Podcasts

Back

Perspectives on Hunger

30
January 2024
Eilish Zembilci, Duke University, Isabelle Tsakok, Alexander de Waal

Tune in to understand the motivators of food related insecurity, the historical roots of Western responses to global food insecurity and how policies can be built to encourage food stability around the world.

According to the commonly recognised definition, which was stated in 1996 at the Food and Agriculture Organisation-hosted World Food Summit, food security is the guarantee that each person has constant access to food that is both affordable and safe in addition to being healthful. Despite this, a startling number of communities throughout the world face difficulties in meeting their basic nutritional demands or obtaining regular access to food. 

This definition establishes a high bar, considering a country to be food secure only when all its residents have regular access to a sufficient supply of safe, wholesome food that allows them to lead active, healthy lives, both financially and physically.

RELATED CONTENT

  • Authors
    July 31, 2026
    Ethiopia continues to struggle to lay the economic foundations of food security for all, more than 30 years after first adopting the East Asian Developmental State Model (EADS) under Zenawi (1911-2012), continued under Hailemariam Desalegn (2012-April 2018), and later shifting toward a neo-liberal, Washington consensus-oriented approach under Abiy Ahmed (2018-present). The achievements recorded under the EADS approach—particularly double-digit annual growth, substantial poverty ...
  • July 23, 2026
    L'agriculture occupe une place stratégique dans l'économie marocaine, mais sa transformation reste confrontée à des défis structurels majeurs. Dans cet entretien, les intervenants reviennent sur les limites des politiques agricoles menées depuis l'indépendance, notamment l'objectif d'au...
  • Authors
    June 24, 2026
    Africa today remains far from food secure. Chronic malnutrition, widespread anemia among women of childbearing age, stunting and wasting among young children, pervasive underemployment in both rural and urban areas, and a youth bulge frustrated by high unemployment are key features of a continent that is seriously off track with respect to the SDG deadline: only 6% of SDGs have been implemented (Mo Ibrahim Forum, 2025).Despite this dismal progress, Africa can still achieve “The Afri ...
  • Authors
    July 31, 2024
    Millions are severely malnourished in a world where there is enough for all. Hunger and malnutrition stalk more than 3.1 billion people. Yet, widespread hunger in all its forms is a problem which has been largely solved at the macro level in today’s high-income, industrialized countries. Their “escape from hunger and premature death” is a fairly recent phenomenon. It began around 300 years ago, continued for most of the 20th century and is still ongoing today. The problems faced by ...
  • January 30, 2024
    Tune in to understand the motivators of food related insecurity, the historical roots of Western responses to global food insecurity and how policies can be built to encourage food stabil ...
  • Authors
    Larissa Wachholz
    Bruno Brasil
    June 20, 2023
    This policy brief was originally published on T20 India website   Supportive policies for tropical agriculture have helped millions of small-scale farmers in Brazil step out of poverty by improving government capacity to design legal frameworks to strengthen agricultural production and family farming. Scientific and technological developments have enabled small-scale Brazilian farmers to produce food while considering local tropical conditions. In contrast, tr ...
  • Authors
    April 26, 2023
    It is estimated that $1 trillion to $6 trillion per year (up to 2050) needs to be invested globally if the world is to stay below the 2°C global warming ceiling of the Paris Agreement and to meet its adaptation goals. Currently, investments stand at about $630 billion per year, way below the original target. And although great efforts have been made in the climate-finance area, more than 70% of the funds deployed have gone to one sector, renewable energy, followed by the transportat ...
  • Authors
    February 13, 2023
    The fundamental role that water resources play in human development has been highlighted in multiple ways; the United Nations SDGs underline 17 different goals and over a hundred targets to be achieved by 2030. Out of 169 SDG targets, 59 were found to have direct links and synergies with the water goal SDG6 (UN Water, 2016). Careful policy making and interventions need to be implemented to avoid conflict among sectors and tradeoffs must be well established. The Integrated Water Reso ...
  • Authors
    Abdelmonim Amcharaa
    Hassnae Maad
    February 1, 2023
    La double crise actuelle de l’énergie et du conflit militaire en Ukraine freine énormément les processus qui se développaient dans l’ère post-Covid 19. Dans ce contexte fragile et tourmenté, la vulnérabilité touche également les chaînes globales de valeur et les systèmes agroalimentaires. La vulnérabilité de la Chaîne Globale de Valeur (GVC) est une fonction de la capacité d’adaptation (CA) face aux chocs et aux impacts potentiels que présentent la fragmentation du ...