Global Hunger Declines for Third Consecutive Year, Yet Progress Remains Fragile and Uneven Amidst Mounting Crises

Global hunger registered a decline for the third consecutive year in 2025, a testament to the possibility of progress in the monumental fight against food insecurity. However, this hard-won improvement is precariously fragile, unevenly distributed across the world, and demonstrably insufficient to meet the ambitious Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by their 2030 deadline. This sobering assessment comes from The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2026 (SOFI 2026) report, a flagship publication released on Tuesday by a consortium of five leading United Nations specialized agencies. The report, co-authored by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the UN World Food Programme (WFP), and the World Health Organization (WHO), serves as a critical annual benchmark for understanding the global food security landscape.

A Glimmer of Hope Amidst Persistent Challenges

The SOFI 2026 report estimates that 7.8 percent of the global population, approximately 645 million people, faced hunger in 2025. This figure marks a significant, albeit slow, improvement from previous years, down from 8.1 percent in 2024 and 8.6 percent in 2022. The reduction translates to nearly 14 million fewer people experiencing hunger compared to 2024, and a more substantial decrease of 43 million since 2022. This sustained downward trend, while welcome, must be viewed within the broader context of a rapidly expanding global population, meaning that even as a percentage declines, the absolute number of people affected remains staggering. The 2025 figure, while lower than recent peaks driven by the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent global shocks, still hovers above pre-pandemic levels observed in the late 2010s, underscoring the long and arduous journey ahead to achieve SDG 2, which aims for Zero Hunger.

Regional Divides: Africa’s Mounting Burden

Despite the overarching global progress, the recovery from hunger is far from uniform, exhibiting stark regional disparities that highlight the complex interplay of economic, social, and environmental factors. Asia, alongside Latin America and the Caribbean, has demonstrated steady improvements in recent years, reflecting targeted interventions, economic growth, and potentially more resilient food systems. These regions have leveraged advancements in agricultural productivity and enhanced social safety nets to mitigate the worst impacts of food crises.

In stark contrast, Africa now bears the disproportionate burden of global hunger. The continent is home to approximately 309 million hungry people in 2025, surpassing Asia’s figure of 292 million. While Africa’s previously rising trend in hunger prevalence is showing signs of stabilization, with the share of its population facing hunger decreasing slightly from 20.3 percent in 2024 to 20.0 percent in 2025, the sheer magnitude of its population growth means it now accounts for the highest absolute number of hungry individuals globally. This demographic reality poses a formidable challenge, demanding accelerated, context-specific interventions to prevent further exacerbation of food insecurity. Factors contributing to Africa’s vulnerability include persistent conflicts, extreme weather events exacerbated by climate change, economic instability, and structural deficiencies in agricultural infrastructure and market access.

Beyond Hunger: The Broader Landscape of Food Insecurity

The SOFI 2026 report also delves into broader measures of food access, painting a more comprehensive picture of global food insecurity. In 2025, an estimated 25.8 percent of the global population, equivalent to approximately 2.1 billion people, experienced moderate or severe food insecurity. This signifies that these individuals were, at times, compelled to compromise on either the quality or quantity of the food they consumed due to financial or other constraints. This figure represents a reduction from 27.1 percent in 2024 and 28.7 percent in 2020, translating to nearly 86 million fewer people than in 2024 and 135 million fewer than in 2020. However, like the hunger statistics, this level of food insecurity remains above pre-pandemic benchmarks, indicating that underlying fragilities persist.

The regional disparities for food insecurity mirror those for hunger, underscoring a systemic issue. More than half of Africa’s population (56.6 percent) faced moderate or severe food insecurity in 2025. This alarming statistic stands in sharp contrast to 20.3 percent in Asia, 22.9 percent in Latin America and the Caribbean, and a significantly lower 8.7 percent in Northern America and Europe. Within these regions, food insecurity continues to be more prevalent in rural areas compared to peri-urban and urban settings, reflecting the challenges faced by smallholder farmers and communities reliant on agriculture. Furthermore, women continue to be disproportionately affected by food insecurity, a persistent gender gap that, while narrowing slightly in 2025, remains a critical area for targeted policy intervention to ensure equitable access to food and resources.

The Shadow of Conflict and Climate: Future Projections

The annual SOFI report offers crucial updated hunger projections for the next five years, critically factoring in the protracted conflict in the Middle East. The analysis reveals a grim outlook: depending on the duration and intensity of the conflict’s impact on food inflation—primarily driven by elevated energy and fertilizer prices—an estimated 510 to 520 million people may still be facing hunger in 2030. This figure is notably higher than the pre-conflict scenario’s projection of 503 million, highlighting the devastating ripple effects of geopolitical instability on global food systems. While the global number of undernourished people is still expected to decrease by 20 percent by 2030 under this scenario, the conflict’s influence means a slower pace of progress and a higher baseline of hunger than previously anticipated.

Crucially, these projections do not account for other potential disruptors, such as the increasing frequency and intensity of weather extremes. Phenomena like El Niño, predicted to have significant impacts in 2026 and 2027, could further compound existing vulnerabilities, leading to widespread droughts, floods, and agricultural losses. The report’s joint authors explicitly warn that the 2026 Middle East conflict, coupled with these weather extremes and the concerning reductions in official development assistance (ODA) and humanitarian funding, poses a severe threat to undermine the fragile progress made towards ending global hunger. This confluence of crises necessitates a robust, coordinated international response that addresses both immediate humanitarian needs and long-term systemic vulnerabilities.

Stalled Progress on Global Nutrition Targets

Beyond the headline figures on hunger and food insecurity, the SOFI report meticulously scrutinizes global progress on maternal and child nutrition, revealing a worrying trend of insufficient advancement towards international commitments, including the vital 2030 nutrition targets. Indicators such as child stunting (impaired growth and development), wasting (low weight for height), overweight, low birthweight, and exclusive breastfeeding rates show only marginal improvements. The pace of progress is deemed too slow to achieve the established targets, jeopardizing the health and developmental potential of millions of children worldwide.

Compounding these challenges, the prevalence of anaemia among women aged 15 to 49 years is worsening, a critical public health concern with profound implications for maternal health and child development. Simultaneously, the prevalence of adult obesity continues its steady and alarming increase, rising from 12.1 percent in 2012 to 16.2 percent in 2024. This trend runs directly contrary to the global target of halting the rise in obesity by 2025, indicating a systemic failure to promote healthy diets and lifestyles. Furthermore, a concerning 150 million children under five years of age are still stunted, and only 30.8 percent of children aged 6 to 23 months worldwide consume a minimally diverse diet, highlighting critical deficiencies in infant and young child feeding practices.

Regional variations again emerge as a significant factor. While the prevalence of child stunting is declining in Africa and is on track to meet the 2030 target in Asia, and exclusive breastfeeding rates are improving across all regions with available data, nearly all regions are grappling with widening gaps in addressing anaemia among women. Moreover, child overweight is increasing rapidly in Oceania, signaling the complex and diverse nutritional challenges facing different parts of the world.

The Unaffordable Healthy Diet: A Deep Dive into Economic Barriers

A pivotal focus of this year’s SOFI report is a detailed examination of the "cost of a healthy diet" – defined as the average minimum expenditure required to obtain locally available foods that meet essential energy and most nutrient requirements. According to FAO and WHO, a healthy diet is characterized by being adequate, balanced, diverse, and moderate. The report unequivocally states that the high cost of such diets remains a major constraint to achieving SDG 2 (Zero Hunger), although it cautions that merely lowering costs alone will not suffice to improve dietary quality and nutrition outcomes, necessitating a broader policy framework.

In 2025, the average global cost of a healthy diet reached 4.28 purchasing power parity (PPP) dollars per person per day, a significant increase from 3.44 PPP dollars in 2021 and 2.94 PPP dollars in 2017. Latin America and the Caribbean recorded the highest levels at 4.91 PPP dollars. Encouragingly, the number of people unable to afford a healthy diet has seen a reduction, declining from 2.97 billion (37.4 percent of the global population) in 2021 to 2.69 billion (32.7 percent) in 2025.

However, this global trend masks profound regional disparities. In Africa, affordability worsened markedly, with a staggering 66.6 percent of the population unable to afford a healthy diet in 2025. This figure is more than double the levels observed in Asia and in Latin America and the Caribbean, underscoring the deep-seated economic barriers to nutrition on the continent. The report identifies structural differences in agrifood systems as a key driver of these cost variations across regions. Animal source foods, fruits, and vegetables account for the largest share of healthy diet costs, while starchy staples contribute relatively little. In Africa, animal source foods are the largest cost contributor, whereas vegetables hold this distinction in Latin America and the Caribbean.

A critical insight from the report is that post-farmgate activities within food value chains account for a substantial 70 to 75 percent of what consumers pay, with up to 40 percent of total costs arising in processing, logistics, and wholesale. This analysis highlights that improving efficiency in these segments, particularly for perishable, nutrient-rich foods, is paramount to reducing the cost of a healthy diet. Policy responses must be context-specific, focusing on expanding the supply of nutritious foods while simultaneously lowering structural costs across agrifood value chains. This includes strategic investments in vital infrastructure (e.g., roads, storage), research and development (e.g., climate-resilient crops), irrigation systems, and crucially, cold chains to minimize spoilage of fresh produce. Furthermore, reforms in subsidies, trade facilitation, and regulatory frameworks are essential to create an enabling environment for affordable, healthy food. Targeted interventions that boost productivity, reduce food losses and waste, and promote sustainable practices can synergistically improve nutrition outcomes, strengthen resilience to shocks, and support broader climate goals. The report concludes with a powerful call to action: "The work that lies ahead over the years to 2030 is immense. However, a world in which a healthy diet is no longer out of reach for nearly one in three people is a world worth building."

Expert Voices: Calls for Concerted Action

The heads of the five UN agencies co-authoring the report delivered impassioned calls for urgent and coordinated action.

QU Dongyu, Director-General of FAO, emphasized the need for speed: "The report shows that progress is possible, but we must move faster. Ending hunger and making healthy diets affordable requires political commitment, sustained investment and enabling policies. Recent crises – from natural disasters like the COVID-19 pandemic to man-made disaster like hotspots of conflicts, the war in Ukraine, the Gaza crisis, and the recent Strait of Hormuz disruption – have demonstrated both the resilience of agrifood systems and the need to strengthen them further to better serve the world’s most vulnerable people, farmers and consumers." His statement underscores the multifaceted threats to food security and the necessity of building robust agrifood systems.

IFAD President Alvaro Lario highlighted the economic dimensions: "SOFI tells us that the cost of a healthy diet continues to rise and that nearly 2.7 billion people may still be unable to afford a healthy diet. Resilient value chains must be a central part of the answer. Our task now is to turn the evidence SOFI provides into investment – and to do so through partnership. Together, we can build the value chains, market systems and rural economies that make healthy food affordable for all." Lario’s focus on resilient value chains and strategic investment aligns with the report’s economic analysis.

UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell stressed the impact on children: "Every child deserves the chance to grow and develop to their full potential, and this starts with access to nutritious, affordable food. This report is a stark reminder that food systems fail millions of children and families. Food, health, education and social protection must go hand in hand to protect the most vulnerable children and women from global shocks." Russell’s words highlight the intergenerational consequences of food insecurity and the need for a holistic approach to child welfare.

Carl Skau, Acting Executive Director of WFP, brought the human cost to the forefront: "Behind every number in this report is a family counting the cost of food. Conflict and climate shocks push them further beyond their means. We must continue working with partner agencies, governments and communities to build food systems that hold up under shock, so families can afford nutritious diets, even in times of crisis. We now need sustained investment to match the scale of the challenge." Skau’s emphasis on families and the impact of shocks resonates with the report’s projection on conflict.

Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General, focused on public health implications: "While we welcome the clear progress we have made in reducing hunger, a healthy diet still remains unaffordable for one in three people globally. Obesity is rising and progress on maternal and child nutrition is stalling. But we know what works: policies that make healthy food the easy choice, promoting breastfeeding, front-of-pack labelling, taxing unhealthy products, and protecting children from harmful marketing. Healthy diets are not a luxury – they are the foundation of health and must be within everyone’s reach." Dr. Tedros’s statement provides concrete policy recommendations for improving nutrition outcomes globally.

Pathways to 2030: Challenges and Opportunities

The SOFI 2026 report serves as a critical annual health check on the world’s progress towards ending hunger and malnutrition. While the decline in global hunger for a third consecutive year offers a glimmer of hope and proves that concerted efforts can yield results, the deeply ingrained regional disparities, the persistent challenge of food insecurity, and the stalled progress on crucial nutrition targets underscore the immense scale of the task ahead. The confluence of geopolitical conflicts, the looming threat of climate extremes, and insufficient financial support for development and humanitarian aid further complicate the pathway to achieving SDG 2 by 2030.

The report’s detailed analysis of the rising cost of a healthy diet and its pervasive unaffordability for billions, particularly in Africa, presents a clear imperative for policy action. Addressing this requires a comprehensive approach that transcends agricultural production to encompass the entire agrifood value chain, from infrastructure and research to trade policies and consumer education. Investments in resilient and sustainable agrifood systems are not merely an economic necessity but a moral imperative, ensuring that nutritious food is not a luxury but a fundamental right accessible to all. The collective calls from the UN agency heads for political commitment, sustained investment, strategic partnerships, and enabling policies resonate as a unified plea for the global community to accelerate efforts, demonstrating that a world free from hunger and malnutrition is an achievable, albeit challenging, vision. The evidence is clear; the time for decisive action is now.