Local solutions help address food crisis

French environmentalist and biologist Rene DuBos asked us to "think globally, act locally", but when it comes to hunger in the world that is not always the best approach. Most hunger problems today have local rather than global origins. Acting locally remains important, but we must learn to think locally as well.

Some global institutions resist drawing local distinctions. UN Secretary-General António Guterres made headlines in June 2022 when he said that the world was facing "an unprecedented global hunger crisis". He said the number of severely food insecure people around the world had recently doubled to 276 million, and he warned that, "This year's food access issues could become next year's global food shortage. No country will be immune to the social and economic repercussions of such a catastrophe."

This sweeping statement calls for more local nuance, and less emphasis on "global" food shortages. Many of those currently facing severe food insecurity live in countries disrupted primarily by organized violence and armed conflict－including Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Ethiopia, South Sudan, northern Mozambique, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Myanmar, the landlocked states of the Sahel in Africa, and Afghanistan. And it is the Ukraine-Russia conflict this year that has blocked wheat exports to Egypt and North Africa, Middle East, and cut corn exports for animal feed to China.