Efforts to make agricultural production and food consumption more sustainable must coincide with broader interventions to alleviate hunger and food insecurity. Doing so will help advance UN Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) target 2.1 to end hunger and ensure all people have access to safe, nutritious and sufficient food by 2030. Measures of food security reflect people’s experiences in accessing food of sufficient quality and quantity.
Unfortunately, since the adoption of the SDGs in 2015, the prevalence of moderate or severe food insecurity has been moving in the wrong direction. As of 2023, 2.3 billion people (29% of the global population) were moderately or severely food insecure. This number has remained steady since 2020, after increasing significantly between 2019 and 2020 at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. The COVID-19 pandemic, war in Ukraine and rising inflation have contributed to supply chain disruptions, job and income losses and rising food prices globally which limited the availability and affordability of healthy foods and, in turn, exacerbated food insecurity. Food insecurity rates are higher in rural areas (32% of the adult population) compared to urban areas (26%), and among female adults (27%) compared to male adults (25%).
In addition to adequate access, healthy diets — and in turn, optimal nutrition outcomes — are also supported by access to clean water, adequate sanitation, education, health care and social services, many of which are further explored in the cities system.