USDA says world’s food deficient numbers dropped 27. 5 per cent this year, but some question the report’s methodology
SASKATOON — Big strides are being made in addressing global food security, according to a new report.
It is forecast to improve in 2024 relative to 2023 for most of the 83 low- and middle-income countries covered by the annual International Food Security Assessment (IFSA) report prepared by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service.
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That is due to an average 3.4 per cent growth in per capita gross domestic product for those countries and the easing of international and domestic food prices for most commodities, including vegetable oil, wheat, sorghum and corn.
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“In 2024, an estimated 19 per cent of the population included in IFSA, or 824.6 million people, may be unable to consume the 2,100 kilocalories per day considered necessary for a healthy and active lifestyle,” stated the report.
“This represents a 27.5 per cent decrease (313 million fewer people) from the estimated number of food-insecure people in 2023.”
However, food security is expected to worsen for Syria, Iran, Laos, Egypt, Gambia, Moldova, Liberia, Bangladesh and Haiti due to elevated consumer price inflation and high rice prices in those countries.
Andy Harrington, executive director of the Canadian Foodgrains Bank, is always pleased to see a report forecasting less hunger in the world, but he has some issues with the methodology the USDA employed.
“It’s purely an economic analysis,” he said.
“It looks at GDP versus the cost of food.”
However, there are other factors to consider beyond purchasing power.
“The reality is, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s going to be available to the people who need it most,” he said.
For instance, there may be good food availability in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, but precious little in Tigray, another city in that same country.
He highly doubts world hunger will decrease by 27.5 per cent in one year.
The USDA report projects an even more significant decline in global hunger by 2034 with 274.6 million people in the IFSA countries forecast to be food insecure by that time, a 66.7 per cent reduction from 2024 levels.
“This decline is driven by projected improvements in per capita GDP, particular in the Former Soviet Union region and the South and Southeast Asia subregions,” stated the report.
Harrington is even more skeptical of that long-term forecast.
“I find it very hard to believe that in this next decade we’ll get as on top of hunger as these figures imply,” he said.
The report he follows more closely is the State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World, published annually by the World Health Organization.
It forecasts that 583 million people will be chronically undernourished by 2030, down from 733 million in 2023.
The good news is that many government agencies are pointing to a decline in global hunger in the coming years.
However, none of them are forecasting that the world will reach the Sustainable Development Goal 2 of eradicating hunger by 2030.
Harrington said the USDA’s long-term forecast ignores “real world” drivers of hunger, including economic disruption, climate change and conflict.
“There’s no space for a COVID shutdown of markets that we saw that completely disrupted food supplies across the world,” he said.
“There’s no place for a conflict that breaks out in a strategic location like Ukraine.”
Another example of a real-world situation that would derail the USDA’s optimistic forecast is the recent four-year drought in the Horn of Africa that seriously disrupted food production in that major food deficit region of the world.
The USDA forecast seems to assume that everything else will go well, but it rarely does, said Harrington.