WEBINAR: launch 2020 Hunger Report of the Bread for the World

29 June 2020. Bread for the World Institute’s 2020 Hunger Report, Better Nutrition, Better Tomorrow, examines the challenge of ending global hunger and all forms of malnutrition and offers recommendations to accelerate progress.

A virtual launch was organised (recording forthcoming): a panel discussion with Dr. David Nabarro, special envoy for COVID-19 of the World Health Organization, and Rev. Dr. Heber Brown III, founder of the Black Church Food Security Network. 

Recording of the webinar forthcoming

The following is a snapshot of the material covered in this report and how it is organized by chapter.

The 2020 Hunger Report is supported by co-publishers Margaret Wallhagen and Bill Strawbridge. View the executive summary for a complete list of report sponsors.

1. Strengthening Food Systems for Nutrition from Farm to Fork

Read chapter 1
Summary: The potential to nourish everyone is real and within our grasp, but not without more of an effort to improve dietary quality everywhere. The links in a food supply chain present many opportunities to advance a nutrition agenda. It starts with farmers and ends with consumers, increasing the supply of nutritious food while cultivating demand.

2. Improving Nutrition to Improve Health

Read chapter 2
Summary: Poor nutrition is now the leading risk factor of premature death and disability worldwide. Tackling this problem requires a multisectoral approach to assisting vulnerable populations. Women and children receive the highest priority, beginning with the 1,000 days between pregnancy and a child’s second birthday, the launch pad for improving health throughout the life course.

3. Championing Nutrition in Sustainable Climate-resilient Food Systems

Read chapter 3
Summary: Climate change poses a serious threat to the goal of ending hunger and malnutrition—more serious than any previous obstacle. Sustainable food systems are a critical part of any effective response to climate change, meaning systems that meet the needs of current generations without closing off the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.

4. Advancing Equity for Workers in Food Systems

Read chapter 4
Summary: Employers throughout the food system have a very poor record when it comes to respecting workers’ rights. Around the world, most of the people who produce, pack, process, and serve food are not paid enough to meet their basic needs for nutritious foods. Improved nutrition outcomes everywhere require addressing power imbalances in food systems.

Featured Article: Collective Action on Nutrition: More Important Than Ever In Light of COVID-19

Read the article
Summary: 2020 was set to be a pivotal year for the international community to accelerate progress on ending childhood malnutrition, culminating in the Nutrition for Growth Summit in December, hosted by the government of Japan. While recognizing that it may need to be slightly delayed due to the pandemic, stakeholders should take collective action on maternal and child nutrition to ensure that nutrition is recognized, more than ever, as critical in protecting human health.

REPORT RECOMMENDATIONS
Build nutrition-smart food value chains (Chapter 1)

• Align agricultural priorities toward dietary quality and diversity and away from a small number of staple crops and animal source products.
• Invest in small-scale, local-level producers and processors of nutritious foods, ensuring gender and racial equity; and incentivize large-scale producers and processors to expand dietary diversity and improve nutrient quality.
• Build infrastructure to pave the way for disconnected rural farmers to reach urban markets to deliver nutritious foods at reasonable prices.
• Reduce nutrient loss and waste by improving food chain management.
• Mobilize private sector leadership to improve food environments for nutritionally vulnerable populations.
• Make dietary diversity more affordable and accessible to consumers who are low-income by improving social protection systems and ensuring gender and racial equity.

Align food, health, and education systems to deliver on nutrition (Chapter 2)

• Target populations that are more vulnerable to the long-term consequences of malnutrition: children, adolescents, and women of child-bearing age.
• Invest resources in preventing malnutrition to avoid the higher costs of treating its consequences.
• Integrate nutrition-related indicators into policies and programs across multiple sectors.
• Issue food-based nutrition guidelines that are coherent across agricultural, school feeding, safety net, and health policies, and promote racial and gender equity.
• Improve public health by incorporating nutrition into education and training of all public health workers, screening patients for food insecurity, and incorporating fruit and vegetable prescriptions into treatment for diet-related health conditions.
• Prohibit the marketing of unhealthy foods to children, and provide consumers with clear labelling about the healthfulness of food products.

Adopt food security and agriculture policies that improve nutrition and protect the planet (Chapter 3)

• Promote healthy, diversified diets that improve nutrition and reduce the environmental footprint of the food system.
• Redirect agricultural production subsidies and incentives to environmental stewardship to reduce the agricultural sector’s contributions to greenhouse gas emissions and to help farmers adapt to and build resilience to changing climate conditions.
• Regenerate the natural resource base crucial for food production by reversing biodiversity loss, improving soil and water management, and establishing a moratorium on deforestation.
• Increase public and private sector research on the impact of climate change on nutrition and food systems. Ensure this research applies an equity lens, especially for race and gender.
• Integrate food systems and nutrition into national and international governance frameworks on climate change.

Ensure that healthy and sustainable food systems leave no one behind and work for everyone (Chapter 4)

• Ensure all food-system workers fair pay and decent work conditions.
• Build food systems free of gender and racial inequities by enforcing equal protections under the law or by modifying laws to ensure equal protection.
• Empower Indigenous populations so that they can maintain control over their lands and protect traditional food systems.
• Protect workers regardless of their immigration status from forced labor and other abuses in food supply chains.
• Address root causes of child labor in agriculture by ending rural hunger and poverty and guaranteeing every child free access to education.