Launch event of the 2026 edition of The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World (SOFI)

Excellencies, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, a warm welcome to the launch of the 2026 edition of the State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World, known as SOFI Report. My name is Yasaman Matinroshan. I'm a Senior Technical Officer at FAO. Thank you. And I have the honor to moderate today's event. Before we begin, I would like to mention a few housekeeping notes. First of all, I would like to extend a warm welcome to everyone joining us online from around the world. I would like to mention that interpretation is available in all 6 official United Nations languages. And we also encourage you to join the conversation on social media using #SOFI2026. For a quarter of a century, the SOFI report has been published by FAO and UN partners. This year's report comes at a unique and critical moment. Intensifying climate extremes, Conflict, geopolitical tensions, and economic shocks are placing pressure on agri-food systems, threatening to deepen hunger and food insecurity while pushing healthy diet further beyond the reach of millions of people around the world. Over recent editions, SOFI has evolved beyond tracking hunger and food insecurity. SOFIE is assessing whether people can afford and consume healthy diets. To do this, it now combines the cost and affordability of a healthy diet with minimum dietary diversity indicators for children and women, including key nutrition outcomes: stunting, wasting, anemia, and obesity. Together, these measures show whether diets are affordable, diverse, and nutritionally adequate. This year's report goes beyond measuring these costs by examining the factors driving the costs and by identifying practical, evidence-based actions across agri-food systems to make healthy diets more affordable for all. As we move closer to 2030, today's discussion could not be more timely. And now, to set the stage for today's discussion, I draw your attention to our SOFI 2026 curtain-raiser video.

In a world marked by conflict, climate shocks, and economic uncertainty, it is easy to believe hunger can only get worse. But in 2025, world hunger fell for the 3rd consecutive year. An estimated 645 million people faced hunger, 14 million fewer than in 2024 and 43 million fewer than in 2022, according to the latest edition of the State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World report. The situation in Asia and Latin America and the Caribbean continues to improve. In Africa, the hunger rate declined for the first time in nearly a decade. The drop was small, and around 309 million Africans still faced hunger in 2025. And official development assistance to sub-Saharan Africa fell by 26.3%. Global health and nutrition indicators, meanwhile, show uneven progress. Just 31% of children under 2 and only 63% of all women achieve minimum dietary diversity. Adult obesity continues to rise. Child stunting, wasting, low birth weight, and exclusive breastfeeding are improving, but only marginally. Learning from countries making significant progress, we know that negative trends can be reversed, that the right mix of policies can make a difference. Countries are achieving results by combining investments in agriculture, social protection, health and nutrition, stronger markets, and rural infrastructure. When policies work together, hunger and malnutrition fall. Yet the recent gains are fragile and must be protected. Disruptions in critical trade corridors are raising energy, fertilizer, and transport costs, threatening future harvests. El Niño is strengthening, increasing the risk of damaging weather extremes. And preventing hunger is only one part of the challenge. About 2.69 billion people still cannot afford a healthy diet. Calories are relatively cheap. Healthy diets are expensive. Many of the costs accumulate after food leaves the farm as it is stored, processed, transported, and sold. Improving the efficiency of agri-food systems, especially for perishable, nutrient-dense foods that are central to healthy diets, can help lower those costs. The answer is not simply to spend more, More, it is to spend smarter. Progress is possible. Better and more affordable healthy diets for all are within our reach.

Thank you.

I have now the honor to invite the Director-General of FAO, Mr. Qu Dongyu, to please provide your opening remarks. Director-General, the floor is yours.

Thank you. Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, dear colleagues, this year's edition of the SOFI Report brings a message of progress, responsibility and agency. For the 3rd consecutive year, global hunger declining. Sometimes the word declining is positive. We need to decline. In 2025, for the first time, it's also declining in Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Africa. That's a major hotspot of food insecurity. In 2025, an estimated 645 million people face hunger, equivalent to 7.8%. That's also very dramatic. I remember 2019, first time Maxima Torero, We come with the former DG to New York to report what the progress. That time is still more than 9%. 1.1%, it's a big number behind. So now it's the first time in the history, 7.8% of people, lowest. percentage of the world population, nearly 40 million fewer people than in 2024, and 43 million fewer than at the 2022 peak time because of the pandemic and locusts and all this. conflict come together. That was 2022, the peak time, with 43 million less. So sometimes, of course, we are very critical, but with all the strong political commitment, we can manage to decline, to reduce dramatically. FAO, together with other sister agencies, We just report based on the data, evidence, and also fact which happening on the ground. We try our best to be more professional interpretation of the progress, what you have achieved by your leaders, by your people working together. That's the role I feel, and with IFAD, WFP, WHO, and others. Moderate or severe food insecurity also fell significantly. In 2025, 2.1 billion people experienced food insecurity, nearly 86 million fewer than a year earlier. That means improve the health, diet also dramatically. Most of this improvement occurred in South America and in Asia, particularly in South Asia. I said many times, people talk about Africa. Of course, Africa by number of countries is big, 54.

54.

But by population, most concentrated part of the world is South Asia: India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka, of course. That's 4 countries composed almost 1.9 or 1.8 billion. Africa, totally 1.3 billion. So that's why the South Asia progress, even small proportion, small percentage, is a big administrative absolute number. These numbers are important because they show that hunger is not inevitable. With strong economic policy, social protection, sustained investment, in more efficient, more inclusive, more resilient, more sustainable agrofood systems, we can bend the hunger curve. We can reverse a trend which we don't want. But the progress remains slow, uneven, and fragile. Africa's hunger rate declined from 20.3% in 2024 to the 20.1%. That's a 0.3% decline. It's a big number behind. This is the first break in the continent upward trend since 2017, so almost 10 years ago. But although an important change in the direction, it is not yet a decisive reversal. So we still want to keep working on that for next 2 or 3 years. We will see. I hope the plateau, we can reach the plateau where we're declining. That will be turning point or turning plateau, no matter is the Himalaya Plateau or here, our base plateau. There are approximately 309 million undernourished people in Africa, but as the population continues to grow rapidly, this number could still increase. With 1 in 5 Africans undernourished, Africa is projected to account for more than half of the world's hungry by 2030. So the relative percentage is high. I say it again. Ladies and gentlemen, current projections suggest that approximately up to 520 million people could still face hunger in 2030. But this projection do not fully catch the potential impact of the very strong El Niños, or the latest reduction in the development and the humanitarian financing. The downside risk is there, huge. But hunger is only one dimension of the challenge. Nearly one-third of humanity still cannot afford a healthy diet. We are aiming, as I said many times, from 4 levels: from basic food, staple food, to the nutrition food, to the health food, and to the functional food. That's— we as a human civilization develop, improve, we need aiming higher and better of the level of the nutrition and the health life. That's why we aiming more and more unhealthy diet, and it is at risk of the malnutrition and other non-communicable diseases. The cost of health diet is the minimum daily cost of purchasing the least expensive locally available food needed for a balanced and nutritious diet. This is different from affordability. Cost depends on the food prices, while affordability also depends on household income and essential non-food expenses. Also the way of the consumption pattern. I know a lot of ladies willing to pay $100 for— or $1,000 for buy the cosmetic, but for me, I have affordability, but I don't want to have willing to pay that. It also depends on the consumption pattern of purchase power. That's maybe we need also more other education. Nutritious food remains expensive largely because the cost accumulate beyond the farmer through the storage process, transportation, and retail. Poor roads, inadequate cold chains, unreliable energy, and inefficient markets raise the price of the fruit, vegetables, and animal source of food. Making healthy diets affordable therefore requires targeted investment across the entire value chain combined with support for the vulnerable households. This means that the challenge is not only to produce more food, but to ensure that nutritious food can move efficiently and affordably from producers to consumers. We must act now. We must keep markets for food, energy, and agricultural inputs open. We must avoid export restrictions. We must protect Vulnerable households through tackling the social protection. We must help farmers obtain fertilizer, seeds, water, and other agricultural inputs, as well as credit, financial services, before plant disease becomes irreversible. And we must invest in agrofood system infrastructure on irrigation, storage, cold chains, transportation, early warning and anticipation action. Agricultural infrastructure is still not well enough attended by the politician and by the society. The people are more focused on bigger infrastructure, road, even now the AI infrastructure, billions, billions. But you talk about the agricultural infrastructure, which is essential, A lot of people, they don't willing to pay the $1 billion. But for AI, for digital, for the road, highways, you name it. I always said that they are— and the IFA, they should advocate for us, for the agro-infrastructure. Not only road, not only coal chunk, a lot of agro-food infrastructure you didn't see. but it's essential. Dear colleagues, let me conclude by recognizing 3 important achievements what we found during past years. First, I congratulate South Asia, led by India, for the significant progress achieved in reducing hunger. It's a phenomenon. That's why this year, I gave personally FODG recognition agriculture medal to Honorable Prime Minister Modi. He was here in the Planet House. If you come, you remember he was highly recognized by the staff of RBA, not only FAO and other friends. The number of undernourished people in South Asia fell by more than 16 million in 2025. Maybe it's bigger than this, but by the methodology we established, yeah, we want to keep continuing the data based on since 70 years ago we established. Maybe we need to improve a little bit methodology, but FAO, we are 194 members, so big or small. So the methodology change if they fit more with big state and ignoring the small state. If we feed the most small state and the big state is one province is bigger than. So I think the most methodology from FAO is more relevant to the middle, middle-small size of the members. That's my personal observation as a scientist 20, 25 years ago when I was Vice President of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, because sometimes I found the data also not so relevant to China at that time. But China, we always keep a little bit low profile because the poverty reduction, we always keep the 2 years Later, let the FO data look bigger. Yeah, now of course it's different. So India played a central role in this program because 1.5 billion people, almost 1.5 billion. Yeah, this demonstrates that the scale is not the destiny and that sustained economic progress, agriculture investment, and social protection That's why India, they have a unique— I should say unique, I have no comments if it's good or bad— unique system to national procurement system. It's huge for European because it supports almost 90 million people to have food secure, almost free distributed. And my chief always said that might be once they sell to the market, they will distort the market price. I said 99% of the possibility they are not going to sell on the market because it's a political decision. I knew that India, they deliver those number of the population, 90 million people free of food. That's the unique national procurement system. If we didn't understand the scale, you said, oh, it's 90 million, so huge.

Yeah.

It's bigger than most of the European countries. So I just use the opportunity to give some of the clarification. That's, I think, also a country investment, social project can transform the life of millions. Second, I congratulate Africa for stabilizing and beginning to reduce the prevalence of hunger for the first time after years of deterioration. The decline is modest and the absolute burden remains unacceptably high, but Africa has taken the first step towards reversing the negative trend. I think you can do— sooner or later, Africa can be next basket. food basket, maybe 30 years or 50 years. It's the last potential for the global food security, is Africa, for sure. And the third, I consider the Dominican Republic, which has moved below the FAO's 2.5% prevalence of undernourishment threshold. And has moved off the hunger map.

Congratulations.

Based on my humble knowledge on the Dominican Republic, they are not small, They are not big, but the one experience you can learn from them, no matter you're big or small, strong political commitment from the president, from the minister, from the farmers, from the NGOs, from the society to fight against hunger together. And with reliable policy. I didn't say never-ending policy, reliable. Any country that have their own situation, if we establish a policy, please, agriculture policy should be reliable and longer. And even the former minister, 6 years since I come, he always come and discussion, learning from others. Agriculture minister, if we change every season, they're sowing the seeds, they didn't see their results. Or even you plant the trees, it takes too long. I don't want you to hold the minister for 20 years, but at least one season or 2 seasons. Yeah, but for agriculture minister, ideally 4 years or 6 years.

4 years.

Yeah, any political system, that's my professional assessment. If shorter than 2 years, it's very difficult to master the complex of agrofood system and the rural affairs. A lot of politicians thought that agriculture is so simple. No, it's not simple. We deal with animals, we deal with human beings, we deal with the natural, and we more humble ministers in any government. My brother is from Uzbekistan. He was the Minister of Education, he was Minister of Innovation, and now he finally, he become the Minister of Agriculture. He can tell which ministry is more recognized by the society, much easier to handle. Since I become the Minister of Agriculture, his gray hair is Annually increased 30%. So I think it's not an easy job, but people normally think Minister of Agriculture, oh yeah, number one is Minister of Foreign Affairs, number one is Minister of Defense, number one Minister of Finance. You can't eat the money. You have to eat the food and drink the—

Water.

orange juice, or you are from Spain, so, or milk. So I think that's one thing. Let's make this simple experience and we can learn together, because if the president takes it seriously, like any other successful countries— many years ago, China also— number one leader is always And then the Minister of Agriculture can get limited resources to do. And he now, he got strong support from president. So that's why he feel politically more important than Minister of Education. Of course, Minister of Education is a very decent job. We are a little bit dirty job. But we make the very health, good, clean food for society. This is a major national achievement and a powerful demonstration of what a determined, sustained, and coherent political commitment with enabling policy can deliver. South Asia, Africa, Dominican Republic remind us of the essential message of this report: progress is possible unless you are really Deliverable. A lot of people, they are not deliverable, just talking. They draft a very beautiful sentence of policy. I always want the deliverable. People, deliverable, small flow of bread, they will remember you. You always say, ah, I will help you to fight against China. You repeat it 1,000 times, nobody believe it. But you just give them one loaf, one loaf of bread, they will remember you. But in a world of ongoing and overlapping shocks, progress cannot be taken for granted. It must be protected, accelerated, and extended to everyone everywhere to ensure the 4 betters: better production, better nutrition, and better environment, better life, leaving no one behind. Food security and diversity are fundamental rights to human beings. I thank you. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Thank you, Director-General, for bringing a message of hope, progress, and urgency. I'm delighted now to invite the President of IFAD, Mr. Alvaro Lario. Sir, you have the floor.

Thank you. Honorable Ministers, Excellencies, dear friends, partners, it's always a very special moment to come together with the leaders of the rest of the organizations for this moment every year for the launch of the State of Food Security and Nutrition. We've done it in Rome a couple of times, all over the world, and I think this at least provides a message to the world about the importance that we attach to, obviously, to food security, to hunger, and to nutrition. As it has been mentioned, SOFI 2026 tells us that progress is possible. Hunger has declined for a 3rd consecutive year, and we are moving slowly but in the right direction. It also provides us with a clear warning: progress remains fragile, and for far too many people, the central question is no longer whether food exists, but whether they can afford the food that they need for a healthy life. And my intervention will very much focus on what should be the global integrated coordinated response on that and what we are currently doing. The report tells us that the cost of a healthy diet continues to rise. and the nearly 2.7 billion people may still be unable to afford a healthy diet. For IFAAD, this speaks directly to our mandate. Food security and nutrition depend on resilient production, functioning value chains and local markets, from access to inputs, storage infrastructure, irrigation, processing facilities, transport, and markets. And it also depends on small-scale producers earning a decent income. And it also depends on nutritious food reaching people at prices that they can afford. Affordability is not created in a vacuum. Climate shocks, conflicts, inflation, disruptions to energy, transport, and trade affect all value chains. They affect what farmers can produce, what it costs to move food, how much is lost before reaching markets, and what consumers ultimately pay. And recent crises have shown that any shock can also raise the food prices, fertilizer costs, and transport costs far away from the origin of the shock. So if affordability is the challenge, resilient value chains must be a central part of the answer. For example, in the current impact of the conflict of the Middle East, we have to continue working together with countries to reduce dependency on imported inputs by investing in local solutions— biofertilizers, agroecology, decentralized seed systems, and stronger links to domestic markets— so that rural communities can be better prepared for future shocks, because this, we know, will happen. In short, affordability depends on investing across the full value chain, from the first mile of production to the markets and services that connect rural people to opportunities. And evidence shows that this approach works. Recent impact assessments show that IFAD-integrated projects increase income, production, and market access by at least 34% among rural investment participants. And where value chains investments include strong private sector engagement, income gains reach 64%, 4 times higher than without such an investment. Finally, also, RBA's contribution to school feeding serves as another compelling example. As an example, throughout IFAD's portfolio, in our 60 investments, we're working upstream to strengthen value chains, farmers' organizations, and procurement systems so that small-scale producers can supply school meals programs reliably. Done well, school meals also create a triple win: better nutrition for children, stable markets for farmers, and stronger local economies. Excellencies, dear colleagues, SOFI 2026 gives us the evidence. It is now our task to turn that evidence into sound policy and bankable investments. And let's do that through partnership. Together, we can build the value chains, market systems, and rural economies that make healthy food affordable for all. That's the hopeful message I take from this report. We know what needs to be done, so let us now work together on the evidence at hand. Thank you all for your attention.

Thank you very much to the President of IFAD for your opening remarks. We are pleased to share a video message from the Director-General of WHO, Mr. Tedros Ghebreyesus, who was unable to join us today.

Director-General Chou Dongyu. President Alvaro Lario. Dear colleagues and friends. Last year, more than 200 million additional people were able to afford a healthy diet compared with 2021. This is good news, but it's just a fraction of what is needed. Nearly 2.7 billion people still struggle to afford the minimum diet needed for good health. And the burden is not shared equally. In Africa, a healthy diet is out of reach for two-thirds of people. In some of the world's most vulnerable settings, the consequences are devastating. Conflict, displacement and climate change are driving unprecedented levels of acute malnutrition, particularly among children. WHO is supporting countries to respond to these urgent needs. But we must also act upstream. We know what works: promoting breastfeeding, taxing unhealthy and subsidizing healthy food and drinks, protecting children from harmful marketing of unhealthy industrialized foods, clear front-of-pack labeling to help people make healthier choices, Reformulating products to reduce salt, sugar, and trans fats; and strengthening primary healthcare to prevent, detect, and manage all forms of malnutrition. Together, these interventions can help to make healthy diets more available, affordable, and accessible. Healthy diets should not be a luxury. They are the foundation of health. And they should be within everyone's reach. I thank you.

To conclude this opening segment, we will now hear a video message from the Acting Executive Director of the World Food Programme, Mr. Carl Skou. who unfortunately was unable to join us in person today. We are, however, pleased to have with us on the podium WFP's Assistant Executive Director, Ms. Rania Dagash Kamara. Thank you for being here.

The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World report is a joint effort between FAO, IFAD, UNICEF, WHO and WFP, built on shared data and a shared goal: ending hunger. This year's report shows that progress is possible, but also that it is uneven. While some countries have made gains against chronic hunger, too many people are still being left behind. The problem is not that there isn't enough food, but that millions of people cannot afford or access it. Today, 1 in 3 people cannot afford a healthy diet, and the cost of one continues to rise. Latin America and the Caribbean have the highest average cost of a healthy diet of any region. But we know what can work to close that gap. I'm now in Guatemala, where despite encouraging progress in recent years, thousands of people still face food insecurity and malnutrition. Globally, El Niño is expected to be the worst in decades, here and around the world. And we're already seeing the impact of the droughts here in Central America, in the Dry Corridor. So hard-won gains are at risk, with small-scale farmers and vulnerable families hit the hardest. At the same time, we are seeing what is possible if we act early. WFP is working with the government communities and our partners, including not least FAO and IFAD, to build more resilient food systems before the crisis strikes. Together, we are supporting smallholder farmers with the tools, the training, the resources they need to grow more food, increase their incomes, and provide healthier diets for themselves and their children. This is one example of how we can anticipate and break the cycle of crisis by working together across agencies, with governments and with communities. And if it can be done here in Guatemala, it can be done everywhere. Delegates, around the world, WFP delivers every day alongside governments and partners fortified foods in emergencies, school meals that keep children healthy and learning, and nutrition support for pregnant and breastfeeding women and young children. These investments help prevent today's affordability crisis from becoming tomorrow's nutrition crisis. At the core of any efficient action is reliable data. It tells us where the needs are the greatest and helps us target and prioritize our response. What is missing now is financing at the scale this moment requires. I thank you.

Thank you to WFP for also emphasizing the importance of anticipatory action and rapid response to prevent crisis. I would like to mention that UNICEF is also one of the main partners of SOFI, but unfortunately, Ms. Russell couldn't join us today, but we would like to acknowledge acknowledge their contribution. Now that we have heard from the leadership of the SOFI partner agencies, to better understand this year's findings, I'm pleased to invite the FAO Chief Economist, Mr. Maximo Torero Cullen, to present the key messages of 2026 report. Maximo, the floor is yours.

Thank you. Thank you very much, Director-General, Excellencies sitting with us here, all the partner members, WFP, President Lario, thank you very much for joining us today. We bring back the SOFI to Rome. It went to Brazil, where Brazil moved out of the hunger map, then it went to Ethiopia, and now it's back to Rome, where India has made huge progress, Africa is stabilizing, and Dominican Republic is out of the hunger map. It's a great pleasure for me to present the 2026 edition of the State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World. Which is a huge effort of 5 agencies working together, enormous amount of technical teams led by David Laborde and José Rosero, and also of all technical teams working in the writing chapters. I cannot mention all of them, but it's important to understand that they are the ones that are working very hard, and it's a huge UN collaboration of 5 agencies working together, which normally is not referred to. Achieving zero hunger requires not only that populations have access to sufficient dietary energy, but that they have economic access to safe, diverse and nutritious foods. Yet, as we will see, healthy diets remain unaffordable for an unacceptable portion of humanity. This year's report explores this pressing challenge, examining the structural drivers behind the persistently high cost of a healthy diet and the systemic barriers proven to access it. What is important is what we see in this slide. That's one of the most important messages we bring this year. First, let us begin with the fragile retreat of global hunger. The latest data from 2025 confirms a sustained gradual improvement for the 3rd consecutive year. And we need to put this in context. We have the COVID-19, the war in Ukraine, and all the different conflicts we are seeing. So we need to give a huge applause to our farmers and people. An estimated 7.9% of the global population faced hunger in 2025, which translates to roughly 645 million people, between— and we normally bring this uncertainty— 608 and 686 million people in the world. While this represents a decrease of 14 million compared to 2024, 43 million people compared to our peak in 2022, we must acknowledge a sobering reality: we are still far above the levels recorded in 2015, when Sustainable Development Goals were launched, with about 50 million more people facing hunger today. Furthermore, the epicenter of hunger has definitely shifted. In 2025, Africa hosted the largest number of undernourished people, 309 million individuals affected, passing for the first time Asia. Today, 1 in 5 people in Africa faces hunger daily. So although the prevalence rate has reduced in 0.3, as was mentioned by the Director-General, because of population growth, because of conflicts, we are seeing that the African numbers still are increasing. So this is partially due to the population growth, which is 2.3%, compared to a lower population growth of Asia of 0.6% per year, but also a number of structural and conjunctural shocks impacting the continent. But the new estimates for Africa point to a halt in the prolonged upward trend in hunger. While we are making progress, the trajectory remains insufficient. to achieve our 2030 targets. The reduction in global hunger has been largely driven by Asia and Latin America and the Caribbean, both of which have shown a steady improvement, a consistent progress and recovery since the pandemic. Asia alone has decreased over 80 million undernourished people since 2021, and this is mainly driven by India, as it was mentioned before. Digging deeper into the year-to-year changes, we see a highly uneven geographical landscape. Most importantly, the prolonged upward trends in hunger that has plagued Africa since 2017 has finally come to a halt in 2025. However, as I mentioned before, in terms of absolute numbers, we need to start to decrease those absolute numbers too, and to find a solution to that. The only sub-region in the world where hunger is clearly on the rise is Western Asia, and this needs to change. Looking beyond chronic hunger, the SDG Indicator 2.1.2 reveals in 2025 an estimated 2.1 billion people, or 25.8% of the global population, experiencing moderate or severe food insecurity. We are seeing a continuous downward trend since 2020, Meaning 135 million fewer people are food insecure today than 5 years ago. That is equivalent to nearly 86 million fewer people experiencing food insecurity in 2025 compared to 2024. Steady progress has been seen in Asia and Latin America and the Caribbean since 2020, and there was an improvement in Africa in 2025 for the first time since the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development goal was launched in 2015. Compared to urban areas, as you can see in the figure on the right-hand side. And women continue to be disproportionately affected compared to men. While the greater gap has narrowed, because especially the woman and male gap increased substantially during COVID-19, now it has narrowed slightly from 2024 to 2025, the persistence of these inequalities demands targeted gender transformative and rural-focused policies. to ensure no one is left behind. We need a structural change so that these gaps are finally structurally reduced for the future. Even if people have enough calories, the question is if they can afford a diet that actually is needed, a healthy diet. Today, in 2025, for 2.7 billion people, the answer is no. Compared to 2021, the percentage of global population unable to afford a healthy diet has decreased in almost all regions, reflecting a broader economic recovery and rising incomes. But there is a glaring exception: Africa. In Africa, the unaffordability of a healthy diet actually increased, leaving a staggering 66.6% of the continent's population entirely priced out of a healthy diet. This widening inequality underscores that our agrifood systems are systematically failing to make nutritious foods economically accessible where they are needed first. And the lack of affordability translates directly into global dietary crises for most of the vulnerable— women and children. Monitoring healthy diets has been a critical gap in tracking progress towards the achievement of the SDG 2. The inclusion of the Minimum Dietary Diversity, the MDD indicator, in the SDGs indicator frameworks in 2025 makes an important step in filling this gap. Dietary diversity remains critically inadequate. Less than one-third of young children and only about 62% of women globally consume a minimum dietary diversity diet. Only 30.8% of children aged 6 to 23 months worldwide consume a minimum dietary diet— diverse diet. Major data gaps continue to limit a full understanding of dietary diversity of children, and women in different parts of the world, and that's where we need to keep working to improve. The stark truth is that the world is off track, as you can see in this figure, to achieve all 7 of the 2030 Global Maternal, Infant, Young Child Nutrition Targets. Conditions like stunting, wasting and overweight among children under 5 are improving, only marginally and not at the necessary pace. So the issue here is to accelerate the improvement and to invest in a huge acceleration of this improvement in these indicators that we are doing well. But surprisingly and alarmingly, anaemia in women of reproductive age and adult obesity are actually worsening, and this is a reflection, we believe, of the lack of access also to healthy diets, not only to calories, and that is also something that this report tries to resolve. Adult obesity has risen from 12.1% in 2012 to 16.2% today. The stark truth is that the world is off track to achieve all 7 of the 20 indicators that we have seen. Now, what this report tries to do in its second part is to focus on one component of access to healthy diets. As you know, the 2.7 billion is about affordability, which links income Of course, but that is also related to the cost of the healthy diet. How costly is this healthy diet that we want people to have access to reduce undernourishment and also reduce overnutrition? And the third component is behavioural change. It's how we can change the way we consume, because I can have the resources to buy a healthy diet, but I decided not to do it, and that's a behavioural change. So what this report tries to do is to look at how we can work to reduce the cost of a healthy diet, because unhealthy dietary patterns impose an extravagant hidden cost on our global economy. We did this in the SOFA, where we look at the hidden costs, and we found that $8.1 trillion of the $11 to $12 trillion of hidden costs are because of health issues. This is related to non-communicable diseases, This is related to the issue of lack of access to healthy diets. So this publication tries to go into that element of the cost of a healthy diet. Poor diets accounted for 12.3% of all deaths globally in 2023. So to combat this, we must tackle the price tag of nutrition, which is the very first signal consumers face in the market. The current inflationary context is not helping at all. that we discussed also in the SOFI 2025, and where we are challenged right now because of what is happening in the world. And that is where we need to change and work together to improve that. So what are the findings in terms of the cost of the healthy diet? As you can see here, driven by food inflation, the global average cost of a healthy diet reached $4.28 purchase power parity dollars per capita per day. Now, this cost sits about 40% above the international extreme poverty line, making it a mathematical impossibility for the poorest populations to eat well. It has priced out 32.7% of the global population, meaning they cannot afford this healthy diet. And this cost also increased sharply in the last years since 2021. The increase is 25%, and this is because of commodity prices and, as a result of that, food inflation. But before we go into the details of the cost and the solutions to the problem of the cost, it's essential to define the precise scope of this year's report and set clear expectations about what it covers. To guide our analysis, the SOFI 2026 report is structured around the 4 critical pillars: understanding the numbers behind the food prices, determining the structural drivers that inflate those prices, and identifying the targeted interventions to bring them down, and finally, design the reforms needed to implement those changes. As the Director-General was saying, we need to implement and not to talk so much, so we need to start bringing solutions based on what we have learned so that countries can move forward. And that's— we have learned a lot, and that's what also the Global Alliance Against Hunger and Poverty is bringing up through the pillar of knowledge. To ensure our policy focus remains sharp, we must be clear about what this report does not cover. First, our analysis is strictly focused on the economic conditions of healthy diets. Second, our primary lens is the absolute cost of a healthy diet. Finally, our framework is dedicated entirely to the solutions to reduce these costs across the agrifood value chains, rather than retaining the well-documented health or economic benefits of consuming a healthy diet. In short, this report provides a targeted supply-side blueprint where FAO has a huge— with our partners— a huge capacity to do. We are deconstructing the $4.28 PPP per capita to understand exactly why it remains so high and providing a roadmap to systematically dismantle the economic barriers keeping healthy diets out of reach to 2.7 billion people. It is vital to understand what this $4.28 figure actually measures. The cost of a healthy diet represents the absolute minimum market floor. It calculates the cheapest possible combination of locally available products across 6 strict food groups needed to meet dietary guidelines for 2,330 kilocalories. What this metric purposefully excludes are the hidden variables of real life. It ignores the heavy overhead cost of time, water, cooking fuel required for meal preparation, and it does not account for cultural preferences or convenience. Therefore, this $4.28 figure is a high conservative baseline. The true lived cost of putting healthy meals on the table is significantly higher for many families when we consider opportunity costs, which this report doesn't include right now. When we break down the composition— and this graph I think is very telling— of the average of healthy diets basket, we confront a fundamental imbalance in our agrifood systems: the calories versus the cost paradox. We see a massive disconnect between the dietary energy a food group provides and what it actually costs to the consumer. For example, starchy staples provide half of our daily required kilocalories— 50%— yet they only account, as you can see in the figure, to 60% of the cost of this healthy diet. In stark contrast, the highly nutritious foods we desperately need to combat malnutrition and to avoid overweight and obesity are disproportionately expensive. Fruits and vegetables, for example, together they provide just 13% of the required calories, but they represent a staggering 40% of the total diet cost. Similarly, animal-sourced foods supply another 30% of the calories but drive 28% of the financial burden. While these results are not surprising, they provide a key entry point to understand how and where to act. And again, understand that fruits and vegetables, animal foods require cooling chains, require better transportation, require food safety standards, and those are perishable goods and we need to find solutions to that so that the local costs can also decline. The global average of the $4.28 PPP dollars per capita per day masks also profound countries and regional disparities. At the global level, and to our surprise, it varies from 2 to 6. But the country differences are largely explained by regional differences, and the reality is that the price tag for a healthy diet is highly dependent on where you live. Surprisingly, Latin America and the Caribbean faces the highest average cost in the world, reaching $4.91 PPP dollars per person per day in 2025. As the charts indicate, this peak is heavily driven by the exorbitant retail price of highly perishable vegetables, direct results of severe domestic logistical friction and transport inefficiency. Amazing for a continent that is a bigger supplier of cereals and high-value commodities to the world. But this raises the question: we also need to look at our local markets. And yes, smallholder farmers, family farmers, are supplying the food for our local markets, but we need to work with them so that we increase the supply, especially for fruits and vegetables. In Africa, the cost stands at $4.35 PPP per person per day, but the primary culprit is completely different. Here, animal-sourced foods are the most prohibitively expensive food groups. This reflects deep structural challenges across the continent, including severe deficits in cold chains, high feed costs, and low baseline livestock productivity. And we also need to look at fisheries and aquaculture, how we can accelerate that, because this is the continent where more proteins are needed and enzymes, things that not only fish and aquaculture but also terrestrial animals bring. Meanwhile, Asia, where a diet costs $4.33 PPP, fresh fruits and vegetables heavily inflate the daily basket due to massive post-harvest losses. Conversely, North America, Europe and Oceania enjoy the lowest average cost, $3.64 PPP, as decades of capital-intensive policy support have made their staples and animal-sourced foods structurally cheap. The gradient between economic development and lower price is still statistically significant, but the relation is not simple. An increase in GDP by 10% translates into a reduction of healthy diets in 0.39%. Here is where growth doesn't resolve the problem. It has to be inclusive and we have to make the transformation to make it inclusive. So more efficient economies make healthy diets cheaper, but economic growth alone is not enough. How to fix this? And that's the goal of this report. The report identifies solutions along 2 complementary axes: expanding supply sustainably, reducing unit costs across the value chain, and to do this governments must bundle hardware and software interventions. Hardware refers to capital expenditures, investments in physical infrastructure like cold storage, rural roads and irrigation, as well as improved seeds. Software refers to regulatory reforms, repurposing agricultural subsidies, facilitating trade and enforcing competition policy. The critical lessons from our analysis is that we cannot run optimized software on broken hardware. Subsidy reforms— repurposing of subsidies— will fail to lower retail prices if severe infrastructure bottlenecks still exist, and we have learned a lot about it. Market incentives fail if physical capacity to store and move food does not exist. Both require simultaneous action. And now we have the capacity with our modeling tools and our data to assess those problems and to look at the whole value chains. We are talking a lot about corridors in Africa, but we need to overlay the corridors with productive potential, trying to see how we connect that infrastructure of roads, of irrigation, to agricultural potential. We cannot keep doing corridors around natural resources only, of mining or energy. We have to bring that to the potential of agriculture. That's what will make this possible and that's what will create the change. Moving to our next crucial finding, we must ask, where should we direct our investments to drive the largest price reductions? As this slide demonstrates, the right sectoral targeting of interventions matters enormously. So an impact of a 10% increase in efficiency at the global level on the hardware interventions, for example, in starchy foods, will reduce the cost to zero. More or less. In animal-sourced foods, in 2.3%, but in fruits and vegetables, in 9%, close to 1 to 1. So we know where to do this prioritization, we know where targeted interventions should happen so that we can reduce and have the target that we want to achieve. And we can look at this across regions. The right targeting of these hardware interventions matters and there is no universal blueprint. And here the intensity of the colours say what is the importance and you need to look at it by the columns because we are comparing across regions, not the horizontal one. For that we need more analysis and in the report you will see. But as you can see, there is diversity of what are the intensity of interventions across regions. In Latin America and the Caribbean, logistics, local logistics, domestic logistics are essential. Also, midstream distribution of markets and access to markets locally. But in other parts of the world, in Africa for example, post-harvest handling will be central, and also ensuring the cold chains so that we can move forward. So again, there is a huge diversity that we need to optimize and allocate our resources in the best possible way. To operationalize this transition, we propose 3 pillars of action. Pillar 1: target the midstream. We must relentlessly attack the 70-75% of food costs that accumulate post-farmgate through targeted hardware investments that eliminate physical food losses. Pillar 2: Update the software. We must halt the historical over-subsidization of starchy staples and redirect finite public research and development and fiscal transfers towards high-cost, highly perishable, nutrient-dense foods like fruits and vegetables. This needs to change. We have been repeating this for years. Pillar 3: we need to sequence for stability. We have learned a lot from the past. We learned from the quinoa example. We learned from other superfoods. We need to sequence interventions so that when we have foods that become extremely relevant for the world, the supply is ready. When they become extremely relevant for our local market, the supply is ready. We cannot just have and propose and incentivize a demand when we are not prepared for our supply. And that is where data, accountability, policy coherence, and public-private partnerships will help to move this trajectory. We need to accelerate this process because we are facing challenges. And let me finalize with looking ahead. What is ahead to us and what we can do by 2030 is extremely important. But there are many challenges that are ahead of us, and we are living some of them today. We have a huge geopolitical fracture. We have fiscal contraction in many of the countries which are facing significant challenge even to access the minimum calories they need. And we have weather extremes. We have violated 7 of the 9 planetary boundaries. We know for sure frequency and intensity of climate events will happen. So we need to be prepared for this. We need to be prepared for a world where value chains are no longer just-in-time but are just-in-case. We need to be prepared for a world where trade will be fragmented, to a world where the costs and inputs for agriculture are going to increase, and to a world where climate issues like El Niño, for example, could affect us even more and the compound effects could affect us even more. So we did some simulations on the trajectory and we see that, for example, just taking into account the Strait of Hormuz problem, we could be in a situation where we will be facing 522 million people by 2030 in hunger. And that's what we need to avoid. Now, we have 2 types of shocks: man-made and natural shocks. The man-made, I call them uncertainties. We don't have too much of a control, although we should have control because they are man-made. But the natural ones, we can increase our resilience, preventing and having capacity of absorption. And that's where we need to work to create this bridge where true food security requires systemic shifts to make nutrient-dense foods accessible to all, where we know for sure that we need to sustain calories available to protect the improvement of the 7.8% of our POU, but also we need to scale healthy diets affordability and target interventions to lower these costs of the healthy diet, which is at $4.28 PPP. So, colleagues, let me finish here with a summary of everything I have been talking for the last 24 minutes. And thank you so much, and let's hope that we can keep on track on what we are trying to do and we can really convert the change, and congratulating all the countries that have progressed so much in the last year. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Maximo. Thank you for your insightful presentation. For those joined us on Zoom, I would like to invite you to use the Q&A feature. And submit your question to our technical teams. We now move to the ministerial segment of today's program. The findings of this year's SOFI report remind us that making healthy diets more affordable requires coordinated action across agri-food systems and strong national leadership. We are therefore privileged to hear from distinguished panelists who will share their country experience and priorities. Excellencies, my question to the panel is, the 2026 SOFI report highlights the importance of making healthy diets more affordable and identifies the key factors influencing their costs. Could you please share the main measures your country has taken to improve access, to affordable healthy diets, and where you see the greatest opportunities for further progress. To ensure we have the opportunity to hear from all distinguished speakers, may I kindly invite you to please keep your intervention to 5 minutes. So, our first speaker is His Excellency José Ignacio Paliza, Minister of the Presidency of the Dominican Republic, Who is joining us online? Excellency, can you hear us?

Sí, buenos días.

Thank you. You have the floor.

Buenos días.

Buenas tardes.

Yes, I can hear you. Good afternoon to everyone. Distinguished Director General. Well, I have to confess that I'm really, really moved today. And I know that you're planning to visit in October this year, and I hope that we can celebrate our victory achieved today and work further on it. Now, one child who's hungry, one Dominican person who's hungry is one too many, so we have to really ensure that we can for the basic necessities for all. So I would like to thank FAO for its ongoing support, for the strategies it provides, and also for its expertise and recommendations, which has helped us systematically make headway since 2020 to achieve our aims of hunger— zero hunger. Without you, it wouldn't have been possible. All of these initiatives are necessary and human and guarantee food for our people. It's crucial to combat hunger. It's an act of deep humanism. I would also like to apologize for joining you only online, but we had last-minute commitments which meant that I was not able to travel to join you in Rome. Friends, the Dominican Republic has achieved headway in reducing hunger. We've supported public policies aimed at guaranteeing food security and nutrition for our population. In line with this year's SOFIA report, basically we have got to below 2.5% in our aim. And we have pushed on increasing foodstuffs, enhancing supply, furthering social protection, inter-institutional protection led by the National Board on Food Security and Nutrition, which it is my honor to chair. We have a law on food sovereignty and nutrition which establishes a means of governance which focuses on 5 main pillars: availability, access to food and nutrition, climate change, and the risks of governance. There is a clear will from our President to change under nutrition, turn it around and establish permanent areas for coordination and decision-making between the various different players within the food system, the aim being to really bring home this national effort and achieve zero hunger. We have a forum that promotes joint solutions and also encourages inclusion, including with FAO. So we have policies intended to strengthen the agricultural sector, and that's led to sustained growth in our production on many fronts. In 2026, agricultural production was up by 5.6% compared with the preceding year. That outcome responds to ongoing policies which aim at increasing agricultural funding at 0% rates from the Agricultural Bank. And we are also bringing in mechanization to production. And we have issued many land property certificates as well, which strengthens the legal security of small-scale producers and particularly expands access to funding. We have— we are introducing further technical developments in irrigation. We are supporting women, young people, and micro companies established under law, and we are working on fuels and fertilizers, trying to mitigate the impact of the geopolitical crises at world level which are driving prices upwards. Now, real income has increased between 2019 and 2025. It was an increase of 15.2%. That increase was possible thanks to an increase in labor productivity. We have seen increases also in the minimum wage. The minimum wage in the free zone areas increased by 25% in this year alone, whereas that was 30% in the tourism sector. We've reduced hunger between 2020 by 21%, from 21% in 2020 to 17% last year. One of the main pillars to reduce vulnerability for lower-income households has been to strengthen our social protection network. As such, first and foremost, we strengthened the school feeding program. Now we have 2.1 million pupils who receive a meal at school every day involving local producers who supply the program. We have also duplicated the number of beneficiaries within the food program, which supports 1.7 million households right now, strengthening the capacity of the most vulnerable to buy the food products in the basket. Now, 1.3 million households are being supported in buying basic fuel, and that helps also reduce deforestation. Fourthly, we've extended the, the cheap restaurants and canteens across the face of the country. That has meant that we've been able to increase the COVID of subsidized feeding, which is free, providing support on a daily basis through meals which are provided. We've also been facilitating access without intermediaries to fresh food and produce through producer markets and also mobile shops, also fairs and support for food and vegetable producers supporting people throughout the country. All these efforts require reliable information which allow us to assess the public policies we've implemented. Our National Statistics Office has been supported by FAO in drawing up the balance sheet, which we hadn't had for over 50 years, which is really helping us to strengthen the system. As of now, this tool will be updated on an annual basis. Ladies and gentlemen, the headway we have made so far is important, but it doesn't stop at indicators. There is a face, a family, a child that's able to learn and look to the future with hope, and a producer who is doing a dignified job behind all of these figures. This is measured by the ability of not the wealth established, but the number of children reduced who are removed from hunger. Hunger is not just a lack of food, it's a lack of opportunities, and we have to continue to work together convinced that we can create a world where food is not a privilege but a right. Thank you very much indeed to FAO today. As Dominicans, as the government, we are committed more than ever to the task of ridding hunger for everyone across. Thank you very much indeed.

Muchas gracias por su discurso.

Thank you very much for that intervention.

And to His Excellency Ibrahim Abdurrahmanov, Minister for Agriculture, of the Republic of Uzbekistan. Excellency, the floor is yours.

Thank you very much, Excellencies, Director-General, President of IFAT, Mr. Alvaro, and all colleagues. I'm very excited to participate in the Sofia meeting today. Thank you for invitation. Actually, these always FIO meetings, this kind of discussions is a big learning platform for us. So, thank you very much giving this opportunity. Today, I will speak a little bit about country perspective, food nutrition, food security. Nutrition is very important for Uzbekistan. Just we finished national census and we're exceeding 39 million people population, so we expected a little bit low but came up, so we're increasing.

We're increasing.

Each year, 1 billion newborn child and a huge task. My brother, DJ, His Excellency, said very correctly, being Agriculture Minister is very difficult in the scenario of expanding population especially. Of course, science and technology education is a key for anything. It's a ground for development, But agriculture ministry, being agriculturalist, very complex because in any decision you make behind the people, lives. So very difficult. And growing population, of course, food security requires lots of new innovations, new knowledge. In Uzbekistan, we particularly pay very great attention because of expanding newborn population. 1 million child every year gives very, you know, huge responsibility in front of us, in front of government. So that's why we understood that food security, not its ability for abundance of the food, it should— it's profitability, of course. Food security counts for profit. Also safe food. we all discussed today, also sharing the food, new mechanisms. In Uzbekistan, because of our President leadership, where our President building new society for Uzbekistan and Central Asia, it's a new society based on human dignity, I always say. Because of our present leadership, we aim right now our undernourished people about 2.5% based on our— compared to our population. Now, we have a target, reduce this 40% by 2030. So undernourished people will be 1.5%. So believe it or not, Like 5 years now, within 5 years, we reduced poverty of the country, poverty like 35% was 5 years back, now 6.6%, and this year end will be 5%. So it's a huge kind of task, and of course it's behind this agriculture. One of the initiatives we took, for example, Mr. Alvaro said, school people, nutrition, school students. We have several regions piloting, 2 regions now, fully free food for school. Karakalpakstan and Khorasan region, and it's a present initiative. Or recently we took another, like sharing the food I mentioned, very important. We have communities, Each community will have like 100 tons capacity of fridges, save the food. So this is another initiative. So many initiatives we're taking up, but I would like to share, in the morning I met our DG brother, Dr. Tu. We discussed a little bit, but I would like to share with them also a little bit my new initiatives taking in Uzbekistan. I would like to give you new directions that we're taking in Uzbekistan. It's a past era in agriculture and from 2 era in agriculture, 2 sectors. One is, of course, Uzbekistan agriculture, many other countries' agriculture also kind of founded based on market orientation. So we have market-driven agriculture programs for 2030, but it's not enough. In the process, like you see, undernourishment. Now we're revising it and making one plus. This is plus era for us. Market-oriented plus human-centered because of human dignity program of our president.

This is—

what does it mean? It means you have to produce, you have to get a profit, but you have to save natural resources for future generation, human-centered. This is one plus. Another plus, just Maximo mentioned in his presentation, software. We see genetics as a software. All the seeds, all the new varieties are software, hardware— I mean, hardware, I'm sorry, hardware.

Hardware.

We fueled lots of funding for creation lots of hardware, but we never worked on software. Software for us, epigenetics. So genetics plus epigenetics will be future of Uzbekistan and Central Asian agriculture. What does it mean? It's very simple. We never use epigenetic technologies, simple epigenetically informed agriculture technologies.

Thank you.

in food security system. For example, wheat, this year we have 10 million tonnes of wheat production. Never happened before. What have we done? Of course, lots of softwares by the President, subsidies supporting free market. It's softwares, as Maximo always highlighted. I appreciate. But what we have done, we just put all the seed before planting under refrigerator for 2 months. This is seed dormancy breaking technology that itself gives same fertilizer, same land, same use of the inputs. You will get at least 1 ton additional yield. Nothing changed, very simple, zero cost. This is another plus, genetics plus epigenetics. era for Uzbekistan. Another thing, nutrition. Nutrition is very good. You have to have good nutrition, safe, healthy nutrition. You have to eat every day, but you have to eat very cleverly. This is another nutrition plus epinutrition, we call it. We geneticists— myself, I am geneticist, that's why I love it— epinutrition. We have to give a concept for epinutrition. When to eat, how to eat, we have to regulate it, otherwise no food security for anybody. So this is plus technologies. For science also, STEM agriculture technologies, smart agriculture. Without smart agriculture, there is no future. However, STEM doesn't have a heart. So what we call STEM plus HEKI. HEKI means humanity, ethics, creativity, imagination. STEM plus HEKI will be our innovation ecosystem in Uzbekistan, and I offer also for others. We just published one paper in big journal, so you can read it. So this is plus technology, but you know, all the food nutrition, food security, Programs need science and technology. However, science and technology academics— I'm an academician myself— universities, they are working for prestige. They have lots of prestige on the shelves. They have to use now 2 eras. So prestige, from prestige to practice.

Thank you.

This should be revisited program for all academies. Another thing, we funded research, myself also as an innovation minister past funded. I funded proof of concept. Did wrong. We have to change from proof of concept funding, proof of use funding in agriculture. We have to— fund used directly because all the innovations sitting on the shelves because we first prove it, lose lots of time. We do not have time. So this is another era I call 2 eras plus eras in agriculture that we're applying. And from 2 eras in agriculture, from prestige from proof of concept funding to the practice and proof of use. So this should be kind of very important for Central Asian ecosystem. May not be directly adopted for other ecosystems or agriculture, but we in Central Asia, because of help of FAO technical support, because of IFAD funds, rural areas we fund, we came to know that we're making lots of errors before. Now we have to revise it very wisely. And that's why this SOFA meeting, SOFA 21-6, very important. And era in agriculture should be new era. We have to go from hardware, as Maximo said, to the software funding, using softwares more to use our currently available hardware. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Excellency, for your presentation and for mentioning these— all these innovative scientific but practical initiatives from your country. Thank you. I'm delighted now to invite His Excellency Sheikh Omar Ba, Minister for Agriculture, Food Sovereignty, and Livestock of the Republic of Senegal. Excellency, you have the floor. Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Je vais parler en français si vous permettez. I will be speaking French. FAO Director-General, ladies Ladies and gentlemen, fellow ministers, the 2026 report crucially raises the central question about what is the point of production if healthy food is not affordable to the people who produce it. In Senegal, we're striving to solve exactly that contradiction, and I'm going to run now through the measures we are planning and those areas in which we are focusing our efforts. Now, through the vision of the President of our Republic for 2050, we in Senegal have established working along 4 lines. Firstly, we want to bring pressure to bear on the cost of production and reduce dependency on imports, which is recommended by the report as well. Our national food sovereignty strategy established an ambitious aim of bringing down imports of rice and wheat because we spend large amounts every year on importing foodstuff, and therefore it's both economically and nutritionally important to reduce that figure. Now, we have supported water supply in the valleys to increase our rice production so that we become more than 70% self-sufficient by 2030 in rice production. Market gardening will help diversify as well the costs of access to essential micronutrients. A second line is reducing post-harvest losses. Which silently drive up the cost of food. Senegal is investing in storage infrastructure, preservation and processing structure on a neighborhood basis, which you mentioned as well. Post-harvest losses amount for almost 30% in certain regions. Stocking with prepayment allows producers to start sales at a low price, which— to avoid the creation of shortages. Director-General, you are right in saying that we have to invest in food system infrastructure. That's why our 3rd line of action is to work through public supply chains. Our school canteens, are locally supplied, and that provides a double lever because it creates predictable demand for local producers and provides food for millions of people, particularly in those age ranges where malnutrition leaves irreversible effects. Also, we're working on the side of public procurement for those school canteens, and then we are also working on nutrition sensitive and targeting monetary transfers towards vulnerable households and also providing subsidies for basic foodstuffs, which allows to support purchasing power in those areas seriously affected by food insecurity affecting millions of people. These provisions depend on nutritional behavior involvement in antenatal consultations as well, and nutrition-sensitive diets. Where have we seen the most opportunities and the greatest progress? We have to be honest, despite this headway, indicators show that we are still not on the right track. 18% of stunting, 10% of emaciation, And we have also anemia in children below 5, and that means we have to work harder. There are 3 opportunities which I can see, and this is also what was presented by Mr. Torero. Firstly, we have to really lever local agriculture. We cultivate local cereals. Lent, sorghum, with high nutritious value, which often have more micronutrients than the rice that we import, and they are produced at a lower cost. Nonetheless, they're still marginalized in urban consumption habits. So we have to change that through nutritional education, through reformulating locally processed products, and working through institutional markets. Also, locally produced goods are often cheaper than imported ones, but there is still a lack of access for markets. We have to establish producer-consumer platforms to reduce the gaps. The Director-General was right in saying that we have to invest in infrastructure and, and and the social security side as well. We have to enhance seeds as well. But how do we do that? Because those people who are supposed to produce the seed capital from our institutes are leaving. There is an equation right now that we should— we need to bring thought to so that we can retarget our public policies, and we're working on that now. My last line of action is to enhance regional coordination. In West Africa, because what we're doing doesn't stop at national borders. The cost of healthy food in Senegal, because that's what you asked me to talk about, is largely determined by the fluidity in trade in the region— Mauritania, Mali, Guinea, for example. And we have to reduce non-tariff barriers, harmonize health standards, and invest in transport corridors. These are levers which we can't use on our own, but our President has understood that, and I think there are opportunities which allow us to quickly invest in this. And finally, we have to invest in evidence. You talked about statistics. We have to further document the progress we are making so that we can correct before it's too late. So to conclude, the 2026 report reminds us that the cost of healthy food is the result of political choices. We are determined in Senegal to make the right produce— the right decisions to support our producers, our consumers, and generations growing up now. We're counting on FAO and the solidarity of this Roundtable to accelerate the transformation. We will be talking to the Dominican Republic to hear how they have managed to lift their country out of Thank you.

Thank you very much indeed, Mr. Minister, for your words. Professor Peter Msophe, Deputy Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Agriculture of the United Republic of Tanzania. Professor Msophe, you have the floor.

Thank you.

Thank you very much, Moderator. Honorable Director-General of FAO, Excellency Ministers, distinguished delegates, ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon. It is my honor and privilege to deliver these remarks on behalf of the Honorable Daniel Godfrey Chungolo, Member of Parliament and Minister of Agriculture of the United Republic of Tanzania, who regrets that prior official commitments have prevented him from joining this important high-level launch of the State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World, SOFI 2026. He has asked me to convey his sincere appreciation to FAO and its partners convening this timely discussion. The SOFI 2026 report reminds us of a simple but powerful truth: food security is not achieved when food is available, but when everyone can afford a healthy diet every day. The report reminds us that Ending hunger is no longer only about producing sufficient food. It's about ensuring that everyone can consistently afford safe, diverse, and nutritious diet. It further demonstrates that the affordability of healthy diets is shaped by multiple factors, including economic conditions, agricultural value chains, regional disparities, and market inefficiencies, and calls for policies and investments that make nutritious food more accessible to all. For Tanzania, these findings strongly resonate with our national priorities. We recognize that Climate change, rising production costs, disruption in food systems, and economic shocks continue to increase the price of nutritious food, placing a disproportionate burden on low-income households, women, children, and rural communities. These challenges require us to move beyond increasing food production alone And focus on transforming agrifood systems so that they deliver: 1, availability; 2, affordability; 3, accessibility; and 4, improved nutrition simultaneously. Excellencies, this vision is reflected in Tanzania Food System Approach. Which views agriculture as an integrated system connecting production, nutrition, value addition, markets, finance, innovation, and environmental sustainability. Our aspiration is not only to feed ourselves, but also to become a reliable supplier of quality food to regional and international markets. To achieve this, the government has significantly increased public investment in agriculture. Recognizing that transforming agri-food system requires sustained public investment, Tanzania has significantly increased financing for agriculture. Public investment in the crop subsector has grown from US$88 million in 2020-2021 to over US$420 million in the 2025-2026 financial year, while investment in the livestock and fisheries subsector has increased from US$26.7 million to US$166.7 million over the same period of time. Now, between 2021 and 2025, Tanzania food production increased from 17.1 million metric tons to 23.7 million metric tons, while agricultural exports rose from US$1.2 billion to $3.73 billion. During the same period, our food self-sufficiency ratio improved from 114% to 130%, and agricultural contribution to economic growth increased from 2.7% to 4.2%. Now, these investments demonstrate our strong political commitment, starting from the top, the President of the country, all the way to everybody who is involved, to building resilient, inclusive, and sustainable agrifood systems. However, we fully recognize that increasing production alone is not sufficient. The central message of the SOFI report is that health diet must become affordable. This requires strong investment across the entire agrifood value chain, from production and storage to processing, transportation, distribution, and markets, while promoting innovation, reducing food loss and waste, improving market efficiency, and strengthening resilience to climate change. These are exactly the policy direction highlighted in the report and essential for reducing the cost of health debt and accelerating progress toward SDG Target 2.1 and 2.2. Excellencies, looking ahead, Tanzania remains firmly committed to this transformation through Vision 2050 and Agricultural Master Plan 2050. Achieving this will require stronger collaboration among governments, international organizations, research institutions, development partners, financial institutions, and the private sector. No single institution can overcome the challenges of and affordable health diets alone. In conclusion, Tanzania welcomed the 2026 SOFA report and its evidence-based recommendations. The report provides an important roadmap for strengthening policies and investments that reduce the cost of health diets while improving nutrition, livelihoods, and resilience. Let us seize this opportunity to turn the evidence presented in the SOFI 2026 report into concrete action. Together, we can build an agrifood system that makes healthy diets affordable for all, strengthen resilience, and ensure that no one is left behind on our journey towards zero hunger.

I thank you very much Thank you very much for your speech, and I would like to take this opportunity to thank our panel for your thoughtful and compelling interventions. We really appreciate your leadership and commitment to ensure food security and access to healthy diets for all. We have reached the closing segment of today's event, and I'm honored to introduce Her Excellency Fernanda Machiavelli, Minister of Agrarian Development and Family Agriculture, Federative Republic of Brazil. Excellency, you have the floor.

Thank you.

Excellencies, Director-General Xu Dongyu, Dr. Massimo Torero, distinguished colleagues and partners, allow me first to congratulate FAO, IFAD, UNICEF, WFP, and WHO for another outstanding edition on the state of food security and nutrition in the world. I want to congratulate República Dominicana for this important achievement. Congratulations.

Thank you.

Exiting, exiting the hunger map is a truly remarkable accomplishment. This year's report addresses one of the defining questions of our time: how do we make healthy diets affordable for everyone? The report brings encouraging news. Global hunger has continued to decline for the 3rd consecutive year. Thank you. Latin America and the Caribbean have made remarkable progress, and Brazil is proud to have once again left the FAO Hunger Map. These achievements remind us that hunger is not inevitable. When governments prioritize the fight against hunger, poverty, and inequality, progress is possible. Yet the report also reminds us that our work is far from complete. Nearly one-third of humanity still cannot afford a healthy diet. The cost of healthy food remains one of the greatest obstacles to realizing the human right to adequate food. Excellencies, perhaps the most important contribution of this year's SOFI is that it moves us beyond describing the problem. It helps us understand why healthy diets remain expensive expensive, and more importantly, what governments can do about it. Brazil fully supports one of the report's key messages: making healthy diets more affordable requires transforming our agrifood systems in a sustainable way. No single policy can achieve this objective on its own. We need a comprehensive package of public policies that addresses how we produce, finance, innovate, distribute, and consume food. Listen to Massimo Toredo's presentation. I was reminded of Brazil's own experience. When President Lula returned to office in 2023, hunger had returned to our country. At the same time, obesity and chronic diseases had increased. Worse still, food inflation had outpaced overall inflation for 7 consecutive years. Our new strategy to fight hunger, therefore, had to focus not only on increasing people's incomes, but also on expanding the supply of and access to healthy food. It also required encouraging people to replace Ultra-processed foods with fresh, diverse, and healthy foods. And that's exactly what we did. Since 2023, Brazil has rebuilt an integrated public policy agenda through the Brazil Without Hunger Plan, combining 3 dimensions: increasing household incomes, strengthening food security policies, and mobilizes society to tackle hunger and promote healthy diets. This integrated approach recognizes that access to healthy food depends not only on the availability of food, but also on people's ability to afford it, and on incentives faced by producers, and on the way food systems are organized. With regards to food production and supply, areas under the responsibility of the ministry I lead, I would like to highlight some key lessons from Brazil's experience. First, we must change incentives at the farm level. Public policies have a critical role in shaping what is produced, how it is produced, and who produces it. Rural finance, technical assistance, innovation, and market access can encourage more sustainable and diversified production systems. Brazil has been strengthening support for family farming by directing public policies toward the production of health food, agroecological systems, and socio-biodiversity products. It's important to say that you have a credit— rural credit that is targeted to family farmers and that we reduce the rate taxes in order to promote the production of food, agroecological food, and to promote rural women economic autonomy. This approach recognizes that family farmers, including rural women, are not only food producers. They are essential actors in building healthier, more resilient and more sustainable agrifood systems. Second, we must reduce the cost of producing healthy foods. The world is undergoing a profound agricultural transformation. We are progressively moving from production systems predominantly dependent on chemical inputs towards systems increasingly based on biological process, knowledge, and innovation. This transition must be accelerated. When governments combine research, technical assistance, and affordable finance, agroecological systems can become economically attractive and resilient. Brazil is supporting this transition through investments in bioinputs, including new legislation that regulates the sector and enables family farming cooperatives to collectively produce bioinputs for their members. We are also investing in research and innovation to reduce dependence on external inputs as chemical fertilizers. That's why food in Latin America has increased the prices, because we are importing fertilizers and with all these geopolitical issues, we are getting a huge impact in our cost of production. At the same time, Brazil has made significant progress in reducing deforestation and restoring degraded landscapes. Through initiatives such as productive forests, agroforestry systems, we are demonstrating that environmental restoration can generate food, income, and economic opportunities for rural communities. These systems combine short-term food production with long-term crops and trees, restoring ecosystems while creating diversified sources of income. Third, we must create reliable demand for healthy food. Transforming production is only part of the solution. Farmers need markets that value diversity and sustainability. Brazil's experience shows that public procurement can simultaneously strengthen family farming and improve access to healthy Our school feeding program provides a stable market for family farmers while ensuring healthy meals for millions of students across the country. Similarly, our food acquisition policies connect family farmers with food banks, community kitchens, and social assistance networks. Unlike highly specialized, highly commodity, unlike commodity systems, family farmers produce an extraordinary diversified— diversity of foods. More than 400 types of fruits, vegetables, legumes, grains, and sociobiodiversity products are brought for our program of food acquisition. Public procurement creates the stable demand needed for this diversity through strengthening rural incomes while improving the availability of healthy Fourth, we must ensure that health food reaches every neighborhood. Health food often becomes expensive not because farmers receive high prices, but because costs accumulate between production and consumption. Long supply chains, multiple intermediaries, and fragmented distribution systems can make fresh and nutritious food less accessible. Reducing these barriers require policies that improves logistics, shorten supply chains, and connect producers and consumers more efficiently. This is another reminder, reminder that reducing the cost of healthy diets require look at the entire food system, not only agricultural production. Fifth, we must strengthen resilience against food price volatility. Food price instability remains one of the greatest threats to health diets, particularly for vulnerable populations. Strategic reserves, investments in storage, and well-designed policy food stocks can protect both producers and consumers. These instruments are not only emergency responses. There are also mechanisms to stabilize markets and maintain access to essential foods. And then, in a climate— in particular, in the context of climate change, building strategic food reserves becomes even more important. I would also like to highlight 2 other key policies. Guaranteeing minimal prices for agricultural products and providing rural insurance, enabling farmers to better cope with the growing risks associated with agricultural production. And I should also say that our greatest remaining challenge, Torero, is in fact improving infrastructure and logistics for food distribution. We need to ensure that healthy food reaches urban peripheries and cities in the north of our country, particularly in areas we identify as food deserts. To address these challenges, we have developed a national food supply plan which includes a range of measures to strengthen food distribution and improve access to health food, includes establishing a network of affordable food outlets, supporting farmers' markets in urban areas, supporting urban agriculture, and strengthening the markets of products from smallerholder farmers' cooperatives. Finally, we must invest in those who transform food systems every day. Brazil believes that women are indispensable leaders of this transformation. Our experience with agroecological productive home gardens demonstrates how relatively modest public investments combined with rural microcredit technical assistance can generate multiple benefits: improving household nutrition, restoring biodiversity, increasing incomes, and strengthening women's autonomy. These initiatives show that integrated public policies generate far greater impacts than isolated interventions. Excellencies, too often we evaluate public policies one program at a time. Yet agri-food systems are transformed when different policies interact and reinforce one another. The greatest return comes not from isolated interventions but from coherent public policy ecosystems capable of generating multiple benefits simultaneously. Healthy diets should not remain a privilege available only to those who can afford them. Our shared goal should be to reshape our food systems so that producing healthy food becomes increasingly attractive for farmers or accessing healthy foods becomes increasingly affordable for every family. This is precisely why Brazil launched the Global Alliance Against Hunger and Poverty during its G20 presidency. By reducing fragmentation and supporting integrated policy approaches, the alliance can help scale up solutions that are already delivering results around the world. The sustainable transformation of agrifood systems is one of the greatest opportunities of our generation. It is an opportunity to fight hunger, improve nutrition, strengthen rural livelihoods, and restore nature at the same time. Let us seize it together. Thank you very much. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you very much for your closing remarks. Ladies and gentlemen, this brings us to the conclusion of today's launch of the State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World, SOFI 2026. On behalf of SOFI partners, I would like to thank all our distinguished speakers and to everyone joining us in the room and online. We hope today's discussion has reinforced the importance of working together to make healthy diets more affordable and accessible for everyone around the world. Thank you.