World Hunger Is Falling – We Know How To Keep It That Way

Three years of declining hunger have answered one question: Progress is possible. The question now is whether governments will scale what works before conflict, climate shocks and financial retreat erase it. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPSOpinion by Máximo Torero (rome)Monday, July 27, 2026Inter Press Service ROME, July 27 (IPS) - Here is a fact that should interrupt the world’s drumbeat of bad news: Hunger fell again in 2025. For the third consecutive year, fewer people faced chronic hunger. The total declined to an estimated 645 million, 14 million fewer than in 2024 and 43 million fewer than at the 2022 peak. Moderate or severe food insecurity fell by 86 million, to 2.1 billion from 2024 to 2025.The number remains a profound collective failure. But the decline challenges the fatalistic assumption that conflict, climate change and economic instability make rising hunger inevitable. When governments align social protection, agricultural investment and economic policy, they can bend the hunger curve.Asia’s hunger is now about one quarter below its 2015 level. Latin America and the Caribbean has also moved below the rate recorded a decade ago. In Africa, the rate declined for the first t...