The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2022: Repurposing food and agricultural policies to make healthy diets more affordable

The report states that between 8.9 per cent and 10.5 per cent of the total world population experienced hunger in 2021. Around 20.2 per cent of the African population experienced hunger during this time. The second largest percentage of people facing hunger was noted in Asia (9.1 per cent), followed by Latin America and the Caribbean (8.6 per cent), Oceania (5.8 per cent) and Northern America and Europe (2.5 per cent).

In 2021, almost 30 per cent of the world's population faced moderate to severe ‘food insecurity’ – limited access to food due to a lack of money or other resources. This is over 350 million more people than in 2019.

Globally, women are more likely than men to experience food insecurity. The report notes that 31.9 per cent of women experienced moderate to severe food insecurity in 2021 compared to 27.6 per cent of males. The difference between the two grew from three percentage points in 2020 to four percentage points in 2021.

When the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development was launched in 2015, eight per cent of the global population was undernourished. Estimates state that the number is expected to remain unchanged by 2030.

In 2019, anaemia impacted one in three women between the ages of 15 and 49 years worldwide. There has been no improvement in this rate since 2012 with poorer women in rural areas and without formal education more likely to suffer from anaemia. The percentage of women in that age group suffering from anaemia has remained around 53 per cent between 2012 and 2019, the report notes.

As per the report, in 2020, approximately 22 per cent of the world’s children under the age of five were ‘stunted’ (too short for their age) and 6.7 per cent were wasted (weighed less for their height). A further 5.7 per cent children in that age group were overweight. Stunting and wasting were more common in children who lived in families with lower-incomes and living in rural areas.

The incidence of children under five years of age who were overweight increased from 33.3 million in 2000 to 38.9 million in 2022. Such higher incidence has been noted in nearly half of all countries worldwide. The report also revealed that the highest prevalence (8.4 per cent) of children under five years of age who were overweight was in upper-middle-income countries.

As many as 3.1 billion people could not afford a healthy diet in 2020 – 112 million more people than in 2019. The report suggests that this reflects the pandemic-driven increase in consumer food prices.

The report states that the war in Ukraine poses a threat to the world's hungry population, particularly women and children. It reveals that the war has adversely affected the world's food supply by disrupting supply chains and impacting the cost of grain, fertilizer, and energy.

Compared to the previous year, the report also found a 11 per cent increase in the global consumer food price index (food CPI) in December 2021, marking the increasing price of food across the world.

There was extreme difference in the food CPIs of different regions. The food CPI for Latin America and the Caribbean increased by 23.5 per cent between December 2020 and December 2021, compared to 15.5 per cent in Africa and 14.8 per cent in Asia. Comparatively, it was lower in North America (6.4 per cent), Europe (4.4 per cent) and in Oceania (2.5 per cent).

The report advocates for governments to re-evaluate public expenditure and lower the price of nutritious foods while simultaneously “increasing the availability and affordability of healthy diets” to realise the second principle of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development – “leave no one behind.”

Focus and Factoids by Naomi Fargose.

PARI Library's health archive project is part of an initiative supported by the Azim Premji University to develop a free-access repository of health-related reports relevant to rural India.