There are fewer food-insecure people in the low- and middle-income nations of the world, about 475 million, or 46 million less than last year, says the government. The International Food Security Assessment, an annual report by the USDA, cites larger harvests in India and Indonesia in Asia and the combination of larger grain crops and slower population growth in Latin America and the Caribbean as bright spots. Sub-Saharan Africa is home to 254 million of the world’s food-insecure people, virtually unchanged from 2014.
Still, the number of food-insecure people in the 76 countries is down dramatically from 827 million in 1995; 38 of the countries met the World Food Summit goal of halving the number of undernourished citizens by 2015.
“Over the next decade, the number of food-insecure people for the 76 countries is projected to deteriorate as the share of population that is food insecure moves from 13.4 percent in 2015 to 15.1 percent in 2025,” said the report.
Food insecurity is forecast to cover 30.5 percent of the population in sub-Saharan Africa in 2025, compared to 28.4 percent now, said the report. Warfare in nations such as Congo, Somalia and the Central African Republic is expected to disrupt agricultural production while populations in other countries, such as Burundi, Ethiopia, Uganda and Burkina Faso, are estimated to grow more rapidly than local farmers can boost their output.
In Asia, food insecurity is forecast to grow to nearly 10 percent from the current 8.4 percent and to intensify for the those short of food. “This result is principally driven” by Afghanistan and Yemen, said the report. In Afghanistan, food production is not forecast to grow as fast as the population. Yemen relies on imports for the bulk of its grain supplies but the pace of imports is expected to slow from its usual growth rate.