The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) is a specialized agency of the United Nations that leads international efforts to defeat hunger and improve nutrition and food security. Its Latin motto, fiat panis, translates to "let there be bread". It was founded on 16 October 1945.
Food security is the state of having reliable access to a sufficient quantity of affordable, nutritious food. The availability of food for people of any class and state, gender or religion is another element of food security. Similarly, household food security is considered to exist when all the members of a family, at all times, have access to enough food for an active, healthy life. Individuals who are food-secure do not live in hunger or fear of starvation. Food security includes resilience to future disruptions of food supply. Such a disruption could occur due to various risk factors such as droughts and floods, shipping disruptions, fuel shortages, economic instability, and wars. Food insecurity is the opposite of food security: a state where there is only limited or uncertain availability of suitable food.
Malnutrition occurs when an organism gets too few or too many nutrients, resulting in health problems. Specifically, it is a deficiency, excess, or imbalance of energy, protein and other nutrients which adversely affects the body's tissues and form.
The World Food Prize is an international award recognizing the achievements of individuals who have advanced human development by improving the quality, quantity, or availability of food in the world. Conceived by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Norman Borlaug and established in 1986 through the support of General Foods, the prize is envisioned and promoted as the Nobel or the highest honors in the field of food and agriculture. It is now administered by the World Food Prize Foundation with support from numerous sponsors. Since 1987, the prize has been awarded annually to recognize contributions in any field involved in the world food supply, such as animal science, aquaculture, soil science, water conservation, nutrition, health, plant science, seed science, plant pathology, crop protection, food technology, food safety, policy, research, infrastructure, emergency relief, and poverty alleviation and hunger.
Sir David Nunes Nabarro is a British Special Envoy on Covid-19 for the World Health Organization. He has made his career in the international civil service, working for either the Secretary-General of the United Nations or the Director-General of the World Health Organization. Since February 2020, he has helped the DGWHO deal with the COVID-19 pandemic.
The International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) is an international research center focused on agriculture and food systems that provides research-based policy solutions to reduce poverty and end hunger and malnutrition throughout low- and middle-income countries in environmentally sustainable ways. For nearly 50 years, IFPRI has worked with policymakers, academics, nongovernmental organizations, the private sector, development practitioners, and others to carry out research, capacity strengthening, and policy communications on food systems, economic development, and poverty reduction.
The Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN) is a non-profit foundation based in Geneva, Switzerland. GAIN was developed during the UN 2002 Special Session of the General Assembly on Children. GAIN’s activities include improving the consumption of nutritious and safe foods for all. The foundation is supported by over 30 donors and works closely with international organisations and United Nations agencies. It has a 20-year history of food system programmes with a focus on adolescent and child nutrition, food system research, fortification, small and medium enterprise assistance, biofortification of crops, and reducing post-harvest losses.
The Institute of Development Studies (IDS) is a research and learning organisation affiliated with the University of Sussex in Brighton, England, and based on its campus in Falmer, East Sussex. It delivers research and teaching in the area of development studies.
Tom Arnold is an Irish agricultural economist and public policy advisor who has worked for the European Commission, the Irish Department of Agriculture and Food and Concern Worldwide. He has served on governmental and non-governmental bodies at Irish, European and international level, with a particular focus on sustainable food systems and nutrition.
Despite India's 50% increase in GDP since 2013, more than one third of the world's malnourished children live in India. Among these, half of the children under three years old are underweight.
Sir Arthur "Richard" Jolly, is a leading development economist who was named one of the fifty key thinkers globally in this field of economics.
Patrick Webb serves as Chief Nutritionist for the United States Agency for International Development USAID. He was Dean for Academic Affairs at Tufts University's Friedman School of Nutrition from 2005 to 2014. In 2024, he was awarded the prestigious 'Jean-Pierre Habicht Lifetime Achievements in Global Nutrition Research' Award by the American Society for Nutrition. He was also listed among the top 2% of highly-cited scientists across all disciplines globally.
Lindiwe Sibanda Majele (born 1963) is a Zimbabwean professor, scientist, policy advocate and influencer on food systems. She currently serves as director and chair of the ARUA Centre of Excellence in Sustainable Food Systems (ARUA-SFS) at the University of Pretoria in Pretoria, South Africa as well as founder and managing director of Linds Agricultural Services Pvt Ltd. in Harare, Zimbabwe. She is currently a board member of Nestlé where she is also a member of the Sustainability Committee.
Howarth E. "Howdy" Bouis, is an American economist whose work has focused on agriculture, nutrition outcomes, and reducing micronutrient malnutrition, also known as hidden hunger. He is the founder and former director of HarvestPlus, a global non-profit agricultural research program. Bouis was awarded the World Food Prize in 2016 for his pioneering work on biofortification.
John Hoddinott, is a Canadian economist and the Howard Edward Babcock Professor of Food, Nutrition and Public Policy at Cornell University. In 2002–2015, Hoddinott was a Deputy Division Director at the International Food Policy Research Institute. Since 1997, he has been a research associate at the Centre for the Study of African Economies at the University of Oxford. Hoddinott received his DPhil in 1989 from Oxford University.
Klaus von Grebmer, descendant of an old Austrian family Grebmer_zu_Wolfsthurn, is a Swiss-German economist and one of the pioneers of the Global Hunger Index. He is currently a Research Fellow Emeritus and Strategic Adviser at the International Food Policy Research Institute since 2012. Klaus von Grebmer joined the International Food Policy Research Institute as Director of the Communications Division in 1999. During 2013 von Grebmer served as acting director for Communications and Marketing at WorldFish.
Sustainable Development Goal 2 aims to achieve "zero hunger". It is one of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals established by the United Nations in 2015. The official wording is: "End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture". SDG 2 highlights the "complex inter-linkages between food security, nutrition, rural transformation and sustainable agriculture". According to the United Nations, there were up to 757 million people facing hunger in 2023 – one out of 11 people in the world, which accounts for slightly less than 10 percent of the world population. One in every nine people goes to bed hungry each night, including 20 million people currently at risk of famine in South Sudan, Somalia, Yemen and Nigeria.
Jessica Fanzo is an American scientist. She is a Professor of Climate and Director of the Food for Humanity Initiative at the Columbia Climate School. Prior to joining Columbia in July 2023, she was the Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Global Food and Agriculture Policy and Ethics at the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics, the Bloomberg School of Public Health, and the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies. She was the first laureate of the Carasso Foundation’s Sustainable Diets Prize in 2012 for her research on sustainable food and diets for long-term human health. In 2024, Fanzo was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences.
William Alan Masters is an American economist, teaching and conducting research on agricultural economics and food policy in the Friedman School of Nutrition at Tufts University, where he also has a secondary appointment in the Department of Economics.
Joachim von Braun is a German agricultural scientist and currently director of a department of the Center for Development Research at the University of Bonn and President of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences.
