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Effective Solutions for Global Food Security

In 2025, an estimated 645 million people faced hunger, while around 2.1 billion people experienced moderate or severe food insecurity, according to the latest United Nations estimates and the FAO’s State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2026 report. In addition, about 2.7 billion people could not afford a healthy diet. Although global hunger and food insecurity have declined for several consecutive years, progress remains uneven and too slow to achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goal of Zero Hunger by 2030.

Irregular access to safe and healthy food is a vital issue for governments and international institutions alike, and food security is one of the primary challenges that the international community set out to address in the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

SDG goal number 2, “Zero Hunger”, sets out to create a world free of hunger by 2030, which directly relates to improving food security. Its targets include ending all forms of malnutrition, increasing agricultural productivity, and ensuring sustainable food production systems.

Ensuring food security for all has long been a priority on the agendas of intergovernmental institutions and non-governmental organizations such as the World Bank. Food security involves three main dimensions that need to be stable over time: physical availability of food, economic and physical access to food, and food utilization. A fourth dimension, stability, is also widely recognized in the FAO framework, referring to the need for the other dimensions to remain secure over time. Additionally, several challenges limit efforts towards food security, including climate change and environmental shocks, demographic changes, conflicts and violence, economic shocks, and inadequate infrastructure.

Understanding these global food security challenges is essential when evaluating solutions. There is no single answer to the question of how to solve food security: effective approaches need to combine resilient agricultural systems, access to nutritious diets, social protection, market stability, climate adaptation, reliable data, and early-warning capabilities.

This article defines food insecurity, explores key challenges in the context of climate change, and provides statistics on the topic. It explores the various causes of food insecurity before discussing various technological and political solutions. Building upon various case studies, we will present state-of-the-art climate risk analytics as a robust tool to support efforts towards more climate-resilient food systems.

What is Food Insecurity?

The definition of food insecurity, as provided by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), is the lack of access to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food for normal growth and development and an active, healthy life. Food insecurity translates into a persistent concern about access to sufficient, affordable food at all times.

Food security and food insecurity should not be treated as interchangeable terms. Food security vs. food insecurity is fundamentally a question of whether people consistently have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and preferences. Food insecurity describes a lack of secure access to food and can range from moderate uncertainty about food access to severe conditions that affect people’s ability to obtain food. The World Bank’s definition of food security similarly emphasizes physical and economic access to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food at all times.

In more detail, food insecurity involves several aspects: access to food in general, the nutritive value of different types of food, health and development, and the reliability of access to food. Food insecurity can be moderate or acute, with the distinction lying in the level of urgency it creates for people. Acute food insecurity threatens people’s lives or livelihoods. Closely related to the notion of food insecurity is hunger, which concerns the distress associated with a chronic lack of sufficient and nutritious food, interconnected with issues of poverty, inequality, conflict, weak government systems, and climate change.

According to the latest 2026 edition of the FAO-led State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World, an estimated 645 million people faced hunger in 2025, equivalent to 7.8% of the global population. Meanwhile, approximately 2.1 billion people experienced moderate or severe food insecurity. These figures show that global conditions have improved in recent years, but the world remains far from achieving Zero Hunger by 2030.

The situation also varies significantly between regions. In 2025, 56.6% of Africa’s population experienced moderate or severe food insecurity, compared with 20.3% in Asia and 22.9% in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Acute food insecurity presents an additional and more urgent challenge. The 2026 Global Report on Food Crises confirms that acute food insecurity remained widespread across countries and territories experiencing food crises in 2025. For the first time in the report’s 10-year history, two famines were confirmed in parts of the Gaza Strip and Sudan during the same year, while famine risk persisted in several locations in 2026.

These figures demonstrate why solutions to food insecurity globally need to address both immediate humanitarian needs and the structural conditions that make food systems vulnerable to economic, environmental, and geopolitical shocks.

Causes of Food Insecurity

Although levels of food security have generally been increasing since the end of the 20th century and the start of the 21st century, they remain volatile and vary from year to year, notably due to climate-related and geopolitical events. The causes of food insecurity are numerous and can be summarized into three broad categories: extreme weather, conflict and insecurity, and economic shocks.

Climate and weather extremes can restrict communities’ access to sufficient and affordable food, for example, when heavy precipitation, flooding, or droughts disrupt agricultural productivity, damage food stocks, or disrupt food supply chains. A recent study in the journal Climate Risk Management shows that “future climate change is projected to exacerbate the magnitude and likelihood of adverse consequences to food security and nutrition”. Climate change can significantly increase the number of people at risk of food insecurity by reducing agricultural productivity, lowering incomes, compromising food safety, and altering crop yields and quality. The climate change impact on food security can occur through multiple channels, including changes in crop yields, livestock productivity, water availability, food prices, and the reliability of transport and supply networks.

Climate change can significantly increase the number of people at risk of food insecurity by reducing agricultural productivity, lowering incomes, compromising food safety, and altering crop yields and quality. This makes climate change and food security closely connected policy and risk-management issues, particularly for agricultural regions and businesses dependent on geographically concentrated production. The World Bank similarly identifies climate-smart agriculture as an approach that can improve productivity, resilience and food security while addressing climate-related risks.

Apart from hunger and malnutrition, conflicts and instability are also considerably impacted by climate change and contribute to food insecurity. Food insecurity and conflict can reinforce one another: climate and economic shocks may increase vulnerability and social pressures, while armed conflict can disrupt agricultural production, markets, infrastructure, trade, and humanitarian access. For example, a Kyung Hee University study in South Korea found that high temperatures during corn-growing seasons in sub-Saharan Africa reduced yields and led to an increase in civil conflict. Moreover, the severe drought that hit the Fertile Crescent between 2006 and 2010 played a direct role in escalating the conflict that led to the Syrian civil war, which began in March 2011. Moreover, research has examined how the severe drought that affected the Fertile Crescent between 2006 and 2010 may have contributed to socioeconomic pressures and instability preceding the Syrian civil war; however, climate stress should not be treated as a single or direct cause of the conflict. Conversely, armed conflict, war, and civil unrest often disrupt food production, distribution, and access.

Finally, economic shocks can significantly threaten food security, particularly in poorer or underdeveloped countries. These shocks, such as those triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic, can disrupt food production and distribution, while also driving up food prices. More recently, persistent food-price inflation has continued to undermine purchasing power and access to healthy diets, particularly for low-income households and other vulnerable populations. The latest FAO analysis identifies the high cost of healthy diets as an important barrier to food security and nutrition. These economic challenges, compounded by socioeconomic disparities and the increasing impacts of climate change, are key drivers of food insecurity worldwide.

Effective Food Security Solutions

Because the origins of food insecurity are often multifaceted, complex, and region-specific, there is no one-size-fits-all solution to food insecurity. However, there are several technological, financial, and political solutions developed around the world. The most effective ways to improve food security, therefore, combine interventions rather than rely on a single technology or policy. These include resilient agricultural practices, improved market access, social protection, infrastructure investment, improved nutrition programs, climate adaptation, and reliable early-warning systems.

Advanced forecasting and analytics solutions can provide more precise yield predictions and extreme-weather alerts using weather and climate modeling, seasonal forecasting, remote-sensing data, and historical yield data. These capabilities can also help organizations identify climate risk in food supply chains by assessing how physical climate hazards could affect production locations, assets, logistics, and sourcing networks.

The Correntics climate analytics platform is a good example of a tool that can help businesses in the agricultural and food sectors to conduct crop and asset-specific risk analysis and dynamic modeling of supply chain shocks. Correntics is currently working together with Danish weather technology company Cordulus, the Danish Technological Institute, and the EClim Group at the University of Zurich to provide a solution in next-generation risk analytics capabilities for the agri-food sector, which will empower organizations to increase preparedness and resilience in the face of climate change and to reduce the risk of food insecurity.

The CLIMARISC project combines hyperlocal weather observations and forecasts, statistical models, crop vulnerability data, and climate-risk analytics to quantify the potential impacts of extreme weather on crops and agri-food supply chains. This provides a concrete example of how climate analytics can support resilience and decision-making rather than relying solely on broad climate projections.

This type of climate risk management in agriculture can support organizations in moving from reactive responses towards forward-looking risk assessment. By combining climate information with asset, crop, and supply-chain data, climate analytics can help decision-makers understand where physical risks may materialize and assess potential impacts under different conditions.

Other technological and digital advancements include automated, precise agriculture methods to treat fields, smart irrigation systems, vertical farming systems, but also non-agricultural solutions such as upcycling food waste, developing plant-based and cellular protein, and digitizing supply chains. For instance, the Swiss Federal Office for Agriculture established Agroscope, a research institute that develops innovative smart farming solutions and sustainable agricultural practices. The institute actively disseminates research findings and technology expertise to contribute to enhancing food security.

Together, these technologies form part of broader strategies to improve food security. However, technology alone cannot resolve food insecurity. Its effectiveness depends on affordability, infrastructure, access to finance, local conditions, governance and the ability of farmers, businesses and public institutions to use reliable information in decision-making.

Global Food Security Solutions

Governments and international organizations such as multilateral development banks or development finance institutions have long been dedicated to finding global food security solutions. The World Food Programme (WFP) plays a crucial role in advancing these goals by providing food assistance, supporting sustainable agriculture, and addressing the root causes of hunger globally. Other key players such as the World Bank, the UN FAO, or the International Fund for Agricultural Development contribute to providing global food security solutions, such as fast-tracking financing for severely food-insecure regions, boosting productivity, improving nutrition, strengthening food systems, or developing early-warning systems like the FEWS NET acute food insecurity early-warning system. There is a clear global commitment to addressing food insecurity through various relief programs, industry development schemes, or resilience-building strategies.

FEWS NET uses scenario-based analysis and forecasting to provide decision-makers with information ahead of potential humanitarian crises, helping them budget, plan, and respond to expected changes in food security conditions. There is a clear global commitment to addressing food insecurity through various relief programs, industry development schemes, or resilience-building strategies.

Taken together, these initiatives represent important global food security solutions. They range from emergency assistance and social protection to agricultural investment, climate adaptation, market stabilization, data infrastructure, and early-warning systems.

However, several challenges remain on the road to improved food security worldwide. For instance, the availability, accessibility, and adequacy of financing flows data is poor, making it difficult to accurately assess the status of financing efforts towards global food security solutions. The World Food Security Outlook estimates that the cost of providing a basic social safety net covering 25% of daily caloric needs for the acutely food-insecure from now until 2030 will be around $90 billion.

The latest global evidence also shows why sustainable solutions for food security need to combine short-term protection with long-term resilience. The 2026 UN SDG assessment emphasizes resilient, climate-smart food systems alongside social protection, nutrition programs, productivity measures, and climate adaptation.

Going Forward: Key Insights and Challenges

Food insecurity is an urgent and vital issue that affects billions of people worldwide. Although global hunger and moderate or severe food insecurity declined in 2025, the latest data show that progress remains insufficient to achieve Zero Hunger by 2030. Access to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food can be limited by extreme weather events and the effects of climate change, by regional conflict and unrest, and by economic shocks. In light of these challenges, technological solutions, effective policies, and international collaboration need to be further accelerated to address the increasing climate and societal risks that amplify food insecurity.

From advanced climate analytics to vertical farming, people, communities, and institutions around the world are working for greater food security. There remain important challenges, though, including poor data in agricultural and food management processes, poor transparency in financing flows for global food security solutions, population growth and urbanization, and the surge of conflicts around the world.

The path forward requires a combination of approaches. Improving food security means strengthening agricultural resilience, protecting vulnerable populations from shocks, improving the affordability of healthy diets, investing in climate adaptation, and using better data to anticipate risks before they become crises. In this context, understanding the impact of climate change on food security and managing climate risk in food supply chains can be an important part of building more resilient food systems.

Correntics provides data-driven climate analytics tools and insights that can help organizations assess and manage the physical impacts of climate change on food systems. By leveraging advanced data analytics, Correntics supports informed decision-making for more resilient agricultural practices and more forward-looking risk management. For organizations seeking practical solutions to food security, climate-risk analytics can complement broader agricultural, financial, and policy measures by helping to identify potential vulnerabilities and prioritize resilience actions. Reach out to discuss and work together on how to increase food security in an ever-evolving climate!