How global food security and sustainable agriculture are drifting further apart in an age of climate chaos and debt

Global food security and sustainable agriculture are under intense pressure as climate change, conflict, and soaring debt push hundreds of millions into hunger. This article examines new UN data on worldwide hunger in 2024, how climate shocks and underfunded smallholder farmers undermine sustainable agriculture, and why supporters and critics clash over the future of our food systems.

Global food security and sustainable agriculture are often treated as technical targets—SDG2 on a UN chart, a “pillar” in climate agreements. On the ground, they are much more intimate: the question of whether a family has something to cook tonight, whether a farmer can trust the rains, whether a child’s body has the nutrients it needs to grow.

By the end of 2024, an estimated 673 million people—about 8.2 to 8.3% of the world’s population—were facing hunger, according to the latest State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World (SOFI) assessment. That is a slight improvement from the peak years of the COVID-19 pandemic, but still far above pre-2020 levels and miles away from the promise of “Zero Hunger” by 2030.

At the same time, a separate UN-backed report finds that more than 295 million people in 53 countries experienced acute levels of hunger in 2024, the sixth consecutive year this extreme form of food crisis has worsened. In Gaza, Sudan, parts of Haiti and the Sahel, the word “famine” is no longer rhetorical.

We produce enough food globally. The problem is where it is grown, how it is grown, and who can afford it—as the climate warms and the economic floor crumbles beneath the poorest.

A world eating more—and hungrier than ever

The paradox of global food security is that we have never had so much technical capacity to grow food, yet hunger figures remain stubbornly high.

The 2024 SOFI report, led by FAO, IFAD, UNICEF, WFP and WHO, underscores three uncomfortable realities:

1. Hunger is falling too slowly, and unevenly
Globally, hunger in 2024 edged down to around 8.2–8.3%, but in Africa more than one in five people remains undernourished, and the absolute number of hungry people on the continent continues to rise.

2. Food insecurity goes far beyond “hunger”
Around 2.3 billion people experienced moderate or severe food insecurity in 2024—meaning they could not reliably access enough safe, nutritious food at some point during the year. That is roughly 336 million more people than in 2019, before COVID-19.

3. Healthy diets are still unaffordable for billions
Even when calories are available, the cost of healthy diets remains beyond reach for many low-income households, especially as food-price inflation and currency depreciation erode purchasing power.

Layered on top of this chronic undernourishment is the sharper edge of acute food crises. The 2025 Global Report on Food Crises (GRFC) warns that 295.3 million people were in crisis or worse in 2024—IPC Phase 3 or above—with 1.2 million facing catastrophic, famine-like conditions.

Conflict remains the leading driver, particularly in Sudan, Gaza, Yemen, and parts of the Sahel and Horn of Africa. But climate extremes and economic shocks—often aggravated by heavy debt and shrinking humanitarian budgets—are playing a larger role each year.

Climate change is eating the harvest

For years, scientists warned that climate change would threaten food security. The warnings are now written into harvest data.

The IPCC’s Special Report on Climate Change and Land concludes that rising temperatures, shifting rainfall, and climate-related land degradation are already reducing crop yields and undermining food security, especially in drylands in Africa and high mountain regions of Asia and South America.

Key impacts include:

• More frequent and intense heatwaves, which lower yields of staple crops like wheat, maize and rice.
• Unpredictable rainfall patterns, increasing the risk of both droughts and floods.
• Soil degradation and desertification, cutting the productive capacity of land already under pressure.

The CGIAR, a global research partnership, puts it bluntly: climate change has “increased risks to global food security—slowing down productivity and even reducing the nutritive content of some staple crops.”

Smallholder farmers—those who cultivate a few hectares or less—are on the front line. They produce a large share of the food in Africa and Asia, yet often live in poverty themselves, with no buffer when rains fail or prices spike. A 2020 joint report by IFAD and Climate Policy Initiative found that only about 1.7% of climate finance was reaching small-scale agriculture actors; later analyses suggest that share may have fallen as low as 0.8% in 2019–2020.

In simple terms: those who did least to cause climate change, and who are most crucial for local food supplies, are receiving a tiny crumb of the money being spent in its name.

Sustainable agriculture: one phrase, many fights

“Global food security and sustainable agriculture” sounds like a consensus; in practice, it is a battlefield of ideas and interests.

Agricultural development today is often framed through three overlapping lenses:

1. Climate-smart agriculture (CSA)
Promoted by FAO, the World Bank and many governments, CSA aims to boost productivity, enhance resilience, and reduce emissions—a “triple win.” Typical interventions include improved seeds, conservation agriculture, drip irrigation, agroforestry, and better livestock management. Proponents highlight case studies in Africa and Asia where CSA practices have increased yields and reduced vulnerability to climate shocks.

2. Agroecology and food sovereignty
Agroecology emphasizes biodiversity, local knowledge, reduced chemical inputs, and community control over land and seeds. A growing body of research links agroecological practices to improved soil health, resilience, and diversified diets, though questions remain about how fast they can scale.

3. High-tech and market-driven intensification
This camp points to GM and gene-edited crops, digital farming tools, precision irrigation, vertical farms, and global value chains as essential for feeding 8–9 billion people without clearing more forests. Technology boosters argue that yield gaps in Africa and South Asia are so large that massive intensification is unavoidable.

These approaches can coexist in theory, but in practice they compete for funding, policy space, and control. Agroecology advocates accuse CSA and high-tech models of greenwashing industrial agriculture and entrenching corporate control over seeds and inputs. Tech-oriented reformers worry that agroecology is too idealistic and too slow to prevent large-scale hunger under climate stress.

Underneath the technical jargon lies a core disagreement: should “sustainable agriculture” be defined primarily by productivity and emissions metrics—or by power, rights, and local autonomy?

Supporters: “Transform the food system, don’t dismantle it”

Supporters of the current mainstream agenda argue that global food security and sustainable agriculture can still be reconciled—if we move fast and smart.

Their case rests on several points:

We know what works, we’re just not doing enough of it.
They point to successful CSA projects that improved yields, reduced erosion and drought risk, and increased incomes—from conservation agriculture in southern Africa to rice intensification in South Asia.

Innovation is essential under climate stress.
As heat and drought intensify, traditional varieties alone may not cope. Drought-tolerant and flood-tolerant crops, improved livestock breeds, and digital advisory tools can help farmers anticipate and adapt to shocks. Rejecting such innovations, supporters say, would leave the poorest farmers with yesterday’s tools for tomorrow’s storms.

Trade and markets prevent local failures from becoming global catastrophes.
In a world of climate volatility, they argue, open trade flows, grain reserves, and functioning markets are crucial to move food from surplus to deficit regions and prevent local droughts from turning into famines.

From this vantage point, the main problems are investment and governance, not the basic direction of travel. Fix those, supporters say, and global food security and sustainable agriculture can reinforce each other.

Critics: “We’re greening the same broken model”

Critics see continuity where supporters see transformation.

They argue that:

• The current food system remains heavily dependent on monocultures, synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, and long supply chains that are vulnerable to shocks.
• Corporate concentration in seeds, fertilizers, and grain trading gives a handful of firms outsized power over what is grown, where, and at what price.
• “Climate-smart” labels can be applied to projects that still displace communities, prioritize export crops over local food, or lock farmers into cycles of debt.

They note that despite more than a decade of CSA rhetoric, hunger and acute food crises remain at historically high levels, while smallholder farmers still receive less than 2% of climate finance.

Agroecology advocates point to success stories—cooperative seed networks, community-based soil restoration, diversified farms that weather climate shocks better than monocultures—as evidence that a different model is possible. But they argue that such initiatives are starved of public funding and policy support compared to large-scale, input-intensive agriculture.

For critics, the risk is not that we will fail to green the system, but that we will green it just enough to feel better, without changing who holds power.

Justice at the center: land, debt, and conflict

Any honest discussion of global food security and sustainable agriculture must confront three politically explosive issues: land, debt, and war.

Land: In many regions, fertile land is concentrated in the hands of elites, companies or foreign investors, while smallholders and Indigenous communities face insecure tenure or outright dispossession. Large-scale land acquisitions, sometimes framed as “green” investments (for biofuels, carbon offsets or “climate-smart” estates), can undermine local food security even as they generate impressive sustainability reports.

Debt: Dozens of low- and middle-income countries now spend more on debt service than on health, education or climate adaptation. When food prices spike or crops fail, their governments have little fiscal room to scale up safety nets or support farmers. SOFI 2024 and related analyses emphasize that financing to end hunger must address debt sustainability and reprioritize public spending, not just rely on new loans.

Conflict: The GRFC data are blunt: conflict remains the single largest driver of acute food insecurity, responsible for hunger in nearly 140 million people in 2024. Gaza, Sudan, Yemen, Haiti and parts of the Sahel are extreme examples of how war can destroy food systems in months—obliterating fields, markets, storage, and supply chains.

You can’t “climate-smart” your way out of bombardment, nor “innovate” around loan repayments that swallow your agricultural budget.

What a serious global food-security strategy would look like

If the world treated global food security and sustainable agriculture as a genuine emergency rather than a talking point, the response would be far more radical than current plans suggest.

A credible strategy would likely include:

1. Major debt relief tied to food and climate goals
Many highly indebted countries cannot invest in resilient agriculture or social protection without restructuring their debts. Linking debt relief to commitments on food systems and climate adaptation—rather than austerity—would free space for real investment.

2. A dramatic increase in finance for small-scale producers
Reversing the trend that leaves smallholders with 0.8–1.7% of climate finance is not a technical tweak; it is a political choice. Redirecting even a modest share of global climate funds and agricultural subsidies toward farmer-led, locally adapted practices could transform resilience.

3. Integrated “food–climate–conflict” responses
In places like the Sahel, Gaza, Yemen and parts of the DRC, food security efforts must be embedded in peacebuilding and protection strategies. The GRFC calls for investing in local food systems and early action, not just emergency rations after collapse.

4. Support for diverse approaches, not ideological monocultures
There is no single silver bullet. Some regions will lean on agroecology and local markets; others will integrate high-tech irrigation and improved seeds; many will do both. The key is democratic control and farmer participation, not one-size-fits-all models imposed from afar.

5. Measuring success by nutrition and resilience, not just yield
Global food security is not just “tons of grain.” It is about whether people eat diverse, nutritious diets year-round, and whether food systems can absorb shocks without collapsing. That means tracking stunting, micronutrient deficiencies, and livelihood resilience as seriously as we track production.

Supporters vs. critics: different nightmares, shared responsibility

Supporters of the current food-system reforms fear a world where we fail to scale up solutions—CSA, innovation, trade—fast enough, and climate shocks push hundreds of millions more into hunger.

Critics fear a world where we scale up the wrong solutions—green-tinted versions of the same extractive systems—locking farmers into dependency while climate impacts worsen and conflict spreads.

Both visions are nightmares. Both point to real risks.

Seen from a village on the edge of the Sahara, or a crowded neighborhood in Port-au-Prince, the argument is not academic. It is about whether the next failed rainy season will mean selling the last goat, pulling a child out of school, or boarding a bus and never coming back.

We already know what it takes, technically, to grow enough food without torching the planet. The harder question is whether we are prepared to confront the politics—of land, debt, climate, and power—that stand between the world we have and the world that global food security and sustainable agriculture pretend to promise.

Until we do, the gap between those words and the reality in the fields will remain one of the great moral failures of our time.