GNV News, January 24, 2025

153 Nobel Prize and World Food Prize laureates made a petition urging world leaders to commit politically and allocate resources to develop bold and ambitious technologies over the next 25 years to avert the global hunger crisis. In an open letter signed by 133 laureates, they call for radical, planet-friendly efforts that deliver not incremental but substantial leaps, such as optimizing growth by improving photosynthesis in major crops and technologies to produce nutritious foods from microbes and fungi, calling for.

Global hunger and poverty rates declined until 2015 but have risen since 2016. About 733 million people currently face chronic hunger, and 2.8 billion people cannot afford a healthy diet. The open letter warns that with the world population expected to increase by 1.5 billion by 2050, humanity is “far from” meeting future food needs. In Africa in particular, temperatures are rising rapidly, and despite a population surge, yields of maize—a staple for many—are projected to decline. Unless the world strengthens cutting-edge research and innovation, it is said we will face “an even more food-insecure and unstable world” by 2050.

Beyond investments in the latest research and innovation for crop production, other challenges remain. United Nations humanitarian funding to support people suffering from hunger and poverty fell to less than half of its target for the second consecutive year in 2024. Germany, a major donor, has reduced aid, and in the United States, aid funding cuts are feared under the Donald Trump administration, which is dissatisfied with the gap between its contributions and those of other countries—leaving a mountain of financial challenges for humanitarian assistance.

Learn more about global food shortages → “Global food shortages: the issues that go unreported”

A sprawling lettuce field (Photo: gillmar / Shutterstock.com)