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Opinion
The Brazilian government has adopted public policies that aim to guarantee food and the nutritional security of the population, especially schoolchildren. Children are served a meal in September 2024 at a public school. Credit: Lúcio Bernardo Jr./Agência Brasília/Flickr
– History has shown us again and again that, so long as inequality goes unchecked, no amount of technology can ensure people are well fed.
Today, the world produces more food per person than ever before. Yet hunger and malnutrition persist in every corner of the globe — even, and increasingly, in some of its wealthiest countries.
The major drivers of food insecurity are well known: conflict, poverty, inequality, economic shocks and escalating climate change. In other words, the causes of hunger are fundamentally political and economic.
The urgency of the hunger crisis has prompted 150 Nobel and World Food Prize laureates to call for “moonshot” technological and agricultural innovations to boost food production, meaning monumental and lofty efforts. However, they largely ignored hunger’s root causes — and the need to confront powerful entities and make courageous political choices.
Jennifer Clapp
Food is misallocated
To focus almost exclusively on promoting agricultural technologies to ramp up food production would be to repeat the mistakes of the past.
The Green Revolution of the 1960s-70s brought impressive advances in crop yields, though at considerable environmental cost. It failed to eliminate hunger, because it didn’t address inequality. Take Iowa, for example — home to some of the most industrialized food production on the planet. Amid its high-tech corn and soy farms, 11 per cent of the state’s population, and one in six of its children, struggle to access food.
Even though the world already produces more than enough food to feed everyone, it’s woefully misallocated. Selling food to poor people at affordable prices simply isn’t as profitable for giant food corporations.
They make far more by exporting it for animal feed, blending it into biofuels for cars or turning it into industrial products and ultra-processed foods. To make matters worse, a third of all food is simply wasted.
Meanwhile, as the laureates remind us, more than 700 million people — nine per cent of the world’s population — remain chronically undernourished. A staggering 2.3 billion people — more than one in four — cannot access an adequate diet.
Women queue up to receive food distributed by local volunteers at a camp in Somalia in May 2019. Conflicts hinder the effective delivery of humanitarian aid during food security crisis. Credit: AP Photo/Farah Abdi Warsameh
Confronting inequity
Measures to address world hunger must start with its known causes and proven policies. Brazil’s Without Hunger program, for example, has seen dramatic 85 per cent reduction in severe hunger in just 18 months through financial assistance, school food programs and minimum wage policies.
Our politicians must confront and reverse gross inequities in wealth, power and access to land. Hunger disproportionately affects the poorest and most marginalized people, not because food is scarce, but because people can’t afford it or lack the resources to produce it for themselves. Redistribution policies aren’t optional, they’re essential.
Governments must put a stop to the use of hunger as a weapon of war. The worst hunger hotspots are conflict zones, as seen in Gaza and Sudan, where violence drives famine. Too many governments have looked the other way on starvation tactics — promoting emergency aid to pick up the pieces instead of taking action to end the conflicts driving hunger.
Palestinians line up for food distribution in Deir al-Balah, Gaza Strip, in October 2024. Credit: AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana
Stronger antitrust and competition policies are vital to curb extreme corporate concentration in global food chains — from seeds and agrochemicals to grain trading, meat packing and retail — that allow firms to fix prices and wield outsized political influence.
Dependency trap
Governments must also break the stranglehold of inequitable trade rules and export patterns that trap the poorest regions in dependency on food imports, leaving them vulnerable to shocks.
Instead, supporting local and territorial markets is critical in helping build resilience to economic and supply chain disruptions. These markets provide livelihoods and help ensure diverse, nutritious foods reach those who need them.
Mitigating and adapting to climate change requires massive investments in transformative approaches that promote resilience and sustainability in food systems.
Agroecology — a farming system that applies ecological principles to ensure sustainability and promotes social equity in food systems — is a key solution, proven to sequester carbon, build resilience to climate shocks and reduce dependence on expensive and environmentally damaging synthetic fertilizers and pesticides.
A demonstrator holds a sign that reads ‘give agroecology a chance’ at the COP27 U.N. Climate Summit in Egypt in November 2022. Credit: AP Photo/Peter Dejong
More research should explore agroecology’s full potential. And we must adopt plant-rich, local and seasonal diets, ramp up measures to tackle food waste and reconsider using food crops for biofuels.
This means pushing back against Big Meat and biofuel lobbies, while investing in climate-resilient food systems.
Bold political action needed
This is not to say that technology has no role — all hands need to be on deck. But the innovations most worth pursuing are those that genuinely support more equitable and sustainable food systems, and not corporate profits. Unless scientific efforts are matched by policies that confront power and prioritize equity over profit, then hunger is likely to here to stay.
The solutions to hunger are neither new nor beyond reach. What’s missing is the political will to address its root causes.
This message is shared by my colleagues with the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems, IPES-Food, whose work covers a range of expertise and experience. Hunger persists because we allow injustice to endure. If we are serious about ending it, we need bold political action, not just scientific breakthroughs.
Jennifer Clapp is Professor and Canada Research Chair in Global Food Security and Sustainability, and Member of the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems, University of Waterloo.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
IPS UN Bureau