What's New

The number of people facing hunger around the world has increased by more than 122 million from 2019, according to the newly released annual State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World (SOFI) report, , a joint publication by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), UNICEF, World Food Programme, and World Health Organization (WHO).

Protectionist policies such as export restrictions are often used as an immediate response to spiking food prices and other food shocks, such as those posed by the COVID-19 pandemic. These policies are increasingly being recognized as detrimental to long-term global food security and can also have impacts for local food security, particularly for low-income and net food importing countries. However, a lack of real-time data makes it difficult for policymakers to see how these responses are truly impacting food markets within their countries.

Food systems have experienced a multitude of shocks in recent years that threaten food and nutrition security around the world. The Latin America and Caribbean region (LAC), which plays an important role in ensuring the stability of the global food system, has been hit hard by these disruptions. The region has accounted for 30% of deaths during the COVID-19 pandemic, yet makes up only 8% of the global population.

Commodity prices continued to fall in June, according to the FAO Food Price Index, which declined 1.4 percent from its May level. This reflects at 23.4 percent drop from June 2022.

The Uruguay Round of international trade negotiations, which started in 1986 and concluded in 1994, advanced trade liberalization and led to the formation of the World Trade Organization (WTO). The Uruguay Round Agreement on Agriculture (URAA) stands out as a hallmark, since it brought agriculture—until then mostly not covered by international trade disciplines—into a rules-based framework.