There is no single, worldwide food shortage in the sense that the planet has stopped producing enough calories. Global grain harvests continue to set records in aggregate. But hunger is rising sharply in dozens of countries, and food is becoming harder to afford for hundreds of millions of people. In 2024, more than 295 million people across 53 countries experienced acute hunger, an increase of nearly 14 million from the year before. The problem is less about total supply and more about where food can reach, what it costs, and who can pay for it.
Where Hunger Is Worst Right Now
The World Food Programme estimates that 318 million people face acute hunger heading into 2026, double the number before the pandemic. Forty-one million of those people are at emergency levels or worse. Two confirmed famines are underway simultaneously in Gaza and parts of Sudan, the first time this century that famine has struck two countries at once. Sixteen additional hotspots, including Haiti, Mali, Afghanistan, and Yemen, remain at high risk of severe food crises.
Conflict is the dominant driver, responsible for roughly 69 percent of global hunger. Climate shocks layer on top: droughts, floods, and storms have hammered agricultural regions across Africa, the Middle East, and the Caribbean. Syria’s crop production has dropped 60 percent. In many of these places, the issue is not that food doesn’t exist somewhere in the world. It’s that war, displacement, and destroyed infrastructure make it impossible to grow, import, or distribute.
Food Prices: A Mixed Picture
Global food prices tell a complicated story depending on what you’re buying. Cereal prices in early 2026 were about 3.5 percent lower than a year earlier. Sugar prices dropped even more dramatically, falling 27 percent year over year to their lowest point since late 2020. Dairy prices also declined nearly 20 percent compared to the previous year.
Other categories moved in the opposite direction. Meat prices climbed 8 percent year over year. Vegetable oil prices hit their highest level since mid-2022. So while some staples have gotten cheaper on global markets, cooking oils and animal protein have become more expensive, and those price swings hit low-income households hardest.
Why Shipping Disruptions Matter
For the first time, the world is dealing with simultaneous disruptions to two of its most important maritime trade routes. Attacks on ships in the Red Sea, ongoing since late 2023, have forced cargo vessels to reroute around the southern tip of Africa. At the same time, climate-driven drought reduced Panama Canal capacity from 36 daily transits to as few as 18. Transits through both the Suez and Panama canals dropped more than 40 percent from their peaks.
These aren’t abstract logistics problems. Longer shipping routes mean higher fuel costs, longer delivery times, and more expensive grain and cooking oil for importing nations. The war in Ukraine already demonstrated how rerouted grain shipments push up prices for countries in North Africa and the Middle East that depend heavily on imported wheat. Those same regions are now absorbing the cost of Red Sea detours on top of that.
Fertilizer Costs Are Squeezing Farmers
Even in countries with stable food supplies, the cost of growing food has jumped. Fertilizer prices remain about 17 percent higher than a year ago, driven by rising input costs for nitrogen-based products and export restrictions from China. The fertilizer price index is projected to climb more than 20 percent over the course of 2025 before easing in 2026 and 2027 as new production facilities come online in East Asia and the Middle East.
This hits hardest for fertilizer-intensive staples like corn, wheat, and rice. When fertilizer costs spike but the price farmers receive for their grain doesn’t rise to match, profit margins shrink. Some farmers plant less or skip fertilizer applications, which reduces yields the following season. It’s a slow-moving pressure that doesn’t make headlines but quietly erodes food production in vulnerable regions.
Long-Term Trends for Staple Crops
Looking out over the next decade, most African and Asian countries (outside major rice exporters) are expected to become or remain net cereal importers. This reflects a basic math problem: populations are growing faster than domestic food production can keep up. African rice imports alone are projected to increase 53 percent over the next ten years as demand outpaces what local farmers can grow.
India, currently the world’s second-largest wheat consumer, is projected to become a net wheat importer by 2034 as its population and income growth drive demand beyond what domestic farms produce. Global wheat consumption is expected to rise 11 percent over the next decade, with India and China accounting for nearly a third of that increase. None of this means imminent crisis, but it signals a world where more countries will compete for the same grain exports, making prices more volatile and supply chains more fragile.
Food Security in the United States
If you’re searching from the U.S., the picture is different from the acute crises in Sudan or Yemen, but not without concern. About 13.7 percent of American households, roughly 18.3 million, were food insecure at some point during 2024. That rate held essentially steady from 2023, when it was 13.5 percent. Most of these households managed to avoid drastically cutting their food intake by using coping strategies: eating less varied meals, relying on food assistance programs, or visiting community food pantries.
The U.S. does not face a production shortage. American farms produce more than enough food domestically. The challenge is affordability. Grocery prices rose significantly between 2020 and 2023, and while the rate of increase has slowed, prices haven’t come back down. For households on tight budgets, that sustained higher cost of food functions much like a shortage: the food exists, but the money to buy it doesn’t stretch far enough.
The Toll on Children
Prolonged food insecurity leaves its deepest marks on young children. In 2024, roughly 150 million children under five were stunted, meaning they were too short for their age due to chronic malnutrition. That represents about 23 percent of all children in that age group worldwide. Stunting isn’t just a height issue. It reflects impaired brain development, weaker immune systems, and reduced earning potential that persists into adulthood. In countries cycling through conflict and climate disasters, these effects compound across generations.