How to address Global Hunger Jayati Ghosh

Regulating financial activity in global commodities markets, while important, is not enough to stave off rising food insecurity. Policymakers must also take measures to help developing countries build up reserves of essential items and cope with price fluctuations, possibly through a publicly administered virtual reserve mechanism.

Among the multiple crises that have erupted around the world, the avoidable tragedy of growing hunger receives only fleeting mention. And any attention that it does attract is apparently not enough to prompt global policymakers to act.

Yet a new report from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations makes for grim reading. According to the State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2023, an estimated 42% of the world’s population more than 3.1 billion people were unable to afford a healthy diet in 2021. Moreover, global hunger is still far above pre-pandemic levels, with around 122 million more people facing food insecurity in 2022 than in 2019, and is on the rise throughout Africa, Western Asia, and the Caribbean, owing partly to higher prices.

At the national level, a worrying pattern can be seen: the countries with the largest increases in food insecurity are also those engulfed in debt crises and experiencing the severest effects of climate change.

Hunger reflects the interplay between food supply, purchasing power, and prices. Supply depends on domestic production, which can be affected by extreme weather and conflict, and on a country’s ability to import foodstuffs, which can be undermined by high transport costs and foreign-exchange constraints. The purchasing power of households and individuals is determined by the availability of income-earning opportunities; money wages and earnings from self-employment relative to food prices; and the extent of social protection, for example through public provision of essential items. Food prices, meanwhile, are driven largely by national and international trade patterns.

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(This article was originally published in the Project Syndicate on October 12, 2023)