The number of hungry people is increasing globally.
The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) estimates that 828 million people, or 10% of the world’s population, go to bed hungry each night, an increase of 46 million from the previous year.
Eighty percent of those who are hungry are women, and two thirds of them reside in climate change-prone regions.
The Hunger Project, a nonprofit organisation, declared May 28 to be World Hunger Day in order to increase public awareness of the extent of hunger worldwide.
When the body is starved of nourishment for an extended period of time, hunger is a crippling condition that develops.
Long-term hunger, especially in children, can have negative effects on the body and the brain that last a lifetime.
Beyond calorie intake, undernutrition also includes a lack of protein, energy, and essential vitamins and minerals.
Global hunger has experienced an increase trend recently after a decade of steady decline. extra than 150 million extra people will be undernourished between 2019 and 2021, mostly as a result of war, climate change, economic shocks, and the COVID-19 pandemic.
Food prices have also gone up. The FAO Food Price Index (FPI), which tracks changes in the prices of a variety of foods including sugar, meat, cereals, dairy, and vegetable oil, rose from 95.1 points to 143.7 points between 2019 and 2022.
For instance, several nations use consumer subsidies to fix prices for consumers and protect them from market swings at the expense of the national budgets for a limited number of products.
According to the most recent UN State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World (SOFI) report, Asia is home to the majority of the world’s undernourished people, who numbered 425 million in 2021. However, Africa has the largest prevalence of hunger, with 278 million people impacted in that year.
“Countries’ resilience and capacity to respond to food shocks are undermined by cumulative global economic shocks, including skyrocketing food prices and significant market disruptions.”
In 2022, the conflict between Russia and Ukraine—two of the largest producers of fertiliser, oilseeds, and staple grains—led to significant disruptions in global supply chains and increased prices for grain, fertiliser, and energy. As a result, in 2022, the worldwide FPI rose to its greatest level ever.
The future outlook for hunger suggests that it will continue, with more extreme weather events having a destructive impact.
