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SOFI24 Chief Economist Maximo Torero

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SOFI24 Chief Economist Maximo Torero

Around 733 million people faced hunger in 2023, equivalent to one in eleven people globally and one in five in Africa, according to the latest State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World (SOFI) report. In this series of soundbites in English and Spanish, FAO’s Chief Economist Máximo Torero explores the causes of global hunger.

Asset date 07/24/2024

Language English, Spanish

Script 1. SOFI's main findings – 00:01-00:43

The SOFI report that we launch every year is the one that brings the numbers of hunger in the world and the status of the indicators of food security and nutrition in the world. Sadly, this year SOFI is showing that the numbers have not changed from the previous years, basically, which were already years where we have seen already the increase of hunger in the world because of COVID 19. So what we are reporting this year is that we have between 713 million and 757 million people which are chronically undernourished, people facing hunger. This is one out of 11 people in the world facing hunger. The situation is not as we would have liked, but with significant differences across regions, Africa being the region that is being the most affected, and Latin America, especially South America, being the region that has improved the most.

2. Africa and financing 00:44-01:38

If we compare Africa with South America, the differences that we observe is that South America spends significant amount of their money in social protection programmes. South America has very developed social protection programmes that allow them to target interventions, so they can effectively move out of hunger in a very fast way, because it is efficient. In the case of Africa, we have not observed that. But on the other hand, Africa is a the region that has been affected the most by conflicts and by climate [change], and of course by [economic] slowdowns and downturns. It is a region that today is showing the biggest number of countries in food crisis because of these three key drivers, and conflict being the first in this sense, followed by climate and slowdowns and downturns. It's also a region that today is facing significant financial challenges, meaning access to financing, because many of the countries in the region are facing a debt stress situation, which doesn't allow them to have the resources to be able to do the policies that we need to put in place to accelerate the reduction of hunger in the world.

3. Progress in South America. 01:39-02:15

Of course, [investing in social protection] is one of the things that we need to learn from Latin America, especially South America. Brazil has a very good social protection system in place… Colombia, Peru, Chile… That allows them to quickly react to the changes and to quickly target the financing resources they have, because all of us are facing stress in terms of liquidity and financial resources. But if you are effective in the way you do it, you will target the population which are in the worst situation. It's also a region that has been recovering very fast from COVID 19 relative to other regions in the world, and this is why we are seeing these significant changes. In Latin America, we are talking of more than 5 million people that has been moved out of hunger in the last three years.

4. Nutrition and affordability of healthy diets 02:16-02:56

When we look at food insecurity, we not only look at hunger, which is chronic undernourishment, but we also look at overweight and obesity. The importance of affordability of healthy diets is that it is a diet that is diverse and brings all the macro and micronutrients that we need, so that we can avoid problems of chronic undernourishment, but we can also avoid problems of overweight and obesity.
Today we have 2.8 billion people that don't have access to the minimum cost of a healthy diet. The number is extremely high, it has not improved relative to the previous years, and that tells us that we need to do a lot here. We need to change this paradigm, why countries have prices which are so high that don't allow people to consume, and also why income is a problem, because it's not only an issue of the supply side, but it's also an issue of the income side.

5. 2030 Zero Hunger 02:57-03:18

What we know is that, if we project the numbers of today, we will be at up to 582 million people chronically undernourished or in hunger by 2030. This is more than what was the target, which is zero hunger, so we need to accelerate the process and we need to change if we want to get as close as possible of our target. We only have six years left.

SPANISH

03:19-03:43

El informe [SOFI] este año nos muestra que estamos en una situación no muy buena en términos de los números de gente con hambre. Los números que tenemos hoy en día están en el rango entre 713 millones y 757 millones de personas que se encuentran en desnutrición crónica, como le llamamos al indicador. ¿Esto qué quiere decir? Que nos hemos mantenido en los niveles altos de COVID 19, que dieron un salto bastante fuerte con respecto a los periodos anteriores.

03:44-04:34

En Sudamérica la situación ha mejorado. ¿Y qué refleja esto? Primero, refleja que hay mayor gasto en programas sociales y en la agricultura que ha permitido mejorar este sector y mejorar el proceso de focalización de intervenciones. Segundo, Latinoamérica y Sudamérica fundamentalmente tienen una gran experiencia en programas de protección social. Muchos de los países de Sudamérica tienen un sistema ya armado institucionalmente que les permite y les facilita responder mucho más rápido a estos shocks, como el Covid19, y por lo tanto les permite focalizar mejor las intervenciones y ser más eficientes en la forma como gastan sus recursos. Y eso ha ayudado muchísimo a países como Brasil, como Perú, como Chile, como Colombia, a reducir sus números [de hambre]. Y como decía, lleva a que esta región haya tenido la mayor caída de hambre en los últimos tres años: más de 5 millones de personas.

Duration 4m32s

File size 25.15 MB

Unique identifier UF17ETC