WORLD FOOD DAY, 2022 -Leave No One Behind

World Food Day is observed annually on 16 October to highlight the millions of people worldwide who cannot afford a healthy diet and the need for regular access to nutritious food. The theme for 2022 is ‘Leave NO         ONE  behind.’

This year’s commemoration is marked amidst multiple global challenges, including the COVID-19 pandemic, conflict, climate change, rising prices and international tensions. All of this is affecting global food security. There is urgent need to build a sustainable world where everyone, everywhere has regular access to enough nutritious food – a society where no one is left behind.

People all over the world are connected together by food. We, therefore, have to work together, learning and taking creative actions to build a sustainable future with food for all.

The huge diversity of global challenges is calamitous, chronic universal food crisis will make an already bad situation worse:

• 160million children worldwide are engaged in child labour.
• Women are 15 percent more likely than men to be moderately or severely food insecure, globally.
• Every day, more than 30 000people are forced to flee their homes because of conflict and persecution.
• In 2021, some 193million people experienced high acute food insecurity, requiring humanitarian assistance for their survival, while over half a million faced Catastrophe conditions, meaning starvation and
• 1billion people (almost 40 percent of the world’s population) cannot afford a healthy      diet.
• Indigenous Peoples are guardians of 80 percent of the world’s terrestrial biodiversity on 22 percent of the Earth’s surface, yet globally, they suffer higher rates of poverty, malnutrition and internal displacement compared to non-indigenous groups.
• A dramatic increase in food prices, including wheat, barley, rapeseed and sunflower oil, and also fertilizers, are moving countries that were already vulnerable into crisis.
• Climate change affects the rural poor, their agricultural yields and productivity, contributing to increasing pests and diseases and changing the nutrient composition of major staple crops.
• Two-thirds of those experiencing high acute food insecurity are rural food producers.

Denying progress to some means limiting progress for all. Be a food hero, combat food loss and waste. Let’s build a more sustainable world with good food for everyone.

Leave no one behind.

[The Day is led by The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)]