This Business Forum Report from the Food Ethics Council explores the ethical implications of the food industry’s involvement with food charity projects such as school breakfast clubs or donations of food and money by supermarkets. 

The FAO’s 2019 edition of its “The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World” report finds that the number of hungry people is increasing, with around 820 million people worldwide experiencing undernourishment. This year’s report also finds that around 2 billion people experience either severe or moderate food insecurity, with the phenomenon found in low, middle and high income countries.

This book, edited by Robert Zeigler, assesses how economics, policy and plant and agricultural science affect global food security.

This modelling paper finds that strategies to mitigate climate change could put an additional 160 million people at risk of hunger by 2050, if they are not designed carefully. However, these trade-offs could be avoided at a cost of around 0.2% of GDP in 2050.

In this comment piece for Foodservice Footprint, Dan Crossley of the UK-based charity Food Ethics Council argues that the current model of charitable food assistance can give an excuse for businesses and policymakers to avoid addressing the underlying causes of food insecurity.

One in five adults in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland experienced some level of food insecurity in 2016, according to this paper, with people who are younger, non-white, less educated, disabled, unemployed or low-income being more likely to experience food insecurity. Low-income adults had a 28% probability of being food-insecure in 2004, which by 2016 had risen to 46%.

The UK’s Department for Work and Pensions will introduce a new measure of food insecurity, reports the Guardian. The new measure will be based on ten questions about food purchase and consumption patterns in the annual Family Resources Survey, which surveys around 20,000 households each year.

This book explores how climate change will affect food security and availability, and outlines ways of adapting agriculture to cope under a different climate.

This book, by William D. Schanbacher, addresses ethical issues around access to food, outlines how the global food system works, and offers suggestions on how people can engage their communities and learn more about the foods they eat.