Food Crisis & Policy

Alicket Masenda, 52, Sande Village, Malawi cannot buy any food due to rising prices.

Photo: Frederic Courbet/Panos Picures/ActionAid

Households around the developing world spend on average 70 percent of their income on food. Any increase in food price is therefore likely to have a disproportionate effect on the poor and hungry.

The last food crisis in 2007/8 was devastating for millions of poor people and reversed years of development gains, raising the number of hungry people to a record 1.02 billion in 2009.

Global food prices reached the highest level on record in March 2011, surpassing levels seen at the height of the 2007/8 food crisis and the highest since the inception of FAO’s food-price index in January 1990.

Yet, the international community has done little to fix a broken global food system which – despite anticipating the third largest global harvest on record this year – allows 925 million people to go to bed hungry and denies them their right to food. What’s worse, another one billion people suffer from 'hidden hunger', in which essential micro-nutrients such as vitamins and minerals are missing from their diet.

In food crisis situation, poor households will try to alter their consumption basket by cutting down on non-staple consumption, which consequently affect the quantity, diversity and safety of diets, and other critical expenditure such as education and healthcare. Women and children who have special nutritional needs are particularly vulnerable, with negative implications for maternal health, and child survival, growth and development.

The price rise on rice and other major food items has over-stretched and incapacitated the men to provide for families. We spend all our incomes on food and have virtually nothing on other domestic expenses like education and health for our children.

– Foday Sowe, farmer and head of a household in Nana Village, The Gambia

To mitigate the negative impacts of soaring global food prices on hunger-vulnerable communities, we are regularly monitoring food price rises and supporting countries to develop proactive responses and strategies.

We are also playing a key role in monitoring and influencing food and agricultural policy at nationa, regional and global level. Some of the global food governance mechanisms we monitor and influence include: