Giving Compass' Take:

• Katherine Walla discusses a Global Food Policy report that shows that the number of undernourished people in the world has increased since 2015 due to failures in policy reform.

• Are NGOs doing enough to ensure cooperation with foreign governments and local operators to make sure those who are hungry get fed? Hunger affects 11 percent of the population, so millions of lives are at stake.

• Read about taking a space-age approach to food security. 

The Global Food Policy 2018 Report released by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) found that, despite recent food policy efforts, the number of undernourished people has increased since 2015. The report attributes this increase to failures in food policy reform due to a lack of international cooperation. Furthermore, the report finds that international cooperation through governance and trade can reform the food system and reduce the number of undernourished people in 2018.

The report assembles the research of experts in a collection of essays, focusing on new developments in food policy and new methods to evaluate hunger and malnutrition. Regional sections follow these topics, evaluating regional trends in 2017 and predicted trends in 2018. At the end of the report, data tables and visualizations present trends in key food security indicators such as volume of food production and inequality in hunger within regions.

According to the IFPRI, governments focused on eliminating hunger must avoid protectionist and anti-globalization policies pertaining to the flow of goods, investments, people, and information. This would allows the international community to tackle the root causes of hunger and poverty such as price invariability, lack of infrastructure, forced or unstable migration, and lack of data.

Read the full article about solving world hunger through cooperation by Katherine Walla at Food Tank.