Food insecurity could soon be on everyone's plate. Here's what we need to do

As the impacts of COVID-19 have expanded from immediate healthcare needs to our societies and economies, the resiliency and inefficiencies of global, regional and local food systems have the potential to become another major consequence of the pandemic.

The fact that the crisis arrived on the back of a series of good harvests globally has meant that this effect is not as serious as it could have been, and as a result has been limited to more localised issues – such as a shortage of food staples in developed markets, farmers dumping large amounts of produce they have been unable to sell from milk to avocados, disruptions associated with meat processing plants, and localised increases in food pricing.

There is, however, no room for complacency. It is predicted that an additional 135 million people could face acute food insecurity by the end of the year. Frailties in the production and supply of food could be further exacerbated by the potential for weather-related shocks, locust infestations in a number of regions, millions of jobs being impacted across the agricultural value chain, resultant food price spikes and financial losses impacting on hundreds of thousands of small and medium-sized local organizations that are critical to the integrity of food supply chains across the world.

Furthermore, the ongoing impact of COVID-19 on peoples' livelihoods across all sectors will have an increasingly debilitating effect on their ability to buy healthy and affordable food. This will be particularly felt in underserved communities, where households can spend up to 80% of their income on food, or where hundreds of millions are affected by the school closures that disrupt vital school feeding programmes, which can be a significant – and sometimes the only – source of nutrition for young children. In short, this means the reality of food and nutrition insecurity around the world could soon be on everyone’s plate.

It is critical, therefore, that the private sector, governments, international organizations and civil society come together to address the current and emerging health, economic, environmental and societal crises as they relate to the building of more resilient, healthy, sustainable and equitable food systems. In that respect, three sets of urgent actions are needed.

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the fragility of our food systems, and the extent of our reliance on them to deliver the nutrition we need. With those fragilities now clearly on everyone’s plate, how we come together to build food systems that are inclusive, sustainable, healthy and resilient to a range of shocks is more important than ever. At the World Economic Forum, we are seeing a renewed commitment to multistakeholder action to solve this challenge – not just for the duration of the pandemic, but for the longer-term transition of food systems that is to come.