More than 295 million people across 53 countries experienced acute hunger in 2024, an increase of nearly 14 million from the year before. There isn’t one single cause behind this. The global food shortage is driven by overlapping crises: armed conflicts that shut down farming and block aid, climate extremes that destroy harvests, rising costs that price people out of eating, and long-term damage to the land itself. Here’s how each factor contributes.
Armed Conflict Disrupts Farming and Trade
War is the single largest driver of severe hunger worldwide. When fighting breaks out, farmers flee their land, harvests go uncollected, and supply routes collapse. The five places currently at the highest risk of famine or mass starvation are Sudan, Palestine (particularly Gaza), South Sudan, Haiti, and Mali. Each faces a different form of violence, but the pattern is the same: conflict displaces people, destroys infrastructure, and blocks humanitarian organizations from delivering food.
In Sudan, famine-like conditions persist because ongoing civil war coincides with the lean season, when food stores from the previous harvest run out. In Gaza, large-scale military operations have made it nearly impossible for aid agencies to operate, and famine risk is climbing. In Haiti, record levels of gang violence in the Port-au-Prince area have forced mass displacement and cut off food distribution to the people who need it most. In South Sudan and Mali, localized fighting compounds economic instability and flood damage, keeping entire regions trapped in crisis.
The ripple effects of conflict extend far beyond borders. When Russia invaded Ukraine, Ukrainian exports of wheat and corn dropped by roughly 90% compared to pre-war levels. The port of Odessa, which normally handled about 90% of Ukraine’s commodity exports, was shut down. Between 20% and 30% of Ukraine’s winter crop areas went unharvested during the 2022/23 season. Because Ukraine and Russia together supplied a significant share of the world’s grain and sunflower oil, this shock sent food prices surging in import-dependent countries across Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia.
Climate Extremes Are Shrinking Harvests
Droughts, floods, and heat waves are hitting the world’s most productive farmland harder and more frequently. U.S. Department of Agriculture modeling projects that corn yields in central American states could fall by 14.5% and soybean yields by 7.1% due to climate-linked changes. In the most vulnerable states, like Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and the Dakotas, the projections are far worse: corn yields could drop by as much as 25.4% and soybeans by 43.4%.
These aren’t just American problems. Droughts in the Horn of Africa, flooding in South and Southeast Asia, and erratic rainfall across sub-Saharan Africa have all reduced harvests in recent years. When a major grain-producing region has a bad year, it tightens supply globally, and the countries least able to afford higher import prices feel it first.
Fertilizer Costs Squeeze Farmers
Fertilizer is one of the biggest expenses in growing staple crops. It accounts for 33 to 44% of operating costs for corn and 34 to 45% for wheat in the United States. When fertilizer prices spike, farmers in wealthier countries may absorb the hit or cut back on application, which lowers yields. Farmers in poorer countries often can’t afford fertilizer at all, and their harvests shrink dramatically.
Prices for nitrogen-based fertilizers surged starting in 2021, reaching record highs in 2022. Anhydrous ammonia peaked above $1,600 per ton, and urea passed $1,000 per ton. Those prices have come down since then and stabilized somewhat by early 2025, but they remain above pre-2021 levels. Russia and Belarus are major fertilizer exporters, so the war in Ukraine and associated sanctions contributed directly to the price spike, creating a secondary channel through which conflict reduced food production worldwide.
Shipping Disruptions Delay and Raise Costs
Getting food from where it’s grown to where it’s needed depends on global shipping routes, and two of the most important chokepoints have been disrupted simultaneously. Attacks on commercial vessels in the Red Sea forced ships to reroute around southern Africa, adding roughly 40% more distance to voyages and causing delays of two to five weeks. Trade volumes through the Suez Canal dropped by 40% as a result.
At the same time, drought conditions reduced the capacity of the Panama Canal, limiting transit to 24 ships per day instead of the usual 36. These aren’t abstract logistics problems. Perishable goods spoil during longer voyages, and the added fuel and insurance costs get passed along as higher food prices. Some exporters have reported cancelled orders entirely because the economics no longer work, particularly for time-sensitive products like fresh produce and dairy.
Food Crops Diverted to Fuel
A meaningful share of the world’s staple crops never reaches a plate. Globally, about 60% of all ethanol feedstock comes from corn, with sugarcane making up another 22%. Biodiesel production draws 70% of its feedstock from vegetable oils like soybean, rapeseed, and palm oil. Government blending mandates in many countries require that transportation fuel contain a minimum percentage of biofuel, which guarantees ongoing demand for these crops regardless of food prices.
Advanced biofuels made from crop residues or woody biomass could reduce competition with the food supply, but they aren’t expected to make up a significant share of production anytime soon. As food prices have climbed in recent years, the debate over whether it makes sense to turn edible crops into fuel has intensified, but policy changes have been slow.
Soil Loss and Urbanization Erode the Foundation
Beneath the headline crises, there’s a slower but equally serious problem: the world is losing farmland. Tens of millions of hectares of agricultural land disappear each year due to soil erosion, poor water management, and urban expansion. As cities grow, they tend to expand into the flat, fertile land that surrounds them. Between 50 and 63% of projected new urban development globally is expected to occur on existing cropland, which alone could reduce global food production by 1 to 4%.
This is happening at exactly the wrong time. Current population growth trends will require a 70 to 100% increase in food production by 2050 to keep pace with demand. Losing productive soil while needing to grow dramatically more food creates a gap that technology and efficiency gains may struggle to close.
Food Price Inflation Hits Hardest in Vulnerable Economies
Even where food is physically available, many people simply can’t afford it. Food price inflation has reached extreme levels in several countries. As of early 2024, Argentina’s nominal food inflation was 296% year over year, Lebanon’s was 181%, Zimbabwe’s was 84%, Türkiye’s was 71%, and Venezuela’s was 61%. When adjusted for overall inflation, Argentina still led at 42% real food price growth, followed by Zimbabwe at 37% and Egypt at 15%.
Currency devaluation plays a major role. When a country’s currency loses value, the cost of importing food rises sharply, even if global commodity prices are stable. Countries that depend heavily on food imports and have unstable currencies face a compounding problem: global supply shocks raise the dollar price of food, and a weakening local currency makes each dollar more expensive to obtain. The result is that a bag of flour or cooking oil becomes unaffordable for millions of families almost overnight.
Why These Problems Reinforce Each Other
What makes the current food crisis so persistent is that these factors don’t operate in isolation. Conflict disrupts farming, which tightens global supply, which raises prices, which makes fertilizer harder to afford, which lowers the next season’s yields. Climate shocks compound the damage by hitting regions already weakened by war or poverty. Shipping disruptions add costs on top of already elevated commodity prices. And all of this plays out on a shrinking base of productive farmland.
The 295 million people facing acute hunger in 2024 aren’t concentrated in one region or affected by one cause. They’re spread across 53 countries, caught in different combinations of these overlapping pressures. Resolving any single factor would help, but no single fix addresses the full picture.