What's New

The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed both the vulnerability and the resilience of food supply chains. Supply chains from farm to retail have been disrupted, primarily by government-imposed lockdowns and other restrictions affecting labor supply, input provisioning, logistics, wholesale, retailing, and food service. Supply chains have also shown a good deal of resilience and innovative capacity to adapt to the major supply and demand shocks they encountered.

The FAO Food Price Index continued to surge in May, rising 4.8 percent from the previous month. Prices are now 38.9 percent higher than May 2020 and the highest seen since September 2011. This twelfth consecutive month of increases also brings the Index just 7.6 percent below the record highs of February 2011.

The FAO Food Price Index continued its 11-month climb in April, rising by 1.7 percent from March 2021. The Index also surged 30.8 percent above its April 2020 levels to reach its highest level seen since May 2014.

The Food Security Portal and the PIM Value Chains Knowledge Portal teams are pleased to announce the awardee for a grant to produce a new e-learning course. Diego Naziri of the International Potato Center (CIP) submitted a proposal for an e-learning course aimed at training facilitators in CIP’s Farmer Business School(FBS) methodology.

The number of people around the world facing severe food insecurity skyrocketed by 20 million in 2020, according to the 2021 Global Report on Food Crises, released today. Acute food insecurity now affects at least 155 million people across 55 countries/territories, with some regions facing famine-level hunger. In light of these soaring numbers, the UN Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) of zero hunger by 2030 seems to have gotten further from reach.