There is enough food being produced today to feed everyone on
the planet, yet by 2020 over 820 million people are considered
“chronically undernourished”. Global hunger is on the rise, despite
the world producing 17% more food per person today than 30 years
ago as reported by Oxfam.
Graphic: The number of undernourished people in the world
continued to rise in 2020 *
The crucial issue is about access as well as production. A lack of
access to sufficient nutrition is more of systemic problem than a
production problem. The scale of global food waste suggests that
increasing production would not reduce world hunger as roughly onethird of all food produced is either lost or wasted, according to the
UN’s Food and Agriculture Agency. What’s more, people in developed
countries consume a great deal more (particularly meat and dairy)
than they need or that’s good for the planet.