A concise explainer to help understand the concept and how it drives WFP’s work
What is food security?
Food security exists when people have access to enough safe and nutritious food for normal growth and development, and an active and healthy life. An official definition was provided at the World Food Summit in 1996 in Rome and further revised in 2001. By contrast, food insecurity refers to when the aforementioned conditions don’t exist. Chronic food insecurity is when a person is unable to consume enough food over an extended period to maintain a normal, active and healthy life. Acute food insecurity is any type that threatens people’s lives or livelihoods.
How many people are food insecure?
Latest figures from the State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World, or SOFI, report, show that up to 757 million people faced chronic hunger in 2023. The World Food Programme (WFP) 2025 Global Outlook estimated that 343 million people were acutely food insecure as of November 2024, across the 74 countries with WFP operational presence and where data was available.
Why is food security so important?
Food security is a moral imperative, in that all people should have equal and unrestricted access to food. Beyond this, food security is an investment in wider stability and security. Where there is food insecurity, there is displacement of people and increased instability that can ripple throughout countries, regions and beyond.
What causes food insecurity?
Conflict, extreme weather and economic shocks are key drivers of food insecurity, often overlapping and interconnected. People displaced from their homes and sources of income are among the most vulnerable groups.
There are four core factors that affect someone’s food security: use, access, availability and stability. Use includes people’s ability to prepare their food in hygienic conditions – for which they need fuel and access to clean water – and to absorb the nutrients contained within it. People in remote areas or those driven from their land by conflict or weather disasters may not be able to prepare food properly. Food use also extends to proper use of seeds for crops and fodder for livestock, for example, and to reducing post-harvest losses and increasing surpluses for export.
Access to food may be hindered by failed crops due to extreme weather, or by food on markets being unaffordable due to high inflation, or by people not being able to reach those markets because they live in conflict and disaster-hit areas. Access may also be restricted due to people’s gender, ethnicity or on other grounds.
“During conflict, materials like seeds and fertilizer are less available and more expensive”
Availability of food may be affected by factors ranging from high import costs to poor transport links. During conflict, materials like seeds and fertilizer are less available and more expensive, meaning farmers can’t grow crops even if they or their workers haven’t been forced off land already. In many rural areas, this can affect large swathes of people directly, as home-grown crops are their primary source of food. Conflict can also restrict food reaching markets by road. Large assistance programmes from a government, WFP or NGOs can boost availability and access, for example through widespread food distributions or through commodity vouchers that allow people to buy food from registered shops.
Stability is a crosscutting aspect, relating to how stable the other three elements of use, access and availability are. In Gaza, for example, where food access and availability were suddenly cut off, instability led to soaring food insecurity.
How do different seasons affect food security?
The agricultural calendar is very important to food security. Pre-harvest time is often the lean season, when people tend to have low food stocks at home, food is less available in markets and prices are high. Conversely, right after harvest time, there’s more abundance and food is much cheaper. A poor rainy season can have a devastating effect on crops, and therefore people’s food security. Seasonal factors can also influence other expenses like school fees – a very important factor for many families that can reduce the money available for food. Urban areas might have other seasonal factors to consider that affect food security: times when there is more work and therefore income available, or more migration that may increase demand for food, or major holidays that involve large expenses and reduce spending elsewhere.
Is there a globally agreed measurement of food security?
Yes. The global standard for measuring food security is the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, or IPC for short. It describes five levels, from “no/minimal food insecurity” (IPC Phase 1) to “catastrophe” or “famine” (IPC Phase 5). The IPC involves over 20 partners, including governments, UN agencies and NGOs, who share data and use the findings to help design programmes that properly address people’s needs. WFP collects information using established food security indicators – for example the Food Consumption Score that the agency has used for over two decades. This information supports WFP operations and is also a main source for the IPC. Where no IPC data is available, other equivalent measures are used, for example what is known as the Cadre Harmonise in West Africa, or WFP’s CARI method.
How does WFP collect information on food security?
Data on acute food security is collected in various ways. WFP is the largest provider of food security data globally, providing a continuous stream of information for our operations, that also feeds into the IPC. This is gathered through a variety of means including face-to-face questionnaires and mobile surveys, satellite imagery and geospatial modelling. Data collection is particularly difficult in areas with limited access due to conflict. In these cases, WFP uses methods such as remote data collection through phone interviews.
Where are food security numbers published?
Annual figures on chronic food insecurity are available in the SOFI report, published each July by five UN agencies including WFP. Worldwide figures on acute food insecurity are published in the Global Report on Food Crises, a multipartner initiative focusing on food-crisis countries, and in WFPs Global Outlook, which focuses on countries with WFP operations. WFP’s latest numbers are displayed on platforms including DataViz and the AI-powered HungerMap LIVE. Numbers may vary for reasons including each report’s geographical coverage and the timeline covered.
How does WFP improve food security?
WFP improves food security in a variety of ways, working in partnership with governments, sister UN agencies, local NGOs and others. WFP boosts food access and availability by providing immediate assistance to people during emergencies. The agency also does a lot of “lean-season programming” – providing more food when availability is especially low to address and improving access for vulnerable groups by providing cash to buy food. Smallholder farmers produce most of the world’s food, so WFP provides them with training to increase their production, reduce losses and improve their bargaining power and prices at markets.
In Bangladesh, we improved access and availability by providing cash in advance of heavy flooding, so people could stock up food while they could still get to markets. Climate insurance payouts mean farmers can provide their livestock with extra fodder and buy seeds and fertilizer, all of which is vital to food production and availability in the face of extreme weather. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, WFP improved access to markets by restoring bridges connecting rural areas to trading cities. WFP school meals improve access to food for children in over 60 countries.
WFP provides energy-efficient stoves and fuel so people can prepare and use their food properly. We also train communities on extracting the best nutrition from their meals and on child-feeding practices – with all these measures improving people’s use of food. There are many further ways in which WFP improves food security, from building people’s resilience to extreme weather to training government staff in food monitoring, as WFP and partners strive for a world where no one has to go to bed hungry.
We are grateful to the following for their contributions to this article: Jessica Harmer and Lena Hohfeld, WFP Assessment and Targeting Unit, Aysha Twose, WFP Regional Bureau for Asia and the Pacific.
