The new UN SOFI report shows that the number of undernourished people in Asia continues to drop, although significant regional imbalances remain. However, a prolonged energy crisis in the Middle East could increase the number of hungry people on the continent by 10 million by 2030.
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New York (AsiaNews) – For the first time since the world a decade ago set the goal of eliminating hunger by 2030, Asia has fallen behind Africa in absolute numbers of hungry people, this according to the latest edition of the most authoritative report on the subject, The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World (SOFI), published by the United Nations agencies that deal with food and health: FAO, IFAD,[*] UNICEF, the World Food Programme and the World Health Organisation.
This is not a sign of a sudden crisis on the African continent (which, in fact, is showing the first tentative signs of a turnaround after a decade of things getting worse), but rather a snapshot of a positive trend in Asia that has continued, almost uninterrupted, since the 2020 pandemic led to a surge in numbers.
In 2010, nearly two out of three undernourished people in the world lived in Asia. Today, the proportion has almost reversed, with 45 per cent in Asia and 48 per cent in Africa. In absolute terms, Asia has seen the number drop from 396 to 292 million in 15 years, while Africa has increased from 171 to 309 million.
Latin America and the Caribbean are also following this positive trend, with the percentage of people suffering from hunger falling to 4.8 per cent, below pre-pandemic levels. Oceania is a different story, stuck at the same rate of 8.0 per cent with no signs of a turnaround.
Within Asia, however, not all regions are progressing at the same pace. Driving the improvement are Southeast Asia, where the prevalence of hunger has dropped to 5.1 per cent from 5.6 per cent in 2021, and especially South Asia, which has gone from 13.9 per cent to 9.3 per cent in four years, although it remains the centre of the problem in Asia, with nearly 195 million people suffering from hunger.
There is, however, one exception that weighs more heavily than the others: Western Asia (which includes the Caucasus and the Middle East), where hunger is up rather than down, going from 9.3 per cent in 2015 to 13 per cent today, the highest percentage in all of Asia.
The impact of the war in the Middle East
This is linked to the conflict in the Middle East. FAO researchers have constructed three scenarios to understand what the consequences could be for world hunger levels in the coming years.
If energy markets were to return to normal quickly, the number of undernourished people in the world could drop to 503-511 million. But if the crisis dragged on, with high oil, gas, and fertiliser prices (in turn caused by infrastructure damage in the Persian Gulf exporting countries), the same figure risks rising to 522 million by 2030, a gap of 11 to 19 million people.
Asia is the region that would pay the heaviest price. In the prolonged crisis scenario, approximately 10 million more Asians would suffer from hunger by 2030. For comparison, the estimate for Africa, under the same scenario, is an increase of eight million.
The reason is simple: Asia as a whole is a net importer of fossil fuels, while Latin America, on the other hand, which exports re
The Middle East, therefore, seems to offer a preview of what could happen to the rest of Asia if the crisis in the Strait of Hormuz (or Bab el-Mandeb) were to continue for a long time. At the same time, the report notes that the Gaza Strip, along with Yemen and Afghanistan, continues to represent the world’s most serious acute food crisis.
Food access data also reveal a two-speed improvement. In 2025, 20.3 per cent of the Asian population experienced moderate or severe food insecurity, compared to 22.1 per cent in 2024: almost 77 million fewer people in just 12 months. This is significant progress, even if the problem continues to affect a fifth of the population of the world’s most populous continent.
But while hunger declines, healthy food is becoming increasingly expensive. The average price of a healthy diet in Asia rose to US$ 4.33 (purchasing power parity) per person per day in 2025, up from US$ 3.00 in 2017, peaking at US$ 5.19 in Southeast Asia.
The good news is that, despite rising prices, more and more Asians are still able to afford it. The share of those unable to afford it has fallen from 43.1 per cent to 28.9 per cent in eight years, with the sharpest drop in this case too in South Asia, from 57.9 per cent to 39.0 per cent.
Nevertheless, since Asia is home to the majority of the world’s population, it still has the largest number of people excluded from a healthy diet, 1.4 billion individuals, more than Africa and Latin America combined.
Beyond wars, climate and economic shocks that drive prices wild from one year to the next also have a significant impact on access to healthy food.
The report provides some examples. Between 1998 and 2012, tropical typhoons in China increased retail prices by an average of 2.3 per cent, with fresh vegetables experiencing the highest increases (+6 per cent).
In 2024, a heat wave in South Korea caused the price of cabbage to rise 70 per cent in just a few weeks, while in Sri Lanka, the 2021-2022 economic crisis doubled the price of legumes and increased the price of cereals, chicken, fish, and eggs by more than 50 per cent.
These episodes illustrate how the fragility of the food system affects low- and middle-income countries, touching even China.
Some concrete examples illustrate the correlation between food prices and other factors. In Indonesia, for example, researchers found that a simple 1 per cent improvement in road quality lowers the price of perishable foods by almost the same amount, because sometimes the problem is not agricultural production, but the difficulty of bringing the harvest to markets.
Similarly, in Nepal, a project connected small-scale producers in western mountain areas to city markets, lowering the price of fruit, vegetables, and animal protein while simultaneously increasing farmers’ incomes.
The (still) long road for women and children
Asia is also looking to 2030 when it comes to child nutrition, after passing the halfway point. The continent is on track to meet the targets for childhood stunting and overweight, a goal that neither Africa nor Latin America will fully achieve, according to current forecasts.
Asia is also doing well on the indicator of exclusive breastfeeding in the first six months of life, rising from 39.1 per cent to 51.4 per cent of newborns between 2012 and 2024, although it is unlikely to reach the 60 per cent threshold set by the World Health Organization as a target for 2030.
More worrying are the data on acute wasting and, especially, anaemia among women of childbearing age. The rate of wasting among children under five dropped marginally, from 9.7 per cent to 9.1 per cent between 2012 and 2024, while the target is 5 per cent.
South Asia once again carries the heaviest burden, at 13.6 per cent, the highest figure among all the world’s subregions.
Conversely, the trend in anaemia has actually reversed; instead of halving as expected, the rate among Asian women aged 15-49 has risen from 30.6 per cent in 2012 to 33.6 per cent in 2023, with South Asia at 49.3 per cent, nearly one in two women.
The report predicts that the gap will widen further in the coming years rather than narrow. The reasons for this disproportion lie in the very nature of anaemia, a condition that can have multiple causes, including a number of nutritional deficiencies and various types of infections.
Added to this is the problem of the availability of iron and folic acid supplements during pregnancy, which remains low worldwide, leaving millions of women exposed to the risk of anaemia and pregnancy complications.
[*]International Fund for Agricultural Development.
- Agriculture
- Strait of Hormuz
- Hunger
