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The global food system puts significant pressure on the world’s natural resources and is a major contributor of greenhouse gas emissions. At the same time, a large amount of the food produced by this system is either lost or wasted each year, lowering overall productivity and hurting both producers and consumers. According to a recent blog by IFPRI Director General Shenggen Fan, as much as one billion tons of food never reaches consumers.

The latest Global Weather Hazards Summary from FEWS Net is reporting dry conditions throughout parts of Africa and Central America.

The latest FAO Food Price Index was released this week, rising slightly from February but well below levels in March 2015. Sugar prices and vegetable oil prices rose sharply in March, but this change was offset by declines in dairy prices.

Last year witnessed the culmination of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and the launch of a new global development agenda – the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). According to IFPRI’s 2016 Global Food Policy Report (GFPR) , launched in Washington, DC last week, achieving the ambitious aims of the SDGs – which include eliminating extreme poverty, hunger, and malnutrition while encouraging sustainable growth and conserving the environment by 2030 – will require coordinated action at the global, regional, national, and local community levels.

A country’s food security conditions clearly have implications for the types of policies its leaders will try to enact and for the way that country interacts with international organizations and governing bodies. Much effort has been made to classify countries according to their food and nutrition security status in order to better guide policymaking, but determining such classifications is complicated.