What's New

The Food Security Portal E-learning Platform has launched its newest course, Partial Equilibrium Models. The course provides an introduction to these powerful models and how to use them to forecast the impact of economic shocks and policies on national and global economic environments.

Alarming levels of hunger and food insecurity are on the rise across the globe. According to the September 2021 mid-year update to the 2021 Global Report on Food Crises (GRFC), an estimated 161 million people in 42 countries/territories have faced Crisis-level (IPC/CH Phase 3) food insecurity or higher. This number is up from the estimated 155 million acutely food-insecure people reported by the GRFC for 2020.

Increasing urbanization plays a major role in shifting patterns of food supply and demand and thus in transforming food systems. These transformations carry significant implications for the livelihoods of rural populations, presenting both challenges and opportunities. A new paper published in Food Security examines some of these impacts in Africa south of the Sahara (SSA) and South Asia, as well as the enabling environments needed to help rural communities benefit from the changes.

The FAO Food Price Index continued to rise in September, driven by increasing cereal and vegetable oil prices. The Index was up 1.2 percent from August 2021 and 32.8 percent from September 2020.

The CGIAR COVID-19 Hub has released updated policy notes regarding the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on global and regional food systems. This latest series of updates covers several FSP priority countries, including Ethiopia, Nigeria, Malawi, and Bangladesh.