BY SWATI MALHOTRA AND SARA GUSTAFSON
Despite tremendous progress made in the last decade to produce enough food to meet the demands of the growing population, around 811 million people lived in hunger in 2020 and nearly half of the world’s population lacked year-round access to adequate food due to climate change, poverty, and the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the 2021 State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World (SOFI) report.
Global food production systems have the potential to improve these numbers, but those systems face large-scale challenges themselves. Many of the workers employed in food systems around the world remain without decent working conditions or wages. In addition, the food production sector is one of the biggest contributors of the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions that lead to climate change and environmental degradation. Donors have a crucial role to play as agents of change to address these issues—and more broadly in food system transformation.
Photo credit: IFPRI