World Food Day

What the day is

World Food Day is observed on October 16. It marks the date in 1945 when the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations was founded, and it has been kept annually since the early 1980s, with a theme set each year.

Origin and background

The central fact the day exists to press is that the world produces enough food. Global agriculture grows sufficient calories to feed everyone alive, and hundreds of millions of people are nonetheless undernourished. Hunger at this scale is a problem of poverty, distribution, conflict and infrastructure rather than of absolute scarcity.

Conflict is now the single largest driver of acute food crises, ahead of drought or crop failure. Famine in the modern era is overwhelmingly caused or worsened by war, blockade and displacement, which is why food security and political stability are discussed together.

Waste is the other half of the arithmetic. A very large share of food produced globally is lost or wasted, though the pattern differs sharply by region: in lower-income countries most is lost after harvest, through poor storage, transport and refrigeration, while in wealthier countries most is wasted at retail and in households. Those are different problems needing different fixes, and cold storage in the first case does more good than guilt in the second.

Malnutrition is also not only undernutrition. Micronutrient deficiency, obesity and diet-related disease frequently coexist within the same country and sometimes the same household, which is why the FAO frames the goal as food security and nutrition rather than calories alone.

How to take part

• Give to a food bank, and give what they ask for rather than what is in the cupboard.
• Check whether your local food bank needs money more than tins; usually it does, because it buys at wholesale.
• Attack your own waste at the point it actually happens: plan the week, use the freezer, and learn what use-by and best-before actually mean.
• Read the year's theme, which tells you what the agency is prioritizing.
• Cook something from a cuisine you know nothing about. The day is about food as well as hunger.