Data

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.

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.

After declining in June and July, the FAO Food Price Index rose quickly again in August and reached 32.9 percent higher than August 2020 levels. The increase was driven by rising cereal and vegetable oil prices, as well as by rises in sugar prices.

Our window of opportunity for achieving SDG 2 — eradicating hunger and malnutrition and ensuring access to safe, nutritious, and sufficient food for all by 2030 — is closing rapidly. However, far from moving closer to that goal, the world has seen a resurgence of hunger and food insecurity.

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused unprecedented disruptions of social interactions, affecting both the supply and demand for food. These disruptions to jobs, income and food supply magnified and exacerbated existing inequalities. While the emerging urban middle class suffered greater income losses, the poor and vulnerable in rural and urban areas experienced the worst livelihood impacts. Many social programs, including cash transfers, nutrition and education were interrupted, delayed, or halted, setting back decades of process in reducing poverty, hunger, malnutrition and illiteracy.