Louis Arminio

English 101

Professor Ferrara

April 5, 2022

Ending World Hunger

Around the world, more than enough food is produced to feed the global population—but as

many as 811 million people still go hunger. After steadily declining for a decade, world hunger is

on the rise, affecting 9.9 percent of people globally. From 2019 to 2020, the number of

undernourished people grew by as many as 161 million, a crisis driven largely by conflict,

climate change, and the COVID-19 pandemic.

Before this increase in recent years, the world had been making significant progress in reducing

hunger. In fact, in 2000, world leaders joined the United Nations and civil society in committing

to meet eight Millennium Development Goals by 2015: the first of which was “to eradicate

extreme poverty and hunger.”

Despite the pandemic, the global food supply has remained relatively strong, with the

production of major staples such as rice and wheat staying above average in 2020. But

lockdowns and other containment measures have driven up unemployment, disrupted food

supply chains, and cut off the flow of remittances around the globe. Hundreds of millions of

people have lost their jobs because of the pandemic, making food—particularly nutritious

food—unaffordable for many even where it is available. Ultimately, the health crisis could
force up to 132 million more people globally to become undernourished this year, UN

experts say, due to inequalities in food access.