Key messages:

1. World hunger rose further in 2021. The increase in global hunger in 2021 reflects exacerbated inequalities across and within countries due to an unequal pattern of economic recovery among countries and unrecovered income losses among those most affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.
2. After remaining relatively unchanged since 2015, the prevalence of undernourishment (PoU) jumped from 8.0 to 9.3 percent from 2019 to 2020 and rose at a slower pace in 2021 to 9.8 percent. Between 702 and 828 million people were affected by hunger in 2021. The number has grown by about 150 million since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic – 103 million more people between 2019 and 2020 and 46 million more in 2021.
3. Moderate or severe food insecurity remained mostly unchanged in 2021, but severe food insecurity rose higher, reflecting a deteriorating situation for people already facing serious hardships.
4. One in five people in Africa (20.2 percent of the population) was facing hunger in 2021, compared to 9.1 percent in Asia, 8.6 percent in Latin America and the Caribbean.
5. Globally in 2020, an estimated 22 percent of children under five years of age were stunted, 6.7 percent were wasted, and 5.7 percent were overweight.
6. Steady progress has been made on exclusive breastfeeding, with 43.8 percent of infants under six months of age exclusively breastfed worldwide in 2020, up from 37.1 percent in 2012, but improvement must be accelerated to meet the 2030 target.
7. Globally in 2019, nearly one in three women aged 15 to 49 years (571 million) were affected by anaemia, with no progress since 2012.
8. Almost 3.1 billion people could not afford a healthy diet in 2020. This is 112 million more than in 2019, reflecting the inflation in consumer food prices stemming from the economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and the measures put in place to contain it.
9. The recent setbacks indicate that policies are no longer delivering increasing marginal returns in reducing hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition in all its forms.
10. Worldwide support to food and agriculture accounted for almost USD 630 billion per year on average over 2013–2018. The lion share of it is targeted to farmers individually, through trade and market policies and fiscal subsidies largely tied to production or unconstrained use of variable production inputs. Not only is much of this support market-distorting, but it is not reaching many farmers, hurts the environment and does not promote the production of nutritious foods. In many countries, fiscal subsidies have increased the availability and reduced the price of staple foods and their derivatives, discouraging and making relatively more expensive the consumption of unsubsidized or less subsidized commodities such as fruits, vegetables and pulses. Repurposing existing public support can help increase the availability of nutritious foods to the consumer.
11. Low-emission intensity technologies have to be adopted to produce nutritious foods, and overproduction and overconsumption of emission-intensive commodities need to be reduced in high- and upper-middle-income countries in line with dietary guidelines.
12. In low-income countries, governments need to increase and prioritize expenditure for the provision of services that support food and agriculture more collectively.
13. Social protection and health system policies will be needed to mitigate unintended consequences of repurposing support on the most vulnerable, particularly women and children. Environmental, health, transportation and energy systems policies will be needed to enhance the positive outcomes of repurposing support in the realms of efficiency, equality, nutrition, health, climate mitigation and the environment.
14. Repurposing efforts will need strong institutions on a local, national and global level, as well as engaging and incentivizing stakeholders from the public sector, the private sector and international organizations.