Regional Overview of Food Security and Nutrition 2023
- The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations released the Regional Overview of Food Security and Nutrition 2023: Statistics and Trends report on Tuesday, December 13, 2023.
- The report focuses on the Asia Pacific region, with a particular emphasis on India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh.
- Rising food costs, if not matched by rising income, would lead to more people being unable to afford a healthy diet.
- “If food costs rise at the same time incomes fall, a compounding effect occurs that can result in even more people unable to afford healthy diets”.
- During the pandemic and the “5Fs” crisis – food, feed, fuel, fertilizer, and finance – the Asia Pacific region witnessed harrowing statistics.
- The Asia and the Pacific region accounts for half of the world’s severe food insecurity, with more women than men being food insecure.
- “Southern Asia showed higher prevalence of severe food insecurity compared with the other subregions, and it is in Eastern Asia where the lowest prevalence of severe food insecurity was observed. Compared with the world, Southern Asia had higher percentages for both moderate or severe and severe food insecurity since 2015,”
- More than 74% of Indians could not afford a healthy diet in 2021.In 2020, the percentage was 76.2.
- In Pakistan, the figure was 82.2% and in Bangladesh, 66.1% of the population faced difficulties in finding healthy food.