World sees ‘unprecedented’ hunger as farm subsidies boost unhealthy foods

 

A new UN food security report paints a grim picture of global hunger and advocates a restructuring of farm subsidies towards boosting healthier, climate-friendly food production.

Elaine Ruth Fletcher

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BETWEEN 702 million and 828 million people suffered from hunger in 2021, more than at any time since 2005, five UN agencies have reported.

The proportion of people affected by hunger had remained relatively unchanged since 2015, affecting 8% of the global population in 2019. Once the COVID-19 pandemic hit in early 2020, those numbers soared to 9.3% in 2020 and to 9.89% in 2021, according to The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2022 report published by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), World Health Organization (WHO), UNICEF, World Food Programme (WFP) and International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), and released on 6 July.

That represents an increase of about 46 million people since 2020 and 150 million people since the outbreak of the pandemic.

At current rates, 8% of the global population will still face hunger in 2030, unchanged from when the UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development launched. Among the key goals of that ambitious plan, adopted at the UN Sustainable Development Summit in September 2015, was a determination ‘to end poverty and hunger, in all their forms and dimensions, and to ensure that all human beings can fulfil their potential in dignity and equality and in a healthy environment’.

Almost 3.1 billion people couldn’t afford a healthy diet in 2020, the report says. Massive food subsidies behind the production and consumption of milk, rice, sugar and meat also are disincentivising production and consumption of healthy fruits, vegetables and protein-rich legumes, the report finds.

Critically, the report calls for a restructuring of global and national food subsidies to encourage more consumption of healthier foods including fruits and vegetables – which would also reduce carbon emissions from agricultural production of livestock and products that contribute to climate change. 

‘Transformed agro-food systems need to be part of the solution to climate change and biodiversity loss … our very existence depends on it. Hundreds of millions of hungry and malnourished fellow human beings depend on it,’ said Botswana’s Collen Vixen Kelapile, president of the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), which hosted the report’s launch in New York City.

‘Starvation and mass migration on an unprecedented scale’

WFP’s Executive Director David Beasley noted the world already faced ‘a perfect storm from the combined effects of conflicts and climate change and COVID economic ripple effects and global inflation’ as this year was getting started.

‘And just when you think it can’t get any worse,’ he said, ‘because we had Ethiopia and Afghanistan, then boom, Ukraine happens, the breadbasket of the world. The impact this conflict is having on global food security means the number of chronically hungry people in the world is likely already much higher than the 828 million people outlined in this work.’ Beasley said the latest analysis shows a record 345 million acutely hungry people are marching to the brink of starvation today, a huge increase from 276 million at the start of 2022 and from 135 million in the pre-COVID era. ‘There’s a real danger it will climb even higher in the months ahead,’ he warned.

The global price spikes in food, fuel and fertilisers resulting from the crisis in Ukraine threaten to push countries around the world into famine, Beasley said. ‘The result will be global destabilisation, starvation and mass migration on an unprecedented scale. We have to act, and we have to act today to avert this looming catastrophe.’

The prevalence of hunger, childhood wasting and stunting is highest in Africa, with a substantial burden in Asia, and Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), the report says.

Hunger affected 278 million people in Africa; 425 million people in Asia; and 56.5 million people in LAC in 2021. Women are more likely to go hungry across the developing world, the report stresses.

Globally, 149.2 million children under the age of five, or 22% of the total population, suffered from stunting, and 6.7% suffered from wasting. Both are nutrition indicators of low height and weight in proportion to age.

Another 38.9 million children under the age of five, or 5.7% of babies and toddlers globally, are overweight, reflecting a rise in unhealthy diets.

Healthy diets became even more unaffordable in 2021.

Almost 3.1 billion people could not afford a healthy diet in 2020, up by 112 million people from 2019, reflecting what the report describes as the effects of inflation in consumer food prices stemming from the economic impacts of the pandemic and the measures put in place to contain it.

The poor in Asia, Africa and Latin America are also among those least able to afford a healthy diet, with Asia seeing the highest surge in costs – 4% in just one year.

Political solution to Ukraine among the most immediate measures

An end to the Russian blockade of Ukrainian ports is an important first step in addressing the crisis but only the beginning, Beasley said, listing the top priorities as follows:

‘Firstly we urgently need a political solution to Ukrainian wheat and grain so they can re-enter global markets. Open up the ports. Let’s get it moving.

‘Number 2, humanitarian organisations need substantial new funding to deal with the skyrocketing levels of hunger that we’re seeing around the world.

‘Thirdly, governments have to resist protectionism and keep trade flowing across borders. And fourthly, we need to learn the lessons of this crisis and invest in resilience programmes to help the poorest communities protect themselves against hunger and against shocks.

‘If we had successfully threaded this needle in the past, the war in Ukraine wouldn’t be having such a disastrous global impact today.’

Rewriting the rules on agricultural and food subsidies to promote healthier foods

Fundamentally, the report calls for a major restructuring of deeply embedded global and national subsidies that are currently driving a significant portion of agricultural production – and unhealthy consumption of meat, sugar and basic commodities such as rice – at the expense of healthier and less-carbon-intensive alternatives. 

FAO chief economist Máximo Torero Cullen said overall support for agricultural production largely concentrates on staple foods such as dairy and other animal-source protein-rich foods, especially in high- and upper-middle-income countries.

‘Rice, sugar and meat of various types are the foods most incentivised worldwide, while producers of fruits and vegetables are less supported overall, and even penalised in some low-income countries,’ he said. ‘This needs to change. We are doing the opposite of what we are talking about. We need to change abruptly what is happening.’

The new report offers scenarios through 2030 in which public support to all farmers is reallocated around priority foods needed for healthy diets.

FAO says adjusting price incentives will also reduce the cost of nutritious foods, which can make healthy diets more affordable.

That would also lower greenhouse gas emissions, particularly with livestock production, which has a high carbon pricetag.

Shifting certain kinds of subsidies could, however, also create negative impacts on some farmers – who would then need new kinds of support, he pointed out.

Needed: new flexibilities in national and WTO subsidy rules 

Cullen said understanding the tradeoffs is key to mapping out the future, and comes further into play with the World Trade Organization (WTO).

‘We need commitments and flexibilities, and we need to follow what we have agreed with the WTO rules,’ he said. ‘It may be necessary to set up new fiscal subsidies to consumers or to use proper social protection systems. International development finance will be needed for low-income countries and lower-middle-income countries, given that they have smaller amount of mechanisms.’ 

Agricultural subsidies rules, however, tend to penalise small farmers in low-income countries, delegates from Latin America, Africa and Asia told the ECOSOC meeting.

‘Massive subsidies distort global markets and make it impossible for farmers from developing countries to produce food at competitive prices,’ said Pakistan’s UN representative Munir Akram.

Gilbert Houngbo, president of IFAD, said the report highlights ways to repurpose agricultural and food policies to support small-scale producers and to build their resilience.

‘Policies on subsidies often fall short of reducing hunger or improving food security and inclusion,’ he said. ‘Instead, they have promoted an overreliance on starches, sugars, high protein and processed foods, while not supporting the production of healthier fruits and vegetables, for example.’                                     

Elaine Ruth Fletcher is Managing Editor of Health Policy Watch, from which this article is reproduced (https://healthpolicy-watch.news/world-sees-unprecedented-hunger-as-farm-subsidies-boost-unhealthy-foods/).

*Third World Resurgence No. 351, 2022, pp 46-47