As we all celebrate and mark World Food Day and the 80th anniversary of the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), food security remains an enduring challenge across the Global South. More than two billion people still face mild to acute malnutrition, with 687 million experiencing hunger and over 1.2 million suffering from critical or severe malnutrition (Gammarano 2025, FAO 2025). These challenges persist despite globally high levels of food production and are compounded by persistently high food inflation and rising prices, undermining progress toward Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 2. Since the agricultural reforms of the 1970s, global food production has consistently outpaced demand. Yet malnutrition remains widespread, and many communities still struggle to secure sufficient access to food.

In rural and subsistence-based settings, vulnerable individuals may not experience outright hunger but often live on nutritionally poor diets dominated by low-cost staples. These foods meet energy needs but fail to sustain healthy lives. Thus, while overall food supply may be adequate, it does not translate into an adequate supply of nutritious food. Ensuring that communities have the right to define their own food systems and be included within these food systems, where those who produce, distribute, and consume food also shape the mechanisms and policies that govern them, remains a global responsibility. Today, the challenge is less about the availability of food than about access to nutritious food, constrained by high costs and inflationary pressures.

The bridge between food security and food sovereignty is also the bridge between developing communities and global food systems. Vulnerable subsistence farmers, with limited access to quality seed and resources to stabilise production in the face of climate change, are particularly exposed to malnutrition. Throughout urban spaces increasing food prices and high levels of food inflation risks excluding vulnerable and marginalised communities from sustainable access to food. This leaves many communities reliant on low-quality staples and imported food across both rural and urban landscapes. Zimbabwe is a case in point, with its heavy dependence on maize as a staple crop often requiring imports from South Africa and Mozambique to meet demand (ZimVAC 2023). Promoting food sovereignty through greater investment in localised production can help offset these vulnerabilities. Yet high food prices and persistently high inflation rates across low-income countries continue to undermine efforts to reduce hunger and promote nutritional sustainability.

This blog aims to highlight persistent global food challenges and explore what is needed to bridge the gap between food security and food sovereignty. By making this discussion accessible, the goal is to encourage reflection on how both global food systems and local community inclusion can ensure food security amongst the most vulnerable communities and to promote local solutions to local problems in addressing food insecurity.

Food Sovereignty and Food Security

Across global debates and discourse on how to address hunger, food security, and food sovereignty have often been positioned as diametrically opposed. Food security has largely been associated with the conditions required to access adequate food supplies, whereas food sovereignty is tied to direct access to food alongside land rights.

These ideas have frequently been used to counterpose one another. However, as global malnutrition has reached its lowest recorded levels, it is important to consider where the commonalities lie in advancing both food security and food sovereignty. Smallholdings account for 84% of the world’s farms and contribute 34% of the global food supply. Moreover, subsistence and smallholder farms often achieve higher yields and return rates (Lowder et al. 2021). From a food security perspective, this would suggest that hunger should be decreasing substantially. Yet these agricultural systems remain highly vulnerable to climate shocks and disruptions. A single poor harvest caused by pests, drought, flooding, or other climate-related events can have devastating effects on community health and food availability. This vulnerability is compounded by global incentives to prioritise high-yield, low-quality staples such as maize, rice, and wheat over diverse local produce.

In practice, this means that land use, land coverage, and local traditions are often crowded out by regional and global demands. Within this context, access to healthy and nutritious food becomes paramount. While global hunger levels have improved, the challenge has shifted from food availability to food access. Persistently high levels of food inflation now pose a substantial threat to the livelihoods of local farmers and vulnerable communities. This is largely due to food production being geared toward regional and international markets rather than local needs. Here, food sovereignty plays a critical role by ensuring that communities are included in regional and local supply chains, enabling them to produce sustainable local foods rather than focusing solely on staple crops. In Zimbabwe, for example, the Vulnerability Assessment notes that many smallholder farmers and urban food distributors primarily cultivate and disseminate maize because of its strong market demand. At the same time, some farmers and local food stores have begun diversifying into legumes, sorghum, groundnuts, and root crops to counter the lack of a nutritious diet (ZimVAC 2023).

Across food supply chains, the concepts of food sovereignty and food security are increasingly intertwined. Rising food costs, which stem from market forces and limited market access, drive up prices and make localised supply much harder to ensure. This escalation in cost translates directly to higher rates of malnutrition, especially among women and children. In rural areas, children are particularly vulnerable: poor transport and logistics infrastructure increase food costs, and when climate disasters damage subsistence harvests, malnutrition becomes an overwhelming threat. In urban settings, disruptions in food value chains lead to price hikes that disproportionately affect impoverished neighbourhoods, where inadequate distribution networks and a scarcity of food stores deepen nutritional deprivation.

Evidence for this effect is found in Mozambique, where food price inflation was shown to increase child undernutrition. When prices of basic food products are high, measures like weight-for-height and weight-for-age among children worsen with malnutrition rates reaching as high as 38% (UNICEF 2023).  In Kenya, the shift toward market-oriented agriculture among smallholder farmers had mixed outcomes: while income increased, the reliance on staples over diverse local produce and informal sharing networks reduced diet quality in vulnerable households (Kubitza et al. 2024).

Global Challenges

Globally, the most notable challenge to food security is the persistent rise in food prices and food inflation. This is especially alarming because, while global hunger is decreasing, hunger across Africa appears to be increasing. Median global food price inflation rose from 2.3 per cent in December 2020 to 13.6 per cent in early 2023, but climbed even higher in low-income countries, peaking at 30 per cent in May 2023 (FAO 2025, Gammarano 2025). Across the African continent, the number of people experiencing malnutrition increased from 296.2 million in 2023 to 306.5 million in 2024, indicating a reversal in progress toward food sustainability and security (FAO 2025). What makes this trend more concerning is its disproportionate impact on African countries, with the ten lowest-income nations experiencing the highest levels of food inflation.

Despite rising global food prices, the number of people unable to afford a healthy diet declined from 2.76 billion in 2019 to 2.60 billion in 2024 (Gammarano 2025). However, this improvement was uneven. In low-income countries, where the cost of a healthy diet rose more steeply than in higher-income countries, the number of people unable to afford a healthy diet increased from 464 million in 2019 to 545 million in 2024 (FAO 2025, Gammarano 2025). Furthermore, as highlighted in the FAO’s State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World report, persistently high levels of food inflation continue to prevent low-income countries and communities from diversifying their food sources and crops, contributing to worsening malnutrition. This is particularly devastating for staple crops, with the report noting stubbornly high prices for maize and rice, which are widely consumed across the Global South. To promote sustainable and equitable access to food, the problem of disproportionate inflation must be addressed as part of efforts to strengthen global food systems. While food aid remains essential for crisis-affected communities, the underlying drivers of hunger and malnutrition linked to inflation cannot be ignored, and targeted global interventions are necessary to preserve both local and international food systems while limiting inflationary pressures.

Going forward

As we celebrate World Food Day, it is key to question the current global food systems and how they can be strengthened to promote sustainable, nutritious, and adequate food security for the most vulnerable communities. The challenges outlined above show that while food production is sufficient at a global level, access to affordable and nutritious food remains deeply unequal. Rising food prices, climate shocks, and market incentives that prioritise staple monocrops over diverse local produce continue to undermine nutrition and resilience. Going forward, the task is not only to expand food supply, but to transform how food systems operate, ensuring that they are inclusive, community-driven, and capable of addressing both hunger and malnutrition.

The integration of food security and food sovereignty provides a pathway to bridge this gap. By upholding the principles of food security, global interventions can ensure that everyone has equitable access to affordable, nutritious food. At the same time, promoting food sovereignty enables local communities to shape their food systems in ways that reflect their traditions, production methods, and nutritional needs. This dual approach is essential to balance global markets with local resilience, and to empower smallholder farmers who play a critical role in global supply but remain most vulnerable to climate and economic disruptions.

Ultimately, building stronger food systems requires a shift toward sustainability, inclusivity, and resilience. This means tackling disproportionate food inflation, investing in diversified local production, and ensuring that the voices of vulnerable communities are central in shaping agricultural and nutrition policy. By promoting both food security and food sovereignty, the global community can work towards a future where all people, not just the wealthiest or most urbanised, have access to food that is nutritious, affordable, healthy and sustainable. On this World Food Day, that is both the challenge and the opportunity: to move beyond calories alone, and to build food systems that truly nourish lives while safeguarding the needs of the most marginalised.

References

FAO, IFAD, UNICEF, WFP, and WHO. 2025. The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2025: Addressing High Food Price Inflation for Food Security and Nutrition. Rome. https://doi.org/10.4060/cd6008en.

World Health Organization (WHO). 2025. Global Hunger Declines, but Rises in Africa and Western Asia: UN Report. 28 July. https://www.who.int/news/item/28-07-2025-global-hunger-declines-but-rises-in-africa-and-western-asia-un-report.

Gammarano, Rosina. 2025. Subsistence Foodstuff Producers: The Importance of Making Their Work Visible. ILOSTAT, 6 June. https://ilostat.ilo.org/subsistence-foodstuff-producers-the-importance-of-making-their-work-visible/.

Zimbabwe Vulnerability Assessment Committee (ZimVAC). 2023. 2023 Urban Livelihoods Assessment Report. Food and Nutrition Council, Zimbabwe. https://www.fnc.org.zw/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/ZimVAC-2023-Urban-Livelihoods-Assessment-Report.pdf.

Kubitza, Christoph, Stefan Hackfort, Amos Opiyo, et al. 2024. “The Effects of Market-Oriented Farming on Living Standards, Nutrition, and Informal Sharing Arrangements of Smallholder Farmers: The Case of African Indigenous Vegetables in Kenya.” Food Security 16: 1363–1379. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12571-024-01480-x.

UNICEF Mozambique. 2023. Results Summary 2023. https://www.unicef.org/mozambique/media/6796/file/UNICEF%20Mozambique%20Results%20Summary%202023.pdf.

Lowder, Sarah K., Marco V. Sánchez, and Raffaele Bertini. 2021. “Which Farms Feed the World and Has Farmland Become More Concentrated?” World Development 142: 105455. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2020.105455.