GIEWS Crop Prospects and Food Situation

The world is not on track to achieve the Sustainable Development Goal of zero hunger by 2030, according to the 2020 State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World (SOFI) report, released in mid-July.

The FAO Food Price Index plunged to a 17-month low in May, driven in large part by sustained negative economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. Prices across all sub-indices declined with the exception of sugar prices.

This post originally appeared on IFPRI's Ethiopia Strategy Support Program (ESSP) blog.

The share of households consuming dairy products in Addis Ababa has dropped by 11 percentage points since the COVID-19 crisis, seemingly linked to perceived risks of consuming dairy products. All income groups declined their consumption, except for the richest quintile where the share of consuming households changed little.

This post originally appeared on IFPRI.org.

Food systems are complex and the disruptions caused by COVID-19 are varied. Global analyses of trends in food supply, trade, and prices are useful. However, as Manuel Hernandez, Soonho Kim, Brendan Rice, and Rob Vos emphasize, daily price data in multiple countries and markets are needed to provide information to identify and respond to more specific local and national shocks—and a new Food Price Tracker tool is now available to meet this demand.—John McDermott, series co-editor and Director, CGIAR Research Program on Agriculture for Nutrition and Health (A4NH).

An estimated 135 million people around the world faced acute levels of hunger in 2019, according to the 2020 Global Report on Food Crises, released this week. This number reflects the highest level of acute hunger seen since the report’s inception in 2017.