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Zero hunger background information

Overview

135 million people suffer from acute hunger, with climate change a major contributing factor. Technology can help grow more crops in areas on the edge of drought or quickly distribute perishables from small stores to local homeless shelters.

Every day, too many men and women across the globe struggle to feed their children a nutritious meal. In a world where we produce enough food to feed everyone, 690 million people still go to bed on an empty stomach each night. (FAO) Acute food insecurity affected 135 million people in 55 countries in 2019. Even more – one in three – suffer from some form of malnutrition.

Eradicating hunger and malnutrition is one of the great challenges of our time. Not only do the consequences of not enough – or the wrong – food cause suffering and poor health, they also slow progress in many other areas of development like education and employment.

Statistics to consider

  • The number of undernourished people reached 821 million in 2017. (UNDP)
  • In 2017, Asia accounted for nearly 2/3 or 63% of the world’s hungry. (UNDP)
  • Nearly 151 million children under age 5, 22 percent, were still stunted in 2017. (UNDP)
  • More than 1 in 8 adults is obese. (UNDP)
  • 1 in 3 women of reproductive age is anemic. (UNDP)
  • 26% of workers are employed in agriculture. (UNDP)
  • Every year, 3 million children die due to malnutrition. (UNICEF)
  • Current estimates are that nearly 690 million people are hungry, or 8.9% of the world population – up by 10 million people in one year and by nearly 60 million in five years.
  • The majority of the world’s undernourished – 381 million – are still found in Asia. More than 250 million live in Africa, where the number of undernourished is growing faster than anywhere in the world.
  • In 2019, close to 750 million – or nearly 1 in 10 people in the world – were exposed to severe levels of food insecurity.
  • An estimated 2 billion people in the world did not have regular access to safe, nutritious, and sufficient food in 2019.
  • If recent trends continue, the number of people affected by hunger will surpass 840 million by 2030, or 9.8% of the global population.
  • In 2019, 6.9% (or 47 million) children under 5 were affected by wasting, or acute undernutrition, a condition caused by limited nutrient intake and infection.

Hidden hunger is common in “developed” nations.

  • The prevalence of household food insecurity is relatively high in some developed countries, ranging from 8% to 20% of the population (NCBI)
  • An estimated 60 million people or 7.2% of the population in high-income countries used food banks in 2013. (NCBI)
  • Nearly 15% of U.S. households — more than 40 million Americans, including 12 million children — struggle to put food on the table. (Bread for the World)
  • There are more than 1 in 5 U.S. children at risk of hunger (1 in 3 among African-American and Latino children) (Bread for the World)
  • In the U.S., more than half of American children do not get enough vitamins D and E, while more than one quarter are lacking in calcium, magnesium, or vitamin A. (FSI)

Targets of UN Sustainable Goal #2

End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition, and promote sustainable agriculture.

  • By 2030, end hunger and ensure access by all people, in particular the poor and people in vulnerable situations, including infants, to safe, nutritious, and sufficient food all year round.
  • By 2030, end all forms of malnutrition, including achieving, by 2025, the internationally agreed upon targets on stunting and wasting in children under 5 years of age, and address the nutritional needs of adolescent girls, pregnant and lactating women, and older persons.
  • By 2030, double the agricultural productivity and incomes of small-scale food producers, in particular, women, indigenous peoples, family farmers, pastoralists, and fishers, including through secure and equal access to land, other productive resources and inputs, knowledge, financial services, markets, and opportunities for value addition and non-farm employment.
  • By 2030, ensure sustainable food production systems and implement resilient agricultural practices that increase productivity and production; that help maintain ecosystems; that strengthen capacity for adaptation to climate change, extreme weather, drought, flooding, and other disasters; and that progressively improve land and soil quality.
  • By 2020, maintain the genetic diversity of seeds, cultivated plants, and farmed and domesticated animals and their related wild species, including through soundly managed and diversified seed and plant banks at the national, regional, and international levels, and promote access to and fair and equitable sharing of benefits arising from the utilization of genetic resources and associated traditional knowledge, as internationally agreed.
  • Increase investment, including through enhanced international cooperation, in rural infrastructure, agricultural research and extension services, technology development, and plant and livestock gene banks to enhance agricultural productive capacity in developing countries, in particular, least developed countries.
  • Correct and prevent trade restrictions and distortions in world agricultural markets, including through the parallel elimination of all forms of agricultural export subsidies and all export measures with equivalent effect, in accordance with the mandate of the Doha Development Round.
  • Adopt measures to ensure the proper functioning of food commodity markets and their derivatives and facilitate timely access to market information, including on food reserves, to help limit extreme food price volatility.

How technology can help

Technology has always enhanced agriculture, from the innovation of harrows and ploughs drawn by cattle to the use of satellite technology to map the size of farmlands. Additionally, technology has helped in promoting global food security in different stages of the agriculture value chain. This ranges from boosting production to lowering production/operating costs to making access to markets easier for smallholder farmers to providing easy access to credit and information.

By applying innovative and emerging technologies, such as Internet of Things (IoT), analytics and blockchain — coupled with continued investments in improving processes and infrastructure along the “farm-to-fork” activity chain — perhaps a more sustainable way of producing and consuming food can be found.

For example:

  • IoT can be used to monitor every point of the supply chain -- from harvesting and processing to transportation and storage -- by using sensors. The cost-effective method could trace all of the environmental conditions as food moves across different stages of production to distribution, and all of this data could be uploaded to the cloud in real time.
  • Analytics can be used to find more efficient or optimal ways of improving yield, predicting spoilage times, determining routing to reduce time in transport, or more efficiently matching supply with demand. Prescriptive analytics, especially, could be used to extend shelf life or show couriers the optimal routes to shorten transportation time
  • In Nigeria, technology is already being used to alleviate food wastage. A storage company named Cold Hub uses solar technology to store and prolong the shelf life of perishable goods. Technologies like these could be adopted across Africa to reduce the impact of food wastage in the continent. (ColdHubs)
  • Blockchain technology could be used to help combat food loss and waste (IBM Food Trust)

Additional Reading