Food Prices

Coffee plays a central role in Ethiopia’s economic structure. An estimated 15 million Ethiopians depend on the coffee sector for their livelihoods, and the country remains the largest producer and exporter of coffee in Africa. Despite the importance of the crop for income generation and economic growth, however, only a small proportion of Ethiopian coffee farmers engage in practices that can result in higher quality beans and garner higher prices on the international market.

Access to and consumption of healthy diets, including fruits and vegetables, forms a key pillar of food security. Consumption of nutritious foods have been shown to reduce the risks of non-communicable diseases like diabetes and heart disease and to cut rates of early morbidity and mortality. Despite these benefits, however, the world’s population continues to overconsume unhealthy foods, such as those high in sugar, fats, and salt, and underconsume healthier foods.

Urgent international aid is needed in Somalia to avert famine and widespread starvation, according to a new alert issued last week by FEWS Net. While humanitarian aid increased throughout this fall and has so far prevented IPC Phase 5 (Famine)-level food insecurity from being reached, experts warn that the southern and central areas of the country will likely reach such acute levels in April-June 2023.

For the fourth consecutive year, global acute food insecurity rose in 2022. As many as 205.1 million people across 45 countries and territories are in IPC Phase 3 (Crisis) or higher food insecurity as of September 2022, according to the Global Report on Food Crisis Mid-Year Update. That represents an increase of 29.5 million people from 2021.

The world continues to lose ground in its efforts to end hunger, food insecurity, and malnutrition in all its forms by 2030, according to the recently-released 2022 State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World (SOFI) report. As many as 828 million people were affected by hunger globally in 2021 (around 10.5% of the world population)—an increase of 46 million since the end of 2020 and of 150 million since the COVID-19 pandemic began a year earlier.