The nonprofit, Action Against Hunger, February 22, 2023 released their global report “2023 Hunger Funding Gap Report — What’s Needed to Stop the Global Hunger Crisis.”
It reports that hunger is higher today than any time in recent decades, and that 50 million people are on the verge of famine. The hungriest countries, it says, are Afghanistan, CAR, DRC, Ethiopia, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Kenya, Madagascar, Mozambique, Pakistan, Somalia and Sudan. Conflict, climate and inflation are drivers of increased hunger.
Action Against Hunger observes that as hunger increases, funding to fight hunger has decreased (as a percentage of appeals). “The world already has enough resources to meet the UN Global Goal of Zero Hunger by
2030. It would take $4 billion to fully fund the hunger-related appeals of the 13 countries in this report. … the world can’t afford to wait — particularly in the hunger hotspots featured in this report.”
In preparing the report, AAH reviewed UN humanitarian response plans, refugee response plans, flash appeals and the FAO’s Integrated Food Security Phase Classification system.
Linda Thomas Greenfield, the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, gave a speech on January 29th in Mogadishu announcing $41 million for famine prevention in Somalia and urged other nations to join in assisting Somalia fight famine.
On September 28, the White House held the U.S.’s second Conference on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health.The main goal of this conference was “ending hunger, improving nutrition and physical activity, and reducing diet-related diseases and disparities” by 2030.
This strategy articlates the priorities of the National Nutrition Policy – Healthy People 2020. It also reflects input from stakeholders across the country—including state, local and tribal governments; non-profit organizations; philanthropic foundations; private businesses; academia; nutrition professionals; consumers and advocates—who have been involved in hunger relief efforts.
End hunger by making it easier for everyone—including individuals in urban, suburban, rural, and Tribal communities, and territories—to access and afford food.
2. Integrate Nutrition and Health
Prioritize the role of nutrition and food security in overall health—including disease prevention and management—and ensure that our health care system addresses the nutrition needs of all people.
3. Empower All Consumers to Make and Have Access to Healthy Choices
Foster environments that enable all people to easily make informed, healthy choices, increase access to healthy food, encourage healthy workplace and school policies, and invest in public education campaigns that are culturally appropriate and resonate with specific communities.
4. Support Physical Activity for All
Make it easier for people to be more physically active—in part by ensuring that everyone has access to safe places to be active—increase awareness of the benefits of physical activity, and conduct research on and measure physical activity.
5. Enhance Nutrition and Food Security Research
Improve nutrition metrics, data collection, and research to inform nutrition and food security policy, particularly on issues of equity, access, and disparities.
This video was featured on January 25, 2021 ABC Nightly News about Mike Mittelman, a furniture maker, who created wooden bowls for those who donated to hunger causes.
In a very short time, the response to the COVID-19 virus pandemic has exposed many of the long-standing structural weaknesses and inequalities of the global food system. After years of steady progress in reducing the total number of chronically underfed people, the tide has turned backward, due to civil wars, crop failure, climate change, and now most recently—COVID-19. The United Nations World Food Programme estimates that more than a quarter of a billion people face starvation this year due to the multiple impacts of COVID-19.
COVID-19 is accelerating global hunger in two key ways: government-imposed lock-downs adversely affect the poor and unemployed families who are running out of money to buy food, even where it is still available. Ironically, due to the weakened demand stemming from a lack of cash, the FAO-monitored food price index has fallen to a 17-month low. Also, many of these vulnerable families depend on school feeding programs to ensure that their children have access to nutritious food at least once a day. The closure of schools is depriving 370 million children of this critical source of nourishment.
Global food trade has also been disrupted. In Africa, many borders have been closed, consequently transporters cannot move food, resulting in significant food spoilage. These localized disruptions have resulted in hoarding and have pushed up prices of staples such as rice. In Senegal, trade restrictions and curfews have adversely affected the food economy, especially the seafood sector upon which the poor depend for livelihoods and sustenance. Exacerbating the situation, some major grain producing countries exporters are contemplating controls on food exports. Such trade restrictions make a bad situation worse. Food deficit countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America, which are suffering from rises in unemployment coupled with drastic reductions in tax and export revenues, now must find ways to feed millions. International cooperation is desperately needed to assist with food surpluses from other parts of the global community.
While we must mobilize quickly and effectively to deal with the immediate adverse consequences of the pandemic on global hunger, at the same time we also must look to the future and think about how we can address our chronic food problems to be more resilient to future shocks such as drought, flood or plague. To achieve this, we must invest in agricultural research—better yields, more drought-resistant crops, early warning systems, and sustainable farming. We must assist small farmers to earn a decent income. One way to do that is by strengthening local food systems by improving transport, refrigeration and food processing. Finally, we must improve access to information and finance, so farmers can better navigate future shocks and more reliably produce the food we need.
The global community is more affluent now than ever before. Our farmers have never produced so much food. However, food like wealth is unevenly distributed – with devastating and preventable consequences. In a resource-abundant world, hunger should now be a relic of the past. Yet it isn’t.
To build a more sustainable and equitable global food system that provides affordable, nutritious and safe food for all, we need strong collaboration between governments, the private sector, academic institutions and intergovernmental bodies. Together we can help not only those left hungry today and tomorrow by COVID-19, but those who are chronically vulnerable to hunger due to deficits in the global food system. Now is the time to act to make food insecurity a distant memory.
About the Author: Dr. Thoric Cederström is the Director for Research and Learning for Food Enterprise Solutions which is actively implementing a five-year USAID Feed the Future initiative called Business Drivers for Food Safety. Previous experience includes: Senior Advisor for Partnerships in Nutrition, World Food Program; Senior Manager for Agriculture in Nutrition, Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN); various positions with Save the Children, Counterpart International, and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), and the University of Arizona.
The current coronavirus (COVID-19) global outbreak – pandemic – may very well have implications for hunger and food security. This would be particularly so in poorer, developing countries where large urban populations may depend on fragile supply chains for food.
We know that shocks – including wars – can impair movement of basic life-sustaining foodstuffs, as in Yemen today. We also know that food is an intrinsic part of how we currently address some diseases. Many humanitarian agencies have published at length about the value of ensuring food and nutrition for African families affected by HIV/AIDS.
Food aid has been important for helping families or breadwinners to self-quarantine after being identified as having been in contact with a carrier of a disease in other instances. For example, in West Africa in 2014/2015, and in Central Africa today, nonprofits and the World Food Programme have been providing food or food-purchasing vouchers to families under watch for suspected new cases of Ebola.
Food aid also helps promote compliance for health care. Often food aid is helpful to ensure prenatal screenings in programs in refugee camps for pregnant and lactating women. As another example, in many countries today, low-income persons with Tuberculosis (TB) find it hard to take the complex regimen of drugs necessary each morning without food also provided, so aid agencies provide food assistance alongside the medical assistance to ensure compliance.
Hunger may also appear as a secondary crisis following the shocks of a larger pandemic. Often in pandemics, ports shut down, trade freezes up, and food does not transport as it had. Any time a city or region is quarantined, it automatically poses constraints to food trade.
Indeed, the food aspects of a pandemic could prove to be the most controversial, posing major policy dilemmas with highly variable outcomes. Many experts believe that the most variable or preventable forms of death due to a pandemic are not from the immediate medical impact, but from the food and social effects. A global public goods perspective of a pandemic suggests that whereas health programs are a win-win for everyone, other goods, such as food, energy, or oil, are competed over and may become scarce.
As of today, the World Health Organization has defined the current COVID-19 spread as a pandemic. From the past, we understand that many pandemics tend to flow as waves. The 1918 flu influenza killed 100 million people, by some estimates, and circled world several times over the span of a year. Health science was so imperfect in that time, and World War I was such a distraction, that the existence of a pandemic killing people from India to Africa to Illinois was not immediately understood. In today’s world, the extent of an outbreak is more immediately tracked and mapped, with the consequence that travel and markets freeze up.
To understand the counter-intuitive ways that markets may respond to fears, consider the large number of people who died in India due to famine during World War II. In 1941-42, a severe famine killed up to two million people in the Bengal region of India. In studying this famine, Nobel Prize winning economist Amartya Sen recognized that it occurred despite a better-than-average local food harvest. Food was sequestered and kept out of retail networks due to an overall atmosphere of uncertainty and anxiety about future events, i.e. an invasion by the Japanese army (which never occurred). This led to a lack of food availability in markets for most of the consumers. The lesson is that events in one domain (war, disease) can lead to market disruptions that can worsen poverty and hunger, and in some pockets of the world, starvation.
The diagram below depicts one scenario of how a disease may pass through a country during a pandemic, similar to the 1918 case. The inner full lines depict the period when it is spreading person-to-person in a particular country – a few months – during a year. The broken line above it depicts the shock wave that is longer as markets tighten and access to food becomes limited. This diagram comes from a USG-funded interagency working group of UN agencies and NGOs in the 2000s, looking at scenarios of how a pandemic might unfold:
Diagram courtesy of Steve Hansch
That same study found that:
“The increase in food prices for some countries – those that are not food self-sufficient but depend on grain imports – will be sharper and higher than that seen in 1974 or in 2008, when food price increases made international headlines as a pervasive crisis. The tightness in food markets in 1974 and 2008 provide some lessons about the dynamics of global food markets, though a pandemic’s effects on food trade could be far more lethal. Just as occurred in 2008, food trade will become restricted and food will be rationed and hoarded, with the result that food prices will increase for most locations where populations aggregate (cities, towns), though food prices will decrease in rural agricultural areas. Even if the virus spreads from foci to foci, along lines of airplane travel, or migration, the wave of food panic may be more diffuse and global.”
The study also cautioned that in many locations, as commercial food pipelines break down, stores that sell food (particularly in urban areas) will likely be in a hurry to disburse fresh (perishable) foods to friends and family before the markets shut down to avoid ransacking. If the store owners trust rumors that food transport will be interrupted and their inventories not replenished, they may see an incentive to protect the store itself by closing it down, boarding it up and posting “no more food” signs, rather than face break-ins, threats, or government requisition.
For these and other reinforcing dynamic reasons, food prices may inflate in urban areas many times above normal levels over the first few weeks of a pandemic. For poor families who are already spending their limited income largely on food, increased prices leads to reduced consumption. Most famines in modern history have shown that increased food prices lead to increased hunger and malnutrition-related death.
Experts recommend that key national-level goals are to reduce national panic and distress migration (for instance away from urban areas to rural areas). Therefore, food programs can support leaders by helping them to maintain credibility when communicating to the public that people need not panic about food shortages; therefore, governments need to have some credible back-up reserves of food with which to promise to provide targeted food for the malnourished. Many governments already dabble in maintaining emergency reserves of food. So, when an outbreak—such as COVID-19—begins to spread on the health side, governments can and should begin to quietly store and then allocate food resources to work with civil society agencies, such as the Red Cross, to quickly pre-purchase and move food storage to decentralized locations, to reach the most vulnerable people.
About the Author: Steve Hansch is a WHES Board Member with long-standing association with Hunger Notes.
While it is often said that more people were pulled out of poverty over the last century than in the whole history of mankind, there is still much work to do. Some numbers about Africa’s economy can seem encouraging at the surface level, but the harsh reality is that Africa still has some of the most unequal societies in the world. It is a continent still affected by political conflicts and corrupt governments. Let’s take a look at some of the effects of unequal wealth distribution worldwide, and what the prospects look like for the future.
Poverty in Africa is Decreasing, But Not Fast Enough
While some countries have had a renaissance, such as Rwanda or the Côte d’Ivoire, poverty on the continent remains very real, and out of the world’s poorest countries, 24 out of the 30 were located in sub-Saharan Africa.
One obstruction seems to be the huge gap between the immense wealth of a small group of persons and the rest of the population. Then there’s the specter of military conflict and rebel activity, often fueled by shadowy groups and old colonial powers.
Countries such as the Democratic Republic of Congo, where most of the world’s cobalt is produced, have been torn apart by conflict for decades. While the high demand for cobalt should have been a windfall for the impoverished country, a handful of warlords in highly disputed regions are the only ones benefiting from it, not to mention that political tensions are never good for foreign investment.
Africa is Not the Only Continent to Suffer from Poverty
South America, Central Asia, and various parts of Eastern Europe are also suffering from extreme poverty and inequality. As we can see on this map, the average income in countries like Afghanistan is below the $600 mark. This can be attributed to decades of conflict, the lack of infrastructure, and a lack of natural resources. The yearly income in Ukraine is also shockingly low at about $2,660, though the gap between the highest and lowest annual incomes is not as drastic there as it might be in other countries—a vestige of the old communist era.
What Are the Solutions?
The solution to the problem should eventually come from different parties. A long-term solution to poverty would be for foreign aid to focus on helping countries become more self-sufficient, through self-determination and development opportunities.
Infrastructure will also have to be improved, starting with roads and communications. Wireless has been a huge boon to Africa, and more people than ever have had the chance to get connected. This is in large part what has contributed to the sudden growth. Finally, leadership in these countries will have to be either pushed or forced to redistribute wealth and uphold the rule of law, either through sanctions or direct action. However, this approach could also lead to more inequality, as governments will often end up funding rebels who will then become the new financially elite, perpetuating the same cycle over and over again. One example would be Ortega in El Salvador.
The problem of poverty is a complex one. Aid efforts that give the impoverished increased access to education, financial mobility, more stable governance and better infrastructure should be given more attention. Much work still needs to be done, but there is still hope.
About the Author: William is a climate/weather enthusiast who takes a great interest in topics related to both climate change and weather. He graduated with a degree in chemistry from the University of Dallas. He is currently retired and lives with his family in Dallas, TX.
*This is an independent article and does not reflect the views of WHES.
The world’s land and water resources are being exploited at “unprecedented rates,” a new United Nations report warns, which combined with climate change is putting dire pressure on the ability of humanity to feed itself.
There’s too much misinformation about the U.S. government’s food stamp scheme. So after some investigation, here are some facts about the benefit, also known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).
For the past 40 years, since its founding in 1976, the mission of World Hunger Education Service is to undertake programs, including Hunger Notes, that
Educate the general public and target groups about the extent and causes of hunger and malnutrition in the United States and the world
Advance comprehension which integrates ethical, religious, social, economic, political, and scientific perspectives on the world food problem
Facilitate communication and networking among those who are working for solutions
Promote individual and collective commitments to sustainable hunger solutions.
nsch, WHES Director
About the Author: Dr. Thoric Cederström is the Director for Research and Learning for Food Enterprise Solutions which is actively implementing a five-year USAID Feed the Future initiative called 
