Today, with a population of ~7.5 billion there remains over 820 million people who are chronically hungry.
Despite significant progress in the fight against world hunger over the last few decades, driven by economic growth and improvements in agricultural efficiency, the last few years have seen the number of undernourished people globally start to rise again as new challenges have begun to show themselves.
The Problem in Numbers
Today, with a population of ~7.5 billion there remains over 820 million people who are chronically hungry and 90 million children under 5 who are severely underweight. As one of it’s sustainable development goals the UN has committed to ending world hunger by 2030, but what is it going to take to get there and meet this admirable and essential yet challenging goal?
Over the next 30 years the global population is expected to grow to 10 billion and with progress as is, come 2030 there will still be approximately 600 million people undernourished globally, somewhat far off 0. To close this gap over the next 10 years governments and NGOs will need to overcome a large set of varying challenges including:
- A rapidly increasing world population
- Increased competition for natural resources
- Climate change
- Plateauing agricultural productivity
- Increased conflicts, crises and natural disasters
- Persistent poverty, inequality and food insecurity
- Persisting food losses and waste
The Potential of Tech
Whilst this has been all going on, the last decade has seen an emergence in new technologies that are disrupting many industries with new developments in AI, the internet of things (IoT) , big data and blockchain starting to redefine what is possible and reap their benefits on the global population. In the agricultural sector we have also seen significant developments in biotechnologies starting to enable gene-editing of crops to improve yield and protect against disease as well as making urban farming possible.
Harnessing and developing these technologies in the food and agriculture sectors could give a much needed edge in the fight against global hunger over the next decade as we work towards feeding more people than ever with the same natural resources we have always had. Unfortunately, a study by the World Economic Forum and McKinsey indicated that these sectors have been slower to invest and adopt in new technologies, with an investment of $14 billion across 1,000 start-ups since 2010 – this may sound like a lot but when compared to the $145 billion invested in 18,000 start-ups in the healthcare industry over the same period it pales in comparison.
The reality of the world we live in is that the funds available to fight hunger now and for the future are finite. Whilst undoubtedly an extremely difficult decision that no one will want to or should have to be in the position to make – to divert funds from saving the lives of millions dying of starvation now in order to invest in solutions that you hope will save many more millions down the line – there does seem to be a question of whether more focus and investment in new and innovative technologies is needed to give us alternative and potentially more effective solutions that will allow us as a population to achieve what must be a shared desire (beyond a UN development goal) of eradicating hunger from this planet?
It is this question that I will be looking to explore over future posts as I dive more into the detail of different approaches governments and charities in the sector are taking as well as looking into some of the latest start-ups and tech innovations in the field.
Sources:
http://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/471169/icode/
https://ourworldindata.org/hunger-and-undernourishment
https://www.undp.org/content/undp/en/home/sustainable-development-goals/goal-2-zero-hunger.html
Do More. Technology Re-imagined. 
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