"End hunger, achieve food security and improve nutrition and sustainable agriculture." It has now been five years since the United Nations set itself this epochal challenge, which together with the other sixteen Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) makes up the 2030 Agenda. Rather than declining, however, the number of people suffering from hunger continues to grow. And the outlook for the future is bleak. So says the FAO (the UN's food and agriculture organisation) in the 2020 edition of the report "The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World" (Sofi 2020).

Food and Agriculture Organization @FAO

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690 million people suffer from chronic hunger. As more people go hungry & malnutrition persists around the🌎, achieving #ZeroHunger by 2030 is in doubt.

We must transform our #FoodSystems to make #HealthyDiets affordable.

📙 New UN Report👉🏽 bit.ly/307uuFk

#SOFI2020

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The zero hunger goal risks slipping away

Fifteen years ago, 852.2 million people were undernourished, representing 12.6 per cent of the world's population. This number fell progressively until 2014, when it reached 628.9 million, with an incidence of 8.6 per cent. At that point a dramatic reversal occurred and the curve began to rise again. Today 8.9 per cent of humanity suffers from hunger — that is, 690 million people, ten million more than last year. At this rate, the figure will reach 840 million by 2030, falling well short of the zero hunger goal enshrined by the UN.

Today one in two undernourished people lives in Asia, but this figure must be read in light of the fact that it is the most populous region on the planet. In reality, the incidence among the continent's inhabitants is lower than the global average and significant progress has been made since 2015, with eight million fewer people going hungry. In Latin America and the Caribbean, too, the percentage of the population affected stands at "only" 7.4 per cent, though in this case the situation has worsened over the past five years. The continent drawing the most attention remains Africa, where even today 19.1 per cent of the population suffers from hunger. At the current pace, that will reach one in four inhabitants by 2030.

Bloomberg ✓ @business

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Hunger and malnourishment is increasing around the world as the coronavirus crisis pushes more people into poverty and limits access to healthy diets, the UN says trib.al/V3hdDs0

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That is not all, because beyond hunger itself there is also food insecurity. This can be moderate (when at certain times of year people are forced to reduce the quantity or quality of food they eat due to lack of money) or severe (when food supplies run out for several days at a time, or people go without eating altogether). Taking this phenomenon into account as well, the total reaches 2 billion people.

Coronavirus: a health crisis, but a food crisis too

These figures, moreover, refer to last year, before the coronavirus pandemic had made its severely damaging social and economic effects felt. According to FAO's preliminary estimates, in the course of this year alone a further 83 million people will be at risk of undernourishment — and this under the relatively optimistic assumption that GDP falls by just four percentage points. In the worst-case scenario, GDP would fall by ten points and a further 132 million people would go hungry.

These estimates should be treated with great caution, the organisation stresses, as it will take more time to understand the true scale of the damage. What does seem certain is that the pandemic will deepen existing inequalities. Action Against Hunger has expressed serious concern, raising a similar alarm in a report published just a few days ago. On the occasion of World Population Day on 11 July, the humanitarian organisation warned of the threat of an imminent food crisis in countries already affected by humanitarian emergencies and further tested by the pandemic. "The unprecedented global situation linked to the spread of Covid-19 has led to an overall reduction in trade and has affected the most vulnerable people's access to livelihoods," says director general Simone Garroni.

Azione contro la Fame @acf_italia

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#GiornataMondialedellaPopolazione, il report di Azione contro la Fame: se non si interviene subito, quasi un miliardo di persone rischiano la #fame per le conseguenze della #pandemia ow.ly/I3dm50AvEcf

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The imperative: healthy food for everyone

As well as raising the alarm, FAO also puts forward a possible course of action. Hunger is not merely a question of the quantity of food available. Quality plays an equally essential role. For this reason, states must "transform their food systems to ensure that everyone can afford a healthy diet, taking sustainability considerations into account." All of this by the 2030 deadline.

How? The organisation led by Qu Dongyu proposes directing public investment towards the agricultural and food products with the greatest nutritional value, increasing their yields and diversifying production. Governments can intervene in many other ways too — for example by lowering taxes on quality food, funding irrigation systems, supporting research and development programmes, bringing small producers closer to new technologies, and tackling food waste.