Despite official speeches full of promises of eradication, hunger is again on the increase throughout the world. The achievement of food security will have to be sustainable. It remains possible in a world of abundance, provided economic and social strategies are improved to become more environment-friendly and generate less inequalities.
The flagship article of hungerexplained on ‘Food Security‘, downloaded over 70,000 times since its publication in 2012, has been updated and enhanced to incorporate the two new dimensions of food security (agency and sustainability) and cover the history of food insecurity worldwide from 1970 to today. The result is presented in the form of a three-part article (see below).
World food insecurity back to what it was 15 years ago (August 2024)
More articles on food security and hunger published on hungerexplained.org
18 July 2023 – Inequality in food systems – Is it realistic to believe that food systems could become more equal in an unequal society? Market and economic laws or rights? Is food just another commodity? Can the solution to food inequality be found in actions within food systems only? [read]
March 2023 – Hunger, food assistance and poverty in rich countries (with illustrations from France and the US) – Hunger and food assistance are on the increase. People using food assistance are more diversified. Being poor is costly. Social security for food, a systemic solution? [read]
13 August 2022 – In the media: food crisis and invasion of Ukraine: what happened to Africa? The ghastly war in Ukraine has been presented in the media as the main cause of the global food crisis, Africa being prophesised as its prime victim. However, to this date, no boat left Ukraine to bring cereals to Subsaharan Africa. [read]
June 2022 – Ukraine war and food crisis: facts and debates – Nature and causes of the crisis, food as weapon, impacts and possible solutions. [read]
April 2021 – Opinion: Another false start in Africa sold with Green Revolution myths by Timothy A. Wise and Jomo Kwame Sundaram – AGRA has clearly failed to improve agricultural productivity and farmers’ incomes in Africa. This failure remind us of the high opportunity costs of paths not taken. [read]
22 June 2020 – COVID-19 and food crisis: the main operating mechanisms – Reduced production and household income and higher food prices are the main causes of the food crisis created by COVID-19. [read]
22 April 2020 – COVID-19 and food: the economic and food crisis hits the more vulnerable – some insights – The COVID-19 crisis is beginning to seriously shake the food system throughout the world, pushing a growing number of people into food insecurity and tragedy. [read]
20 October 2019 – Urbanisation of hunger: the rural drift drives hunger to the cities – Once in the cities, most rural migrants are very vulnerable. More than 60% of the money they earn will go straight into the purchase of food. [read]
10 March 2019 – Can the food issue be reduced to a question of production? – A sustainable solution to the food issue will only be found if there are in-depth changes both in the way our food is being produced and consumed. This will require to challenge the paradigm that underpins the world economy and causes intolerable inequalities. [read]
May 2018 – Agricultural Trade Liberalization Undermined Food Security by Jomo Kwame Sundaram and Anis Chowdhury. [read]
24 January 2018 – Are industrial megafarms the solution for feeding the world? The answer is clearly “no” : they do not offer a sustainable solution to the food issue, be it from a technical, environmental, social or even economic perspective [read].
17 September 2016 – Can urban agriculture be part of the food solution? In the debate around the food issue, there has been an increasing number of voices who have put forward urban agriculture as an important part of the solution. What are the arguments that support this view? [read]
26 September 2015 – Modalities for implementing the right to food: the debate – The lessons of more than a decade of debates that led to the approval of the new Indian Food Security Act. [read]
8 December 2014 – More resources are needed to combat hunger in rich countries (United Kingdom, France and the United-States). [read]
16 November 2014 – Second International Conference on Nutrition (ICN2): Will the real issues be discussed and what can we expect? More than twenty years after the Conference on Nutrition of 1992, countries meet to agree on the measures to take to improve word nutrition. But some key questions will not be considered. [read]
18 March 2014 – Hunger is a political issue: its eradication will require more democracy – Olivier De Schutter, Special Rapporteur of the UN on the right to food, submitted his terminal report to the UN Human Rights Council at the end of his six-year tenure. His diagnosis on the world food situation is uncompromising, and he formulates very relevant recommendations. [read]
6 January 2014 – Letting people die from hunger should be recognised as a crime against humanity – Hunger is the result of deliberate decisions taken by governments. Abandoning a population to hunger, neglecting to take the measures required to ensure adequate food to all, must be recognised as a crime against humanity, so that political leaders can be put in front of their responsibilities and forced to act to eliminate hunger. [read]
11 November 2013 – India approves the largest ever food security programme – The Upper House of the Indian Parliament has recently approved a programme of around $20 billion that will help 800 million beneficiaries. [read]
6 April 2013 – 1,000 days before the hunger MDG deadline: Humankind on a drunken boat [read]
19 February 2013 – What is the real number of hungry people in the world? [read]