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AUDIO NEWS RELEASE - FAO Chief Economist Máximo Torero on SOFI 2025

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AUDIO NEWS RELEASE - FAO Chief Economist Máximo Torero on SOFI 2025

FAO Chief Economist, Máximo Torero, comments on the main findings related to The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World (SOFI) 2025 report on hunger and malnutrition.

Language English

Script 1.Main findings of the report - Hunger declines globally, but rises in Africa

00:00 - 00:27
This year, the SOFI brings important results in terms of the situation in terms of food security in the world. First the number of hungry people has reduced. We are talking of 673 million people in hunger in 2024. Second, access to healthy diets has improved slightly to 2.6 billion people that cannot afford a healthy diet. The minimum cost healthy diet. Now, if we project the number of hungry people to 2030, we will be in 512 million people in hunger by 2030.

00:28 - 00:44
Now, this number also diversifies across regions. From these 512 million in 2030, 60% of those will be in Africa, which means that Africa has been deteriorated in terms of hunger, while Latin America, especially South America, has been improving, and Asia, especially in South Asia, driven by India, has been significantly improving.

2. Situation in Africa and the 3 key drivers of Hunger

00:45 - 01:19
In the case of Africa, 60% of the 512 million people in chronic undernourishment will be in 2030. The numbers of hungry people are increasing. The situation is not where it should be because of several drivers. First is conflict. Many of the countries which are in food crisis are mostly because of conflict. But also we have the macro-economic issues, the slowdowns and downturns, which is affecting those economies which are already highly indebted. And it's very difficult for them to cover the food import bill, which explains why they are not able to have the levels of minimum calories that they need to be able to remove out of hunger. Climate [change] although is affecting the whole world, it affects more the most vulnerable.

3. Progress in South America

01:20 - 01:58
When we look at Latin America, we mostly refer to three subregions, South America, Central America and the Caribbean. What the report shows is that South America especially has been improving substantially during the last years. South America has been able to implement and to lead in many of very important social programs that have created significant impacts. And these programs, for example, are cash transfers, conditional cash transfers, but also school feeding programs, which have been shown to be extremely successful. Brazil was the only country in the world where extreme poverty was reduced during Covid 19 because of the availability of more resources, through these programs of transfers, social protection programs.

4. 2030 Zero Hunger

01:59 - 02:21
In SOFI, we project to 2030. If we continue as we are by 2030, we will be 512 million people in chronic undernourishment by 2030. It’s still very far to achieve the zero hunger. The probability [to achieve zero hunger] is very low because the numbers are high. But we can at least change that trend and to do that, the way to go is to improve our capacity to respond to the shocks we are facing.

5. Food Prices /Inflation

02:22 - 03:27

SOFI shows this year that food prices have grown faster than other non-food prices and that affects the population. It affects enormously the poorest people because a bigger share of what they consume is food. And if the food prices increase, their consumption will decrease. We need to find ways in which we can accelerate the transmission of the reduction of the commodity prices into the food prices. And we need to look at the structure of the market, and we need to come up with solutions and policies can accelerate that process. Second, we need to increase competition. We need to increase the bigger producers of cereals in the world and bigger producers of high value commodities in the world, so that there is more availability. Third, we need to focus on what are the policies being put in place by governments. Today a lot of the support to agriculture is going to commodities, which are not the most nutritious. And that's why also the cost of healthy diets is so high. And we need to find ways to reduce the cost of healthy diets. And we need to focus how we can create this public investment to be able to accelerate that. And finally, we need to focus on investment, but also we need to bring a more coordinated investment of the international financial organizations and the development banks.

Duration 3m26s

File size 28.56 MB

Unique identifier UF1ADLL