A recent comprehensive assessment by five leading United Nations specialized agencies reveals a complex and often contradictory picture of global food security. While the world has seen a marginal reduction in the prevalence of hunger for the third consecutive year, signifying a fragile positive trend, this progress remains critically unevenly distributed and insufficient to meet the ambitious Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) related to eradicating hunger by 2030. The detailed findings, presented in The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2026 (SOFI 2026) report, underscore the persistent challenges posed by regional disparities, geopolitical conflicts, climate change, and the escalating cost of nutritious diets.
The report, a collaborative effort 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), estimates that approximately 645 million individuals, or 7.8 percent of the global population, endured hunger in 2025. This figure represents a slight decrease from 8.1 percent in 2024 and 8.6 percent in 2022, marking a cumulative reduction of 43 million hungry people since 2022. This incremental improvement, while welcome, points to a slow trajectory that jeopardizes the international community’s commitment to achieving Zero Hunger within the next five years. The definition of hunger in this context refers to chronic undernourishment, a prolonged state of insufficient caloric intake to meet minimum dietary energy requirements.
Beyond chronic hunger, the report also examines broader measures of food access, revealing that a staggering 2.1 billion people—approximately 25.8 percent of the global population—experienced moderate or severe food insecurity in 2025. This metric encompasses individuals who, at times, faced uncertainties about their ability to obtain food, were forced to compromise on the quality or quantity of their meals due to lack of money or other resources, or went without food for entire days. While this represents a decline from 27.1 percent in 2024 and 28.7 percent in 2020, bringing the number of affected individuals down by 86 million from 2024 and 135 million from 2020, the current level still surpasses pre-pandemic figures, indicating a lingering vulnerability within global food systems.
The geographic distribution of these improvements and setbacks highlights profound inequities. Regions like Asia, and Latin America and the Caribbean, have demonstrated consistent, albeit modest, advancements in reducing hunger indicators over recent years. This progress is often attributed to a combination of sustained economic growth, targeted agricultural policies, and social safety nets in various countries. However, the African continent presents a stark contrast, now hosting the largest absolute number of hungry individuals worldwide, totaling approximately 309 million. Although Africa’s proportion of the population facing hunger saw a marginal decrease from 20.3 percent in 2024 to 20.0 percent in 2025, this minor stabilization is overshadowed by its rapidly expanding population, which continues to drive up the absolute count of those experiencing food deprivation. The continent’s vulnerability is exacerbated by factors such as climate change, recurrent conflicts, political instability, and underdeveloped agricultural infrastructure, making it particularly susceptible to food crises.
Similarly, regional disparities are pronounced in the context of moderate or severe food insecurity. More than half of Africa’s populace, an alarming 56.6 percent, grappled with this challenge in 2025. In comparison, Asia recorded 20.3 percent, Latin America and the Caribbean 22.9 percent, and Northern America and Europe a significantly lower 8.7 percent. The report also underscores that food insecurity remains considerably more prevalent in rural areas, where communities often rely directly on agriculture for their livelihoods and are more exposed to climate shocks, limited market access, and inadequate public services. Furthermore, women continue to bear a disproportionate burden of food insecurity globally, often due to entrenched gender inequalities in access to land, education, financial resources, and decision-making power. While the gender gap showed a slight narrowing in 2025, the underlying structural issues persist.
Looking ahead, the SOFI 2026 report offers updated projections for hunger in the next five years, factoring in the escalating Middle East conflict. The analysis suggests that depending on the duration and intensity of the crisis’s impact on global food inflation—largely driven by surges in energy and fertilizer prices—between 510 million and 520 million people could still be experiencing hunger by 2030. This represents a significant upward revision from the pre-conflict projection of 503 million, indicating that ongoing geopolitical tensions are actively undermining efforts to achieve food security. The conflict disrupts supply chains, displaces populations, and diverts resources, exacerbating existing vulnerabilities. The projections, however, do not account for other potential catastrophic disruptors, such as the severe weather extremes anticipated from phenomena like El Niño in 2026 and 2027, which could further compound the global food crisis through droughts, floods, and reduced agricultural yields.
The five co-authoring UN agencies issued a joint warning that the confluence of the Middle East conflict, extreme weather events, and a worrying reduction in official development assistance (ODA) and humanitarian funding poses a grave threat to the progress made in combating global hunger. These multifaceted crises strain already fragile food systems, diminish the capacity of governments and aid organizations to respond effectively, and erode the resilience of vulnerable communities.
Beyond caloric intake, the report highlights the dire state of global nutrition targets, revealing insufficient progress towards international commitments for maternal and child health, including the specific nutrition objectives set for 2030. Key indicators such as child stunting (impaired growth), wasting (low weight for height), overweight, low birthweight, and exclusive breastfeeding rates show only marginal improvements. The pace of change is critically slow, jeopardizing the attainment of these vital health benchmarks. Alarmingly, anaemia among women aged 15 to 49 years is worsening across nearly all regions, posing significant health risks for mothers and their offspring, including increased maternal mortality and developmental delays in children. Simultaneously, the prevalence of adult obesity continues its relentless rise, increasing from 12.1 percent in 2012 to 16.2 percent in 2024, directly contradicting the global target of halting its increase by 2025. This dual burden of malnutrition—undernutrition alongside overweight and obesity—reflects profound systemic failures in providing equitable access to healthy, diverse diets.
The report further reveals that only 30.8 percent of children aged 6 to 23 months globally consume a minimally diverse diet, essential for healthy development. Consequently, 150 million children under five years of age remain stunted, suffering from irreversible cognitive and physical impairments that will affect their future health and productivity. While child stunting is declining in Africa and appears on track to meet the 2030 target in Asia, and exclusive breastfeeding rates are improving in regions with available data, the widening gaps in addressing anaemia among women and the rapid increase in child overweight in Oceania are causes for deep concern, demonstrating the highly localized nature of nutrition challenges.
A critical focus of this year’s SOFI report is the escalating cost of a healthy diet, which remains a significant impediment to achieving SDG 2. A healthy diet, as defined by FAO and WHO, is one that is adequate, balanced, diverse, and moderate, providing all necessary nutrients for optimal health. The report underscores that merely lowering these costs, while crucial, will not singularly resolve dietary quality and nutrition outcomes.
In 2025, the average global cost of a healthy diet reached 4.28 purchasing power parity (PPP) dollars per person per day, a notable increase from 3.44 PPP dollars in 2021 and 2.94 PPP dollars in 2017. Latin America and the Caribbean recorded the highest regional costs, at 4.91 PPP dollars. Despite this rising cost, the number of individuals globally unable to afford a healthy diet did decline, from 2.97 billion (37.4 percent of the global population) in 2021 to 2.69 billion (32.7 percent) in 2025. However, this overall trend masks acute regional disparities. Africa, in particular, witnessed a marked worsening of affordability, with an alarming 66.6 percent of its population unable to access a healthy diet in 2025—more than double the rates observed in Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean.
The wide variation in healthy diet costs across regions stems from structural differences within agrifood systems. Animal source foods, fruits, and vegetables constitute the largest share of these costs due to their perishability, specific production requirements, and complex supply chains, while starchy staples contribute relatively little. For instance, animal source foods are the primary cost driver in Africa, whereas vegetables account for the largest proportion in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Food value chains play a pivotal role in determining consumer prices. Post-farmgate activities, encompassing processing, logistics, and wholesale, account for a substantial 70 to 75 percent of what consumers pay. Up to 40 percent of total costs arise specifically in processing, logistics, and wholesale segments. Improving efficiency within these parts of the chain is therefore paramount, especially for reducing the cost of perishable, nutrient-rich foods that are often crucial components of a healthy diet. This necessitates strategic investments in infrastructure, research and development, irrigation systems, and crucially, cold chain facilities to minimize spoilage and maintain quality.
To effectively reduce the cost of a healthy diet and build more resilient food systems, context-specific policy responses are essential. These must aim to expand the supply of nutritious foods while simultaneously lowering structural costs across the entire agrifood value chain. Recommended interventions include increased public and private investments in agricultural infrastructure, scientific research and development for improved crop varieties and farming practices, advanced irrigation techniques, and robust cold storage and transportation networks. Furthermore, reforms in agricultural subsidies, trade facilitation policies, and regulatory frameworks are necessary to create a more equitable and efficient food environment. Targeted interventions that boost productivity, reduce post-harvest losses, and promote sustainable agricultural practices can simultaneously enhance nutrition outcomes, strengthen community 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." This sentiment was echoed by the heads of the participating agencies. FAO Director-General QU Dongyu emphasized the need for political commitment, sustained investment, and enabling policies, highlighting the resilience of agrifood systems but also the urgent need to strengthen them against crises. IFAD President Alvaro Lario underscored the importance of resilient value chains and turning evidence into investment through partnerships. UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell stressed that every child deserves access to nutritious food and called for integrated approaches involving food, health, education, and social protection. WFP Acting Executive Director Carl Skau urged sustained investment to build food systems that withstand shocks, ensuring families can afford nutritious diets. WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus welcomed progress but reiterated that healthy diets are not a luxury but a foundation of health that must be accessible to everyone, advocating for policies that make healthy food the easy choice.
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