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Some private investments aimed at eliminating hunger across the globe are actually escalating ill health and inequity, a United Nations report has found.
These private investments can have a negative impact on food security in developing countries in the long run, the State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World (SOFI) report published on July 24 has noted.
The comprehensive analysis noted that several studies had found little evidence for either negative or positive effects of foreign direct investment (FDI) on food security in developing countries. It did suggest though that the effect might be positive in the short term but negative in the long term.
The report was published by five United Nations specialised agencies namely, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the UN World Food Programme (WFP), and the World Health Organization (WHO).
The SOFI report found that the global prevalence of undernourishment persisted at pre-COVID-19 pandemic levels for the third consecutive year, with one in 11 people facing hunger globally in 2023.
Also, almost 713 million-757 million people may have faced crippling hunger in 2023.
This is an alarming figure and is a warning sign that the world is falling significantly short of achieving SDG 2, which is merely six years away from the 2030 deadline.
Interestingly, FDI appears to be more clearly associated with increases in overweight, obesity and non-communicable disease prevalence than with changes in undernutrition.
The SOFI report pointed towards a study on ‘commercial determinants of health’, published in The Lancet in 2023. This report highlighted that there was growing evidence of a shift towards market fundamentalism. Increasingly powerful transnational corporations are responsible for escalating rates of avoidable ill health, planetary damage, and social and health inequity — problems that are increasingly referred to as the commercial determinants of health.
In fact, private sector financing was more difficult to track.
“Philanthropic flows (USD 4 billion on average over 2017–2021) look small compared to cross-border remittances from migrants invested in agrifood systems (USD 29 billion on average over 2017–2022) and foreign direct investment (USD 62 billion on average over 2017–2022),” the report said.
Further, a review of 35,550 products manufactured by the global top 20 food and beverage companies in a few key countries including Brazil, China, India and South Africa found that the overwhelming majority were unhealthy according to the World Health Organization Regional Office for Europe nutrient profile model, with a small number of significant exceptions.
In these four countries, healthier products accounted for just 4-12 per cent of the 2020 sales of these companies. As far as environmental impacts were concerned, ‘ultra-processed foods’ were associated with intensive agriculture and livestock and threaten all dimensions of agri food systems sustainability.
In addition, a network analysis revealed that many of the large players in the global food and beverage industries were at the centre of interest groups representing the ‘ultra-processed food’ industry.