For our next webinar, we’ll be hosting Máximo Torero Cullen, the Chief Economist of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

Hunger has risen under the shadow of the pandemic, with the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimating that 720 to 811 million people experienced it in 2020. At the higher end of the estimate, that means 161 million more people faced hunger than the prior year.

To put it in a different perspective: Hunger affects 21% of the population of Africa, 9% of the population in Asia and 9.1% in Latin America and the Caribbean, according to the FAO. Even more, nearly 1 in 3 people experienced moderate to severe food insecurity in 2020, meaning they did not have access to adequate food.

Depending on where you live and work as a journalist, these numbers may not be particularly visible to you. In addition to the pandemic, conflict, poverty, economic shocks such as hyperinflation and rising commodity prices, and environmental shocks such as flooding or drought are major contributors to the food crisis.

At the recently held 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26), the food crisis was presented as a major outcome of climate change and a major reason why the issue should be urgently addressed.

But many journalists still find it tricky to report the food crisis. The enormous nature of the issues can be overwhelming, cumbersome and abstract all at once. Moreover, what else can we report on beyond the number of people going to bed hungry every night, number of devastated farmlands, effects of harsh weather and climate change — and other popular food crisis buzzwords?

On our next webinar, we will hear about the true state of the global food crisis from our guest, Máximo Torero Cullen, the Chief Economist at FAO). The FAO is a specialized agency of the United Nations that leads international efforts to defeat hunger and improve nutrition and food security.

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