By John Oba
with agency report
With the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda adopted, the world has its eyes fixed firmly on the goal of Zero Hunger.
Here are ten facts about our food systems, agriculture and rural development, pro-poor investment needs, and sustainable natural resource management to reflect on.
They reveal the complexity of our food systems and the underlying causes of hunger, and suggest a few areas where action is needed.
Share them with friends and colleagues and let them know that #ZeroHunger is possible.
Select a fact, and then the pop-up Twitter icon that appears to edit and tweet it.
75% of the world’s poor and food insecure people rely on agriculture and natural resources for their livelihoods.
Family-farms produce around 80% of the world’s food. Supporting family farmers is critical to global food security.
The number of hungry people in the world is now just under 800 million – around 1 person out of every 9.
In developing regions, the prevalence of undernourishment has declined to 12.9 percent of the population, down from 23.3 percent 25 years ago.
Of those 73 countries, 29 also met the more stringent goal to halve the overall number of hungry people, established by the 1996 World Food Summit.
Another 12 of those 73 countries have maintained hunger rates below 5% of their total population dating back to at least 1990.
In developing regions, the prevalence of undernourishment has declined to 12.9 percent of the population, down from 23.3 percent 25 years ago.
These hunger trends mean that since 1990, some 216 million people have been freed from hunger.
FAO projects that global food production needs to increase by 60% by 2030 to keep up with global population growth.
Totally eradicating world hunger by 2030 will require an additional $267 billion per year on average for investments in rural and urban areas and in social protection.
1.3 billion tonnes of food is lost or wasted each year. In some countries as much as 35% of available food is wasted.
The net food production of sub-Saharan Africa is around 230 million tonnes per year.
