Kopi Time E082 - Carin Smaller on Global Food Security

Kopi Time podcast with Taimur Baig

Carin Smaller, Executive Director of the Shamba Centre for Food & Climate, joins Kopi Time to talk about global food security. As per the United Nations, after three decades of steady decline, the number of people who suffer from hunger began to increase again in 2015. Current estimates show that nearly 690 million people are hungry, or 8.9 percent of the world population. Compounding this trend is the high frequency incidences of natural disasters, pandemics, and wars that are pushing millions more into hunger. If recent trends continue, the number of people affected by hunger would surpass 840 million by 2030.

Ms Smaller begins by going over the state of global food security for the remainder of this year and 2023, both with respect to the price and availability. She then sheds light on the various dimensions of structural food security, touching on income inequality, climate change, distributional bottlenecks, and insufficient global coordination. But there is some glimmer of hope, with initiatives like Ceres 2030 estimating the funds and work required to end global hunger by the end of this decade, galvanizing official donors, private philanthropies, and multilateral organisations. We go over promising technologies, recent developments in global trade rules, and state of resource mobilisation that reflect some degree of resolve to deal with this crisis.

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