On Sept 15, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) published its annual comprehensive report, The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World: Building Resilience for Peace and Food Security. Since its first publication in 1947, this annual report has been called The State of Food and Agriculture , but this year's title has been expanded to include the word nutrition. Also for the first time, this year's report has a wider authorship group including UN Partners—the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), UNICEF, the World Food Programme (WFP), and WHO.

To achieve Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 2, “End hunger, achieve food security and improve nutrition, and promote sustainable agriculture”, coherent multi-sectoral policy actions must meet diverse, yet specific, targets, such as ending hunger, addressing all forms of malnutrition, including overweight and obesity, wasting and stunting, and addressing the nutritional needs of vulnerable groups such as children, older people, and pregnant and lactating women. This report observes that we have entered a new era for monitoring progress, with peace taking centre stage, as conflict and natural disasters cause shifting patterns of migration. However, underlying poor global governance and a continuing lack of political will to fix a broken system remain obstacles to a world free from hunger and malnutrition in all its forms.

The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World reports that in the past year there has been an unexpected and alarming increase in the number of food-deprived people—a trend that had previously been declining since 2012. The FAO definition of undernourishment is based on the availability of food in a community, and the minimum energy needs per person. 2016 data found one in nine people hungry, with an absolute global number of 815 million, up from 2015's 777 million, and returning to a level last seen in 2012. This may represent a reversal of trends or a blip, and poor governance has now been exacerbated by the effects of natural disasters and conflict, leading to a surge in hunger with famine outbreaks in several countries, including Nigeria, Somalia, and Yemen.

Using new indicators that measure severity of deprivation and access to food, the report finds that prevalence of hunger is greatest in Africa, with the highest absolute number of people facing hunger in Asia (520 million). Prevalence of stunting has fallen to 22·9% in the past decade; globally there are 155 million children younger than 5 years with stunting, and 52 million affected by wasting, with 27·6 million of those children living in southern Asia. According to the 2016 Global Nutrition Report, there are a further 41 million children under 5 years of age who are overweight—leading to an expectation that WHO's goal of “no increase” by 2025 is not on track to be met.

Malnutrition will not end without politically peaceful solutions that bring an end to avoidable conflict and violence, as per SDG 16: “Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development”. Displacement caused by climate change disasters and vast waves of migration are compounding food insecurity. This report calls urgently for new ways of “conflict-sensitive” working, and finding more effective means of supporting and implementing appropriate government and humanitarian programmes and policies. Similarly, the theme of the FAO's upcoming annual World Food Day on Oct 16 is “Change the future of migration. Invest in food security and rural development.” However, political will remains the underlying problem—food systems need stronger political leadership, with a vision that extends beyond 2030, bringing the rights of future generations and our diminishing planetary resources into better focus.

In 2018, The Lancet will launch four food-related initiatives: the EAT-Lancet Commission, the Lancet Obesity Commission, a Series on health and agriculture, and a Series on the double burden of malnutrition. Each of these projects will reinforce a different aspect of the global call for equitable and sustainable provision of food to be a priority: recommending how policy makers approach food systems inclusive of health, cultural respect, agriculture, production, transport, trade, and retailing.

As long as the global food system continues to deliver diets that are not healthy or sustainable, we will continue to see both undernutrition and overnutrition, resulting from an unsustainable food system that wreaks devastating effects on the environment. While global conflicts pose further obstacles to overcome by 2030 and beyond, the shocking figures from last week's report must spur words into action, and shift the imagining of a world without hunger and malnutrition towards a reality.

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