More than an Empty Plate: Food Insecurity in the Global System

More than an Empty Plate: Food Insecurity in the Global System

Elliot Nelson, 2026-27 Iowa UNA College Ambassador from Drake University

Scribbled into the margins of geopolitics, food insecurity affects more people across the globe than war. The scope of the problem is far-reaching. The Food and Agricultural Organization, a specialized agency of the United Nations, coordinates international efforts to defeat hunger and to achieve food security. In the FAO’s 2026 report, the State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World (SOFI), about 645 million people, or 7.8 percent of the global population, faced hunger in 2025. Roughly 2.1 billion people, more than a quarter of humanity, experienced moderate or severe food insecurity. These numbers tell a striking story about food insecurity.

Food insecurity refers to a lack of reliable access to enough affordable, nutritious food. While closely related to hunger, it is not the same thing, and it often hides in plain sight. A family can have food on the table tonight and still not know where next week's groceries will come from. As UN Sustainable Development Goal 2 (SDG 2) recognizes, food insecurity is not mainly a food supply problem—it is a systems problem. The world produces enough food to feed everyone. The shortfall lies in who can afford it, reach it, and rely on it.

There is some good news: global hunger has declined for three consecutive years. But progress is uneven, and the FAO report projects that around 520 million people could still be hungry in 2030, leaving the world off track to reach Zero Hunger.

The causes of food insecurity connect to multiple interconnected systems.

• Cost and income: This year's SOFI report centers on the high cost of a healthy diet. When wages fail to keep up with housing, healthcare, and energy costs, food, particularly nutritious food, is often the first budget line to shrink for most individuals and families.

• Geography and inequity: Food insecurity is more severe in rural areas and falls hardest on women and children. In many cities, neighborhoods with limited grocery access, referred to as “food deserts”, are the product of decades of geography’s impact on food inequality.

• Climate: Environmental degradation damages farms, roads, ports, and storage, while droughts, floods, and extreme heat reduce harvests. These shocks ripple through global supply chains and hit the most vulnerable first.

• Waste and policy gaps: Roughly a third of the food produced globally is lost or wasted, even as millions go without. Food assistance programs are often hard to navigate or carry a stigma that keep people from seeking help.

If the causes of food security are systemic, the solutions must be too. SDG 2 is focused on ending hunger, achieving food security, improving nutrition, and promoting sustainable agriculture. Its place among the 17 SDGs is intentional, because hunger inherently connects to equality, health, education, and other human rights. A hungry student struggles to learn, and a malnourished child carries the effects of inequal access into adulthood.

As the vision of SDG 2 shows, there is a fundamental connection between education and advocacy for food security. Community gardens model sustainable agriculture on a local scale. Nutrition education supports healthier diets. Advocacy for school meals pushes toward universal access to safe, nutritious food. Food recovery efforts make food systems more efficient and resilient. These efforts also connect to SDG 1 (No Poverty), SDG 12 (Responsible Consumption and Production), and SDG 13 (Climate Action), making up the global collective to tackle the challenges facing universal human rights.

Some of the most promising work to promote SDG 2 is coming from young people. Youth-led work at schools, including primary and secondary schools, maps directly onto SDG 2's aims. Having had the chance to work in my university’s community garden as a Youth Educator, I spent a significant amount of time learning how food accessibility and the value of nutrition trickles down to youth, specifically in how they perceive nutrition and environmentalism.

One moment has stayed with me. When the garden's carrots were ready, the youth helped pull them from the soil, wash them, and finally taste them. One student took a bite and told me it was "delicious" and that he had "always wanted to try it." While only an aside, his comment was shocking to me: a vegetable most of us take for granted had been out of his reach for his lifetime.

This experience showed just how young people's relationships with food are shaped by what is available and affordable to them. A kid who has only known processed snacks is not making a "bad choice"; they are responding to their environment. But given soil, seeds, and a little time, that relationship can change quickly. Students who planted, watered, and harvested with our community garden began to see food not just as something bought, but as something grown, shared, and connected to the health of the land.

Food insecurity sits at the center of daily life. Ending it means fixing the systems that produce it: income, access, equity, and resilience. Young people are already showing what that can look like, one garden bed and one policy conversation at a time, and that gives me hope.

This blog will be the first in a series of blogs on food security sponsored by the Iowa UNA. We look forward to continuing to build knowledge about the challenge of food insecurity and advocating for SDG 2 in Iowa and beyond.