every country every year. IPC also collaborates with Cadre Harmonisé, another food insecurity analysis tool covering the Sahel and West Africa, which is seen as compatible, and thus extends IPC’s analysis to additional countries. Confusingly, GFRC also includes other assessment data including from FEWS NET, or the Famine Early Warning Systems Network, which provides early warning analysis on acute food insecurity, and that was set up in 1985 by the U.S. Agency for International Development. But it is not just the additional countries covered; WFP’s total is also higher because it includes more up-to-date figures as well as projections, whereas GFRC and IPC rely on data from the previous year, according to Arif Husain, WFP’s chief economist and director of research, assessment and monitoring. This time lag means that the latest GFRC doesn’t reflect the impact of the war in Ukraine, which will have pushed more people into food insecurity, Husain added. “We are an operational agency and so we have to have numbers right now and also projected forward because we have to plan. But GFRC numbers are a year behind,” he said. The lag in GFRC reporting can lead to delays in much-needed action, according to James Belgrave, spokesperson and communications officer at WFP. “In an ideal situation we’d use the most high quality, vetted, peer-reviewed data to place our operations but peer reviewing the numbers, etc. takes a lot of time. … We need to act immediately before a situation worsens,” Belgrave told Devex. Ultimately, Husain said he wants to see greater harmony and coverage of the numbers. “Because of the state of food insecurity and acute hunger in the world, we need to be in a place where we can provide global figures, not just for a subset of countries but for the entire coverage of acute hunger,” he told Devex. However, Russo and others in the industry raised questions about WFP’s data and also the way it is communicated. WFP uses what it calls the CARI method for analyzing and reporting the level of food insecurity within a population, mainly through telephone-based interviews. But where this is not possible, WFP does modeling. Russo questioned WFP's practice of aggregating and comparing the different indicators assessing food insecurity. "The use of different indicators to assess food insecurity, including some modelization, may create confusion when producing global numbers as sources and approaches are not always harmonized and fully comparable. ... Much more needs to be done to increase the overall transparency of these analytical efforts," Russo told Devex in an email. These concerns were echoed by another practitioner within the food security industry who asked to remain anonymous to preserve professional ties. “It’s not transparent how WFP comes up with the figures in countries beyond what is covered under IPC and the GFRC processes,” they said, before going on to add that some suspect WFP’s figures for acute insecurity are inflated to help the agency raise funds. “WFP comes in with a figure … that is quite a bit higher ... and there is a perception sometimes that that is being used for advertising purposes or to contribute to WFP’s own fundraising [and] not for collectively raising the issues and solutions,” they said. Emily Farr, emergency food security and vulnerable livelihoods adviser at Oxfam, which is an IPC partner agency, agreed that the different figures could be confusing and said efforts should be channeled toward expanding IPC’s coverage — pointing to its consensus-based multipartner approach — rather than producing alternatives. “It is very confusing and can be problematic to have other agencies coming out with different figures,” she said, adding that “The value add of IPC is that you have WFP, FAO, UNICEF, and NGOs and regional bodies etc.” “There is a problem of undercounting and coverage and we need to work collectively to increase coverage by putting more attention and resources to that,” Farr added. Focusing on the wrong things The confusion over the overall figures aside, some experts question whether these totals are even communicating the right information to policymakers. “Knowing the overall numbers of people facing food insecurity does not give a complete picture, as the intensity of food insecurity differs between populations, ranging from crisis-level to catastrophic levels or even famine,” Dan Walton, senior analyst at Development Initiatives, a United Kingdom-based think tank, told Devex. Those more nuanced figures are available in the IPC reports but rarely presented to policymakers, Walton said. For example, the countries with the largest total population facing food insecurity include Afghanistan, Nigeria, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. However, if you look at the depth of severity — the number of people on the threshold of being food insecure, which DI refers to as the "food insecurity gap" — then Yemen, Afghanistan, and South Sudan are in greater need of urgent assistance. DI has developed a methodology which presents policymakers with a single percentage figure indicating the intensity of food insecurity across a population. Walton hopes the new figure will help donors and policymakers direct greater resources, and the right kinds of interventions, where they are most needed. He hopes it won’t add to the “already confused world of food insecurity statistics.” Ultimately, despite the numerous and often confusing numbers out there about food insecurity, they all point to the same thing, according to Walton. “The figures often tell the same story,” he said. “There’s a huge need, mostly concentrated in conflict and humanitarian countries. And there’s not enough funding.” Update, Dec. 16, 2022: This article was amended to clarify concerns about how WFP analyzes levels of food insecurity.