The Green Institute

World Food Day should not be erroneously construed to mean a day for excessive eating or to encourage unhealthy eating habits. It proposes a scientific and empathetic evaluation of the global food system. As the website of the World Food Day, United States appropriately phrases it, “it is a day of action against hunger”. Furthermore, the FAO of the United Nations affirmed the importance of World Food Day by saying,

“World Food Day is calling for global solidarity to help all populations, and especially the most vulnerable, to recover from the crisis, and to make food systems more resilient and robust so they can withstand increasing volatility and climate shocks, deliver affordable and sustainable healthy diets for all, and decent livelihoods for food system workers.”

This serves as a reminder that in handling global challenges such as food insecurity, multilateralism always trumps unilateral approaches. We cannot sit back and fold our arms as food insecurity rages unfettered. We must rise to the occasion amidst the COVID-19 pandemic because our collective action determines our collective future.

As the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) marks its 75th anniversary on World Food Day with the theme Grow, Nourish, Sustain. Together., we should bear in mind that the fight against chronic hunger and malnutrition is unending. The current pandemic has emphasized loopholes in our food systems, reinstating the need for a global recovery response that prioritizes resilient and sustainable food production. The FAO has been unwavering and creative in its recovery response to alleviate global food crises. According to the FAO, there has been a steady increase in hunger even before the COVID-19 pandemic. In their report, almost 690 million people went hungry and according to The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2020, the stakes of an additional 130 million people drifting into chronic hunger by the end of 2020 are high. The Great Reset Initiative propounded by the World Economic Forum (WEF) will go a long way if it includes infrastructures for sustainable food production and distribution. FAO Director-General QU Dongyu quipped: “Our ability to act, in our shared best interest and for greater collective impact, has never been more important.” We need more cooperation, not less.

The COVID-19 pandemic has indeed brought to limelight the challenges of every aspect of human living including food production, distribution and supply. The response initiative forwarded by the FAO’s COVID-19 Response and Recovery Programme spans seven key areas including: Global Humanitarian Response Plan, Data for Decision-making, Economic Inclusion and Social Protection to reduce Poverty, Trade and Food Safety Standards, Boosting Small Holder Resilience for Recovery, Preventing the Next Zoonotic Pandemic, and Food Systems Transformation. The FAO is therefore calling for a 1.3billion dollars stimulus package during and after the pandemic to provide nutritious food to most affected and vulnerable regions.

There are various risk factors to food insecurity. Prominent among these are poverty and conflict. Poverty reduces people’s accessibility to nutritious food, and according to the United Nations 122 million out of 144 million stunted children are found in conflicted zones/countries.

According to the World Food Programme Hunger Statistics, 821 million people – one in nine – still go to bed on an empty stomach each night, and one in three suffers from some form of malnutrition. The challenges of our food systems go beyond food availability to include various forms of malnutrition which include: undernutrition (wasting, stunting, and underweight), inadequate vitamins or minerals, overweight, obesity, and resulting diet-related non-communicable diseases. Key statistics according to the World Health Organization are:

1.9 billion adults are overweight or obese, while 462 million are underweight.
47 million children under 5 years of age are wasted, 14.3 million are severely wasted and 144 million are stunted, while 38.3 million are overweight or obese.
Around 45% of deaths among children under 5 years of age are linked to undernutrition. These mostly occur in low- and middle-income countries. At the same time, in these same countries, rates of childhood overweight and obesity are rising.

In closing, World Food Day should indeed serve as a wake-up call that we are far from achieving Zero Hunger as stipulated in SDG 2 of the Sustainable Development Goals. Have a participatory World Food Day.