UN: 2.3-B People Were Severely Or Moderately Hungry In 2021

According to a UN report released Wednesday, July 6, 2022, world hunger rose in 2021, with around 2.3 billion people facing moderate or severe difficulty obtaining enough to eat – and that was even before the Ukraine war, which has sparked increases in the cost of grain, fertilizer, and energy, as per Edith M. Lederer for the Associated Press (AP).

Photo Insert: More frequent and severe weather events are also interrupting supply chains, particularly in low-income countries.

“The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World” paints a grim picture, based on 2021 data, saying the statistics “should dispel any lingering doubts that the world is moving backward in its efforts to end hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition in all its forms.”

It added, “The most recent evidence available suggests that the number of people unable to afford a healthy diet around the world rose by 112 million to almost 3.1 billion, reflecting the impacts of rising consumer food prices during the (COVID-19) pandemic.”

The heads of five UN agencies that published the report—the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), World Food Program (WFP), UN Children's Fund (UNICEF), World Health Organization (WHO), and International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD)—warned that the conflict in Ukraine, which began on February 24, "is disrupting supply chains and further affecting prices of grain, fertilizer, and energy," resulting in more price increases in the first half of 2022.

At the same time, they claim that more frequent and severe weather events are interrupting supply chains, particularly in low-income countries. Ukraine and Russia produced over a third of the world's wheat and barley and half of its sunflower oil, respectively, while Russia and its ally Belarus are the world's second and third largest producers of potash, a critical element in fertilizer.

According to the report, hunger continued to rise in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean in 2021, albeit at a lesser rate than from 2019 to 2020, according to the report. Hunger would afflict 278 million people in Africa, 425 million in Asia, and 56.5 million in Latin America and the Caribbean in 2021, according to the report.

UN development objectives call for the abolition of severe poverty and hunger by 2030, but according to the research, forecasts show that 8% of the world's population, or about 670 million people, will be hungry by the end of the decade. That is the same number of people as when the goals were set in 2015.

The gender difference in food insecurity, which worsened during the COVID-19 pandemic, widened even more from 2020 to 2021, the report highlighted.

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