The Way to Fight Global Hunger

• The world produces enough food to feed all 7.5 billion people, yet 1 in 9 people still go hungry every day. We also know that we as a global society are falling behind on the United Nations goal of reaching Zero Hunger by 2030. What’s to be done?
• The combined negative effects of climate change, conflict, COVID-19, and cost pose major risks to food security worldwide. But immediate responses to the current hunger crisis must also support the long-term transformation of food systems.
• The solutions to hunger are both simple and complex: The simple ones are the actual interventions themselves, many of which are steps that can easily be taken, and the complex part is making that change happen in a lasting and sustainable manner, and finding the right combination of solutions for each individual community.

The global food system is broken. Although it produces more than enough calories to feed everyone, up to 811 million people – more than 10% of the world’s population – go to bed hungry each night. Sadly, effective governance to ensure access to food for all is still lacking. A globally coordinated effort to address both the short- and long-term aspects of the hunger crisis must therefore be the top priority.

Today, all four dimensions of food security – availability, access, stability, and utilization – are threatened by the combined negative effects of climate change, conflict, COVID-19, and cost. By disrupting global trade and pushing up food prices, these four “Cs” are creating a short-term challenge of increasing hunger. At the same time, the man-made climate crisis poses a medium to the long-term threat.

Climate change

Human actions have created a world in which it is becoming ever more difficult to adequately and sustainably feed and nourish the human population. A 150-year run of rapid economic growth and a consequent rise in greenhouse gas emissions have pushed average global temperatures to 1°C above preindustrial levels. According to the global hunger index for the world’s hungry and undernourished people, climate change is an increasingly relevant threat multiplier. Almost 822 million people remain undernourished, and 149 million children are stunted because of undernutrition. In addition, more than 2 billion people suffer from deficiencies of one or more micronutrients.

Climate change has already started to affect the environment in which food can be produced. Exceptional droughts, heat waves, and floods are undermining farming in regions as different as the Horn of Africa and the Midwest of the United States. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s recent Sixth Assessment Report leaves no doubt: The climate crisis will have increasingly damaging consequences for food systems around the world.

Conflict

Conflict breeds hunger. It can displace farmers and destroy agricultural assets and food stocks. Or it can disrupt markets, driving up prices and damaging livelihoods. In this vicious circle, conflict and lack of food break down the very fabric of society and all too often lead to violence. Hunger is both a cause and a result of any conflict. People living in conflict zones are often displaced from their homes and forced to live in refugee camps in difficult, cramped, and unhygienic conditions. Displacement from homes also damages people’s livelihood prospects, thereby increasing their food insecurity. As social infrastructures are damaged during conflicts—including health systems, drinking water supply, and education services—this compounds the distress of the populations.

The war in Ukraine is aggravating this already dire situation. Armed conflicts have long been major causes of hunger, usually at the regional level. But the Ukraine war, involving two of the world’s largest producers of agricultural commodities, is distorting global trade. As a result, the Food Price Index compiled by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations hit an all-time high in March.

Cost

Food is becoming more and more expensive around the world. Already in 2021, food prices worldwide rose by 28 percent in some cases, the highest increase in ten years. The war in Ukraine has made the situation even more dramatic. For many already poor countries in the Global South, food price increases can have dire consequences, leading to hunger, famine, or social unrest. Food security for millions of people is at risk. Prices of basic commodities such as flour or vegetable oil have tripled in some regions since the war began. Food producers also face skyrocketing prices for fossil fuel-based fertilizers, of which Russia is one of the biggest exporters. In severely affected countries, rising food prices may threaten social stability.

Food prices have risen sharply around the world. They had already reached a record level in January 2022; due to the war in Ukraine, they then virtually exploded: In March 2022, the FAO Food Price Index (FFPI) was almost 13 percent higher than in the previous month, with a price jump of 17 percent for wheat. Besides the war in Ukraine, there are additional factors: Crop losses, expensive fertilizers, logistical problems, and high energy prices combined with an overall increase in demand for agricultural goods. Income that has fallen or disappeared as a result of lockdowns also plays a role. 

COVID-19

According to the UN, the pandemic has caused tens of millions of people to go hungry. And lockdowns aimed at combating the virus have disrupted supply chains, adding to the upward pressure on food prices. Agricultural commodities cost a total of 31 percent more on the world market in 2020, the first year of the pandemic than a year earlier (FAO). Oilseeds such as rapeseed cost twice as much. The price of corn has also nearly doubled. Wheat and soybeans have become significantly more expensive. One reason for this was the cost of storage in Covid times. In addition, trade disputes, including those in the pandemic, between countries, can lead to supplies being halted.

Our food systems face further challenges. Overconsumption of cheap calories, enabled by the global trade in commodities and fossil fuel-based inputs, has led to widespread obesity and caused severe environmental problems. But the negative effects of production systems on the environment have often been treated as economic externalities and thus ignored. More generally, and notwithstanding last September’s UN Food Systems Summit, there have been very few holistic approaches to food-system transformation. Industrialized agriculture continues to hold sway.

That means there is much to be done. But threats to global food security will increase if policymakers trying to stem the immediate hunger crisis continue to ignore the climate and biodiversity crises and delay necessary steps to make food systems more sustainable. For example, postponing the implementation of the European Union’s Farm to Fork Strategy, as some have proposed, will not provide the amount of food needed in the coming months and will further undermine the resilience of European agriculture. As risks to food security mount, we cannot exclude the possibility that agricultural production from the food, feed, fiber, and fuel sectors will be insufficient to meet demand. Scarce supplies and disruptions to global trade will force us to make choices.

Solutions To Global Hunger

Countering the effects of the four Cs will require a globally coordinated response. The key question is whether the multilateral system will be able to provide an active platform where states and all stakeholders can manage these challenges effectively. The solutions to hunger are both simple and complex: What’s simple are the actual interventions themselves, many of which are steps that can easily be taken. More complex is making that change happen in a lasting and sustainable manner, and finding the right combination of solutions for each individual community. Here are a few solutions that are helping work toward Zero Hunger in the world. 

Climate-Smart Agriculture (CSA)

Climate-smart agriculture (CSA) is an integrated approach to managing landscapes—cropland, livestock, forests, and fisheries—that addresses the interlinked challenges of food security and accelerating climate change. Climate-Smart Agriculture (CSA) is a broad term that encompasses a number of practices that allow farmers to adapt and become more resilient to a less-predictable climate. These practices include diversifying crop varieties, conservation agriculture practices, and low-water sack gardens. CSA aims to simultaneously achieve three outcomes:

1. Increased productivity: Produce more and better food to improve nutrition security and boost incomes, especially for 75 percent of the world’s poor who live in rural areas and mainly rely on agriculture for their livelihoods.
2. Enhanced resilience: Reduce vulnerability to drought, pests, diseases, and other climate-related risks and shocks; and improve capacity to adapt and grow in the face of longer-term stresses like shortened seasons and erratic weather patterns.
3. Reduced emissions: Pursue lower emissions for each calorie or kilo of food produced, avoid deforestation from agriculture and identify ways to absorb carbon out of the atmosphere.

While building on existing knowledge, technologies, and principles of sustainable agriculture, CSA is distinct in several ways. First, it has an explicit focus on addressing climate change. Second, CSA systematically considers the synergies and trade-offs that exist between productivity, adaptation, and mitigation. Finally, CSA aims to capture new funding opportunities to close the deficit in investment.

Adopt Short-term and Long-term strategies

To tackle poverty and hunger around the world, as well as the effects and consequences for people, food systems must be made sustainable and poverty-reducing, and disasters must be better prevented. There is a particular need for rapid action locally, such as building strategic reserves of food, ensuring the availability of adapted seeds, sustaining the promotion of innovative farming methods, advancing comprehensive risk management, or promoting measures to adapt to climate change.  To prevent possible famines caused by the rise in food prices the implementation of Short-term and Long-term strategies are the few necessary steps:

Short-term 

• Avoid export freezes – in the event of impending crop failures in famine regions, it is important that the global agricultural market remains stable and can compensate for undersupply.  In crisis regions, adequate food supplies must be ensured even if food prices rise. Affected states should prepare for sharply rising prices and prepare social security measures (e.g. cash assistance).  Donor countries must adapt their services to food price increases.

Long-term    

• Governments should develop and implement a policy agenda for agricultural consultation that focuses on food security and income generation for the rural poor. Agriculture should maintain and further expand the high priority given to it by national governments and international development agencies, and its resources should be increased accordingly.
• The promotion of location-appropriate agriculture is a key component of the food system and an important tool for fulfilling the human right to food. Countries in the Global South need to implement integrated, transparent, and participatory regional policies that focus particularly on the agricultural sector and its linkages. Vocational training and continuing education, especially for young people and women, are urgently needed, as is the transfer of know-how and adapted technologies. 

Put Food Before Trade

It’s the right to celebrate life. When we eat, it’s such a pleasure. It’s also the right to eat good food, in communion (a nod to the food sovereignty movement, which advocates for communities to have control over how their food is produced, traded, and consumed). So, it is more than just the right to be free from hunger. This is how sovereignty is different from the idea of ‘food security’ which had a critical edge in the mid-1970s, during the midst of global famine.

When the idea of free trade first emerges in late 19th-century Britain it is with the so-called Corn Laws. This is when free trade is put into legal practice. The argument went like this: ‘Let us not feed ourselves within the boundaries of Britain, let’s trade, let everyone do their part.’ Then Britain unilaterally reduces its tariffs [a tax on imports]. In the popular press, they articulated it as the price of bread (as corn meant wheat in those days). ‘If you want a cheap loaf, you’re in favor of free trade because we can get wheat cheaper from elsewhere.’ That meant the colonies – the Empire. By saying trade and food are inherently intertwined what I’m also saying is it’s about capitalism and imperialism.

• Trade rules are the architecture of an unequal and extractive food system. We need an overhaul of our laws, regulations, and multilateral institutions to produce new blueprints, which subordinate trade to food security and phase out dysfunctional global commodity chains. Let’s start by winding down the World Trade Organization (WTO) Agreement on Agriculture and bringing civil society to the negotiating table.
• Local markets with short supply chains have shown their worth during Covid-19 lockdowns. Governments can foster them using sourcing policies like Brazil’s National School Feeding Programme, which buys a proportion from family farmers and privileges suppliers from indigenous and traditional communities. Urban farming – already 15-20 percent of food production – can boost self-sufficiency, and fair-trade co-operatives can connect consumers to growers from cities to the countryside and across borders. (See ‘Food is love’.)
• Industrial agri-food giants exert outsized control over production, distribution, and trade policy. Break up huge conglomerates, whose net worth is bigger than the GDPs of many countries in Africa, with anti-trust legislation. Cut subsidies to input-intensive commodity agriculture and industrial fishing, bring in new tax agreements, and remove pro-agribusiness investor dispute clauses from trade deals. Make famine, malnutrition, and hunger – at heart, political choices – into crimes that are punishable by the International Criminal Court.

Reducing Food Waste

Currently, one-third of all food produced (over 1.3 billion tons) is wasted. Producing this wasted food also wastes other natural resources —requiring an amount of water equal to the annual flow of Russia’s Volga River and creating 3.3 billion tons of greenhouse gases. Ending food waste would be a radical shift, but it’s one that you can be a part of by simply reducing your own food waste. It’s especially important in countries like the United States (which contribute more to climate change but feel the effects less than more vulnerable countries) to take these steps towards climate justice.

In addition, we all know the main causes of obesity, overweight, and ill-health is eating too much food, which is also exacerbated ‘solving hunger’. Use government pricing policy to target unhealthy drinks and foods (eg taxation and tariffs) and redirect subsidies to bring down the price of healthy diets. Alongside, revive a range of traditional foods with the help of chefs, social movements, and cut-price communal eateries. We can all play a part in reaching the national food waste reduction goal – to reduce food waste by 50% by the year 2030. Start using these tips today to reduce food waste, save money, and protect the environment.

• Preplan and write your shopping list before going to the grocery store. As you write your list, think about what meals you will be preparing the following week, and check your fridge to see what items you already have. Buy only what you need and stick to your shopping list. Be careful when buying in bulk, especially with items that have a limited shelf life.
• When eating out, ask for smaller portions to prevent plate waste and keep you from overeating. In the words of writer Michael Pollan ‘Eat food, not too much.’ In wealthy populations, shifts to ethical, organic, and vegetarian (or ‘flexitarian’) diets are positive signs.
• What if you have plenty of food, but lack the storage solutions to make it last? This requires big interventions, like building or rehabilitating grain stores. Other times, this is a change that can happen at the household level. One innovation Concern has introduced into women’s groups around the world are solar dryers, which serve as one solution. Sun-drying vegetables, a traditional practice, preserve micronutrients and prolongs shelf lives. Solar dryers, which operate by (you guessed it) exposure to sunlight are eco-friendly devices that accelerate this process, while also reducing contamination and minimizing nutrient loss. If you have more food on hand than you can use or you need, consider donating your extra supply of packaged foods to a local food pantry or a food drive.

Conclusion

Climate change, conflict, COVID-19, and cost are affecting the global food system in ways that increase the threats to those who currently already suffer from hunger and undernutrition. In this context, ending hunger and undernutrition demands large-scale action that seeks to address the inequities raised by climate change while staying within planetary boundaries. It requires ambitious leadership showing that an alternative future, including adaptation and mitigation actions on a broad scale, is possible.

To mitigate ‘Global Hunger‘, global solidarity must be fostered, and high-income countries must take responsibility for mitigating causes and supporting low- and middle-income countries in adapting to these changes. Both mitigation and adaptation measures need to be combined with safety net policies that protect the most vulnerable people from hunger, food insecurity, and other adverse impacts of these measures. Furthermore, good governance, capacity building, participatory planning, and downward accountability are essential to help people and institutions negotiate and define measures that are fair and sustainable. Achieving these goals will require a radical transformation that enables changes in both individual and collective behaviors and values and a fairer balance of political, cultural, and institutional power in society for the benefit of the food security and nutrition of all people.

source New Internationalist. Project Syndicate, World Bank, Global Hunger Index, and Concern Worldwide