Food production alone is not preventing hunger
The world continues to produce more calories per person year on year, yet localised food shortages persist. That contradiction is at the centre of a call for systemic change across the agri-food supply chain from Elizabeth Robinson of the London School of Economics, writing in The BMJ’s climate issue.
Her argument is that food insecurity cannot be understood only as a question of global output. Access, affordability, transport, markets and the ability to cultivate land all matter. Conflict is identified as the primary driver of many local shortages, while climate change is increasingly adding pressure through crop losses, supply-chain disruption and food-price volatility.
The result is a food system in which aggregate production can rise even as communities face acute hunger. Addressing that gap requires attention to the full path between farms and households, particularly in places affected by violence or extreme weather.
Conflict disrupts every part of food security
Armed conflict can leave farmland abandoned or difficult to cultivate, displace communities and restrict access to markets. It can also make food less affordable. These disruptions have long-term health consequences and can persist after immediate fighting has changed local conditions.
Robinson cites the Food and Agriculture Organization and World Food Programme’s 2026 Global Report on Food Crises, which identifies 13 hotspots where acute food insecurity is expected to worsen. Twelve of those hotspots are affected by armed conflict and violence. The report identifies risks of famine in Sudan, South Sudan, the Gaza Strip and Somalia.
The relationship is also widespread beyond the most visible emergencies. Around 60% to 70% of the world’s most undernourished people live in areas affected by conflict, according to the article, while 85% of people facing hunger are reported to live in conflict-affected countries.
These figures point to a central difficulty for food policy: increasing agricultural capacity may not be enough when people cannot safely grow, buy, transport or sell food. Supply chains are vulnerable at multiple points, from fields and storage facilities to roads, ports and markets.
Climate pressures deepen the strain
Climate change adds a different but overlapping set of risks. Rising temperatures and extreme weather events affect food security through crop losses, disrupted supply chains and volatile prices. The effects can spread beyond the locations that experience an event directly, particularly where countries depend on imported food and agricultural goods.
The article notes that an estimated 123.7 million additional people faced moderate or severe food insecurity in 2023 because of the higher frequency of heat-wave days and drought months compared with the 1981–2010 period. That comparison illustrates how climate conditions can change the food-security outlook even in a world that is producing substantial quantities of calories overall.
Heat and drought can reduce harvests, but their impact does not stop at the farm gate. They can also interrupt processing and distribution, create shortages in particular markets and push up prices. For lower-income households, price shocks can quickly become an access crisis.
Food insecurity and instability can reinforce one another
Robinson describes evidence of a vicious cycle between hunger and conflict. Food insecurity can contribute to violence, instability and political unrest; conflict then worsens food insecurity by damaging production, access and markets.
That feedback loop makes narrow interventions less likely to hold. A programme that focuses only on emergency food provision may be essential in the short term, but it does not by itself restore farms, market access, affordability or resilient logistics. Likewise, measures aimed only at output may not reach people if violence blocks transport or trade.
The global effects can be considerable. Major conflicts, including Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the U.S.–Iran war, have food-security ramifications for countries dependent on food and agricultural imports from conflict-affected places. In an interconnected system, a disruption in one producer or transit route can influence availability and prices elsewhere.
Why system-wide action is the focus
The article calls for changes across the agri-food supply chain because the causes of food insecurity are distributed across that chain. Production remains important, but so do storage, transport, market access, affordability and the ability of communities to recover from shocks.
Conflict and climate change can strike different links in different ways. In one setting, people may be displaced from productive land. In another, drought may reduce harvests and raise prices. Elsewhere, insecurity may prevent goods from reaching markets despite adequate production. A system-wide approach recognises that these failures can occur together.
The framing also challenges the assumption that a growing global calorie supply automatically ensures food security. Food must be accessible where it is needed, at a price households can afford, through supply chains capable of functioning under environmental and political stress.
A food-security agenda shaped by resilience
The evidence outlined in the BMJ article places resilience at the heart of food policy. That means preparing for climate hazards that can damage crops and disrupt distribution, while also accounting for the far-reaching consequences of conflict.
It also means treating food insecurity as more than a production problem. Policies must account for local conditions, trade dependencies, price volatility and the risks faced by people living in conflict-affected areas. These are not secondary considerations; they help determine whether food available somewhere in the system reaches families facing hunger.
As conflict persists in many food-crisis hotspots and climate pressures increase, the case for broad supply-chain reform becomes more urgent. The challenge is not only to produce food, but to build systems capable of delivering it reliably and affordably when disruption is most severe.
This article is based on reporting by Phys.org. Read the original article.
Originally published on phys.org
