The world’s poorest countries are still struggling to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic, with billions unable to access a healthy diet.
A new United Nations report has found that a third of the world’s population cannot afford a healthy diet, with poorer countries more impacted since the pandemic.
Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Chief Economist Maximo Torero said the 2024 State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World report found while food prices increased throughout 2022, pushing up the cost of a healthy diet, this was largely offset by economic recovery.
Mr Torero said 35.4 percent of the global population, equal to 2.826 billion people, were unable to afford a healthy diet in 2022.
He said that compared to 36.4 percent in 2019, however, the recovery to pre-pandemic levels was achieved in an uneven manner across regions.
“In 2022, the number of people unable to afford a healthy diet dropped below pre-pandemic levels in the group of upper-middle and high-income countries. In contrast, low-income countries had the highest levels since 2017,” he said.
Mr Torero said the finding highlighted “a major structural problem of our agrifood systems”.
He said the report found the share of people in Africa unable to afford a healthy diet was 64.8 percent. In Asia, the figure was 35.1 percent, in Latin America and the Caribbean it was 27.7 percent, in Oceania 20.1 percent and in Northern America and Europe 4.8 percent.
“In low-income and lower-middle-income countries, the number of people unable to afford healthy diets grew from 2019 to 2022, an outcome that reflects how post-pandemic economic recoveries were unevenly shared and how more advanced economies were better placed to cope with supply-chain shocks and worldwide inflationary pressure on food commodity prices.”
