Goal 2: Zero Hunger

End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture

In some parts of the world a lot of people still go hungry, especially in South Asia, South-East Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, where almost one person in four suffers hunger or malnutrition. The root causes are often armed hostilities and extreme natural events, but structural poverty also plays a part.

In spite of all the progress made over recent years, we have still not managed to end hunger everywhere in the world. Today, almost 800 million people will go hungry worldwide. Because the world’s population is continuing to grow, especially in developing countries, experts forecast that agriculture will have to produce 60 per cent more food by 2050 in order to feed the world.

What must be done?

Hunger and malnutrition around the world cannot be eradicated with food aid alone. It is paramount that food be produced more effectively, more efficiently and more sustainably and that everybody has access to this food. To achieve this, small farmers for instance should receive support to help them increase yields, so that they can feed themselves and supply others with food. Research and technologies are needed that poor countries too can access. And the quality of soil, water and other natural resources must be preserved in the long term, partly also to better protect agriculture from the impact of extreme weather events.

Facts and figures

Since the year 2000 global hunger has dropped by 27 per cent.
One quarter of all children under the age of five are undernourished or suffer growth disorders. Every day about 8,500 children die as a result of hunger and malnutrition, which are responsible for one in two child deaths worldwide.
75 per cent of all those who go hungry live in rural areas. Most small farmers are women who grow the food their families eat.

Targets

Sufficient food for all Healthy nutrition Strengthen small-scale farmers Sustainable food production Biodiversity of cultivated plants and livestock Enhance agricultural productivity Open agricultural markets Stable food prices

2.1 Sufficient food for all

By 2030, end hunger and ensure access by all people, in particular the poor and people in vulnerable situations, including infants, to safe, nutritious and sufficient food all year round

2.2 Healthy nutrition

By 2030, end all forms of malnutrition, including achieving, by 2025, the internationally agreed targets on stunting and wasting in children under 5 years of age, and address the nutritional needs of adolescent girls, pregnant and lactating women and older persons

2.3 Strengthen small-scale farmers

By 2030, double the agricultural productivity and incomes of small-scale food producers, in particular women, indigenous peoples, family farmers, pastoralists and fishers, including through secure and equal access to land, other productive resources and inputs, knowledge, financial services, markets and opportunities for value addition and non-farm employment

2.4 Sustainable food production

By 2030, ensure sustainable food production systems and implement resilient agricultural practices that increase productivity and production, that help maintain ecosystems, that strengthen capacity for adaptation to climate change, extreme weather, drought, flooding and other disasters and that progressively improve land and soil quality

2.5 Biodiversity of cultivated plants and livestock

By 2020, maintain the genetic diversity of seeds, cultivated plants and farmed and domesticated animals and their related wild species, including through soundly managed and diversified seed and plant banks at the national, regional and international levels, and promote access to and fair and equitable sharing of benefits arising from the utilization of genetic resources and associated traditional knowledge, as internationally agreed

2.a Enhance agricultural productivity

Increase investment, including through enhanced international cooperation, in rural infrastructure, agricultural research and extension services, technology development and plant and livestock gene banks in order to enhance agricultural productive capacity in developing countries, in particular least developed countries

2.b Open agricultural markets

Correct and prevent trade restrictions and distortions in world agricultural markets, including through the parallel elimination of all forms of agricultural export subsidies and all export measures with equivalent effect, in accordance with the mandate of the Doha Development Round

2.c Stable food prices

Adopt measures to ensure the proper functioning of food commodity markets and their derivatives and facilitate timely access to market information, including on food reserves, in order to help limit extreme food price volatility

Dominic MacSorley – Photo (c) Concern Worldwide US — Dominic MacSorley, CEO of the Irish aid and humanitarian agency Concern Worldwide – Photo (c) Concern Worldwide US

“Agenda 2030 provides us with the ambition and commitment to reach zero hunger. We have the technology, knowledge and resources to achieve that vision. What is missing is both the urgency and the political will to turn commitments into action.”

Source: IFPRI

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Ban Ki-moon, UN Secretary General from 2007 to 2016

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