Miller Magazine Issue: 125 May 2020

22 NEWS MILLER / MAY 2020 Beyond the COVID-19 health emergency, a recession looms, and countries ought to take measures now to soften the longer-term impacts on hunger and food insecurity, a new FAO policy brief says. Millions of people are likely to join the ranks of the hungry as a result of the COVID-19 Forecasts for the global economy vary in details, but all point to a historic downturn. The International Monetary Fund now expects worldwide gross domestic product to shrink by 3.0 percent in 2020, compared to January pro- jections of 3.3 percent growth. The large downturn is also expected to usher in the first outright recession in sub-Sa- haran Africa - where about a quarter of the population is undernourished - in 25 years. In the 2019 State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World (SOFI) report, FAO analysts noted that economic slowdowns and downturns helped explain rising under- nourishment levels in 65 of the 77 countries that recorded such rises between 2011 and 2017. That underscores the risk of adverse hunger trends ahead. The new FAO Policy Brief offers an analysis of food supply data since 1995, which is linked to FAO's statisti- cal development of the prevalence of undernourishment (PoU) indicator, and correlates them to past local econo- mic trends in countries that are net food importers. It notes that in the absence of timely and effective po- licies, millions of people are likely to join the ranks of the hungry as a result of the COVID-19-triggered recession. That number will vary according to the severity of econo- mic contractions, ranging from 14.4 million to 38.2 mil- lion people, or even 80.3 million should there be a truly devastating contraction of 10 percentage points in all 101 net food-importing countries' GDP growth. The Policy Brief warns that the actual outcome could be worse if current inequalities in access to food are worse- ned. It includes scenarios and methodology and a techni- cal note was developed and published simultaneously to explain those aspects in further detail. "The Policy Brief offers evidence in favor of making hunger reduction a priority of the economic stimulus me- asures to address COVID-19," says Marco V. Sánchez, Deputy-Director of FAO's Agricultural Development Eco- nomics Division. FAO URGES FOR KEEPING FOOD SUPPLY CHAINS ALIVE As the world is not facing food shortages, FAO is ur- ging that countries do their best to keep trade flowing and food supply chains alive and increase agricultural output during the international health crisis. The lar-