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Approximately 63 per cent of low-and-middle-income countries (of 119 analysed) have limited or moderate access to financing for food security and nutrition, according to a United Nations report on the state of global food and nutrition.
This is despite the fact that the majority of these countries (74 per cent) were impacted by one or more major factors contributing to food insecurity and malnutrition.
The link between limited access to financing was directly related to the prevalence of undernourishment, as it was much higher (23.1 per cent) for such countries, when compared to those with moderate (10.4 per cent) and high (6.9 per cent) ability to access financing.
A similar trend was observed for stunting in children below five years of age, although the stunting average of countries with limited and moderate access to financing was much closer (23.9 and 20.9 per cent, respectively).
In most cases, countries that were the most in need of financing, in terms of both hunger and food insecurity levels, as well as in terms of how they were affected by the major drivers, face structural limitations to increase financing for food security and nutrition options.
The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World (SOFI) report published on July 24 showed that food security and nutrition took less than a quarter of total official development assistance.
In the period between 2017 to 2021, as analysed by the report, these flows amounted to $76 billion per year, of which only 34 per cent helped address the major drivers of food insecurity and malnutrition.
This comes at a time when more countries are off track than being on track for most of the seven global nutrition targets.
While analysing correlation between public spending and food security, the report, interestingly found that the more governments spend on agriculture, the more countries exhibit a high percentage of children under five years of age who are overweight.
It gave explanations and hypothesis for this correlation:
one could be that a higher prevalence of overweight among children may prompt governments to spend more on some nutrition-related programmes.
public spending on agriculture does not support enough nutrition-sensitive actions, nor does it enable healthy food environments. The world is also not producing sufficient fruits and vegetables and other nutritious foods for a growing population demanding them more, including in rural areas.
Public support to the food and agriculture sector, including fiscal subsidies, has also created incentives to increase the availability and reduce the price of staple foods and their derivatives – including highly processed foods high in unhealthy fats, sugars and/or salt and of minimal nutritional value – while at the same time discouraging and making relatively more expensive the consumption of unsubsidised or less subsidised commodities such as fruits, vegetables and pulses.
The report urgently called for a universal adoption of a new definition and a standardised approach to mapping financing flows for food security and nutrition, as current efforts lacked adequate attention and clarity.
Currently, there is no agreed upon definition of financing for food security and nutrition. There is also no unity regarding how to measure the financing flows to food security and nutrition in any of the existing financial data sources. A clear understanding and knowledge of the level of financing for food security and nutrition is therefore absent. This absence undermines efforts to achieve food security and end all forms of malnutrition
“Multiple definitions of financing for food security and nutrition are applied, leading to stark differences in estimates of such financing. This predicament poses a multitude of problems, including identifying underfinanced areas, ensuring accountability of institutions, and tracking the effectiveness and impact of interventions financed,” it stated.
In view of this, the report, in a first proposed a new definition:
Financing for food security and nutrition refers to the public and private financial resources, both domestic and foreign, that are directed towards eradicating hunger, food insecurity and all forms of malnutrition.
“The fastest route out of hunger and poverty is proven to be through investments in agriculture in rural areas. But the global and financial landscape has become far more complex since the Sustainable Development Goals were adopted in 2015. Ending hunger and malnutrition demands that we invest more - and more smartly,” said Alvaro Lario, president, International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD).