Measuring hunger, food security and food consumption
One of FAO’s key mandates is to monitor hunger and food security in the world. FAO uses different approaches for monitoring chronic hunger and food insecurity at global, regional and national levels as well as for assessing acute food insecurity in humanitarian contexts. Chronic hunger and food insecurity are longer term and persistent, while acute food insecurity is typically shorter-term but can be so severe that it threatens lives or livelihoods. While it is important to note that repeated shocks and persistent crises of acute food insecurity can lead to situations of chronic food insecurity, the methodologies presented here are those aimed at measuring chronic hunger and food insecurity.
FAO has produced estimates of the Prevalence of Undernourishment (PoU) for more than 20 years to monitor global, regional and national trends in chronic hunger, which was key to monitor the Millennium Development Goals. However, in preparation for what became the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, it became evident that additional tools were needed to complement the PoU – tools capable of providing more timely, detailed information about who is food insecure, where they live, and the level of severity of food insecurity they were facing. FAO launched the Voices of the Hungry project to help fill this gap, with financial support from the United Kingdom Department for International Development (DfID) and the Kingdom of Belgium, resulting in the launch of the Food Insecurity Experience Scale (FIES) in 2014. Inspired by two decades of accumulated experience with similar tools in several countries, Voices of the Hungry developed the analytical protocols necessary to scale-up experience-based food security measurement to the global level, making it possible to compare prevalence rates across countries.
The PoU is Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) Indicator 2.1.1. It is a measure of ACCESS TO DIETARY ENERGY. The prevalence of moderate or severe food insecurity based on the FIES is a measure of ACCESS TO FOOD and is SDG Indicator 2.1.2 of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The FIES can also be used to produce estimates of recent food insecurity to guide emergency response planning, including Integrated Phase Classification (IPC) assessments. FOOD CONSUMPTION statistics provide evidence on dietary patterns to guide country-level policy and are an important component of the model used to compute the PoU.
FAO is the custodian agency for SDG Indicators 2.1.1 and 2.1.2 and supports countries in monitoring SDG Target 2.1.
Useful links
- The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World (SOFI)
- SDG Indicator 2.1.1 - Prevalence of undernourishment
- SDG Indicator 2.1.2 Prevalence of moderate or severe food insecurity in the population, based on the Food Insecurity Experience Scale
- FAOSTAT Suite of food security indicators
- UN SDG data portal
Assessing food insecurity: different numbers, different objectives
Global, regional and country-level estimates of the PoU and of the prevalence of moderate or severe food insecurity are disseminated annually in the State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World flagship report as well as on FAOSTAT, the world's largest database on food and agriculture statistics, and the United Nations Global SDG Indicators Data Platform. The objective is regular monitoring of chronic food insecurity in all countries. This differs from the Global Report on Food Crises which focuses on acute food insecurity in a limited number of countries and territories affected by food crises as assessed based on analytic approaches such as the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification/Cadre Harmonisé.
