For three years running, the number of people going hungry around the world has gone down. That is the headline finding of the State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World (SOFI) report, released July 21. An estimated 645 million people faced hunger in 2025, 14 million fewer than the year before and nearly 43 million fewer than at the 2022 peak.
"These numbers are important because they show that hunger is not inevitable," said FAO Director-General Qu Dongyu.
But the same report shows that progress is at risk, and the next decision that could sustain it lands in Rome in December
Even with hunger falling, 2.69 billion people, roughly one in three, still could not afford a healthy diet last year. The cost of that diet keeps climbing, reaching $4.28 a day per person in 2025, up from $3.44 in 2021.
The picture is sharpest in Africa, where 309 million people are undernourished and 20% of the population faces hunger — the highest rate of any region in the world. More than half the continent experienced moderate or severe food insecurity last year..
The report’s own projection for the end of the decade is sobering. Given current trends, around 512 million people could still be undernourished by 2030, the year the world promised to end hunger altogether.
Three pressures are converging on these fears.
The first is conflict. Ongoing conflict in the Middle East is pushing up fuel, fertilizer, and transport costs, and those costs ripple through global food systems. SOFI’s forecasting accounts for this shock, estimating that millions more people could be facing hunger by the end of the decade than earlier projections suggested.
The second is the consequences of climate change. One example is the emergence of stronger El Niños, with a historically torrential one already forming this year. This climate pattern warms surface waters in the central and eastern Pacific Ocean, weakens trade winds, and disrupts weather around the world, often bringing heavier rainfall to some regions, drought to others, and reducing agricultural yields.
The third is funding. Development assistance and humanitarian assistance are being cut in several major donor countries at exactly the moment the other two pressures arrive. Farmers who lose a season to drought and have no financing to plant the next one could face significant setbacks.
For years now, the question facing world leaders is no longer whether the world can reduce hunger. The last three years answered that. The question is whether governments are willing to invest enough to sustain the progress. That is where IFAD14 comes in.
This December, governments will gather in Rome for IFAD14, the fourteenth replenishment of the International Fund for Agricultural Development. Every three years, IFAD's member states collectively fund its replenishment based on the priorities and challenges raised by rural communities around the world. The resources pledged this December will finance IFAD's work from 2028 to 2030.
IFAD is the only international financial institution focused solely on rural transformation, and its work starts with small-scale farmers and rural communities. These are the producers who grow a significant share of the world’s food on small plots, usually with limited access to credit, markets, or storage, and they are the first likely to be hit when fertilizer prices spike, rains fail, or conflict cuts a supply route.
IFAD's investments help rural communities increase productivity, create jobs, strengthen food systems, and adapt to climate change. In practice, that can mean helping a farmer obtain drought-resistant seeds, connecting a rural cooperative to buyers in the nearby city, or providing financing for irrigation and storage facilities that prevent food spoilage before reaching the market.
Governments keep funding it because it works.
Impact assessments from IFAD's 12th replenishment cycle, along with results from ongoing investments, found that participants increased their incomes by 34%, their agricultural production by 35%, and their market access by 34%. Farmers were not only growing more — they were also able to sell more of what they grew
SOFI reinforces why this kind of investment matters. The report finds that food value chains — meaning everything that happens between the farm and the plate — account for 70% to 75% of what consumers pay for food. Making those chains more efficient, especially for perishable and nutrient-rich foods, is one of the clearest paths to making healthy diets affordable.
"SOFI tells us that the cost of a healthy diet continues to rise and that nearly 2.7 billion people may still be unable to afford a healthy diet," said IFAD President Alvaro Lario, who has pushed for resilient value chains to be central to the response.
The consequences of IFAD14 could extend far beyond rural communities.
When farmers cannot afford fertilizer, production falls. When harvests shrink, food prices rise, in cities and villages alike, in wealthy countries and poor ones. When rural livelihoods disappear, economies weaken, migration pressures grow, and instability spreads.
The reverse is also true. Investing in resilient rural economies strengthens food systems before crises deepen, making it far cheaper to help a farming community withstand a drought than to respond once famine has already set in.
Governments now have just a few months to decide how much they will invest through IFAD14.
The latest SOFI report shows that ending hunger remains within reach, but only if governments continue investing in the solutions that work. Three consecutive years of declining hunger did not happen by accident; they are the result of sustained investment, effective programs, and political will, and pulling back now would put it all at risk.
This December, IFAD14 will be an important moment to demonstrate whether world leaders intend to finish the work that’s been started. You can join Global Citizen in calling for support and investment for the people who grow the world's food, and make sure progress keeps moving in the right direction.