The nutritionists are right. We must end hunger differently.
- May 12
- 2 min read
In 1946, more than half the world’s population faced hunger. Today, this figure has fallen dramatically—to 8 percent—even as the global population has tripled. Progress the past 20 years has been significant with, for example, Cambodia bringing its hunger levels down from 25 percent in 2000 to 5 percent in 2025.
Unfortunately, progress has not only stalled—it has reversed in some regions. At the same time, we are facing colossal health and environmental problems worldwide because of an approach used to end hunger that focused heavily on a few staple crops: wheat, rice and corn. Today, one out of three people in the world suffer from malnutrition with overweight and obesity rates skyrocketing. An estimated 20 percent of global mortality is now attributed to poor-quality diets.
This is further compounded by an affordability crisis. Healthy diets remain economically out of reach for most people living in low- and middle-income countries, estimated to cost US$4.50 per day (global mean) while 45 percent of the global population lives below US$6.85 a day, and 10 percent lives below US$3.00 a day. Poverty and a lack of access to healthy diets go hand in hand.
These results are not accidental. They reflect decades of policy choices that promote the production and marketing of staple and oilseed crops through price incentives, procurement measures and subsidies. These policies have subsidies overwhelmingly favor staple foods and limited incentives for farmers to diversify their production systems.
The problem is not a lack of calories. It is a lack of diverse foods needed for healthy diets, the discrepancies between where food is produced and where it is consumed, and the inability of vulnerable populations to afford healthy food options. This is the hunger problem we face today.
But this problem can be fixed. Agriculture remains the first line of defense against hunger and malnutrition. Investing in nutrition-sensitive agriculture ensures that these systems deliver not just more food, but more healthy food. This needs to be driven by a multi-sector approach with co-investments in health, education, as well as water, sanitation, and hygiene alongside agriculture and food systems.
A new report published by researchers from CABI, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the Shamba Centre for Food & Climate, shows how we can integrate nutrition into current agriculture and food aid programs. It identifies 10 high-impact nutrition-sensitive interventions based on a review of scientific evidence spanning 1,732 individual studies across 83 countries and published in 52 high quality systematic reviews over the past 20 years.
