Photograph courtesy of BGR partner Lotus Outreach International.
By Patricia Brick, BGR Staff
Among the most evident factors influencing food insecurity and malnutrition is the price of food, particularly in relation to household income. When the price of food rises more quickly than wages, more people go hungry.
In the U.S., food prices increased by 23.9 percent between December 2019 and May 2025. Initially driven by impacts of the Covid pandemic, this “food price inflation” has not ended. Among other factors, avian flu outbreaks have raised the cost of poultry and eggs, and climate-change related factors including flooding, drought, and changes in precipitation and temperature patterns continue to impact agricultural production more broadly.
While the rate of food price inflation has slowed since the pandemic’s end, it continues to exceed the overall inflation rate. Between August 2024 and August 2025, U.S. food prices rose by 3.2 percent, and experts predict further increases due to the Trump administration’s mass deportations of undocumented immigrants—many of whom are farm workers—and tariffs, which impact not only imported foods but also fertilizer and other supplies needed by the domestic agriculture industry. The effects on hunger and food security are already evident; a 2025 report by the Greater Chicago Food Depository found that 25 percent of Chicago-area residents are facing food insecurity.
But the problem of unsustainable food price costs is not limited to the U.S. Around the world, national food-price inflation rates are higher than overall inflation rates. In combination with the lingering effects of Covid, the repercussions of climate impacts on agriculture, and the war in Ukraine, food-price inflation has contributed to hunger and rates of food insecurity that are higher than those of a decade ago, with the most serious consequences impacting low-income populations, according to The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2025.
Known widely as SOFI, The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World is the United Nations’ annual report on global progress toward achieving the goal of ending hunger, food insecurity, and malnutrition. Developed by a coalition of the U.N.’s international humanitarian agencies—the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the World Food Programme (WFP), and the World Health Organization (WHO)—this year’s report focuses on the timely subject of the impacts of food-price inflation on hunger and malnutrition around the world.
Among the key findings shared in SOFI 2025:
- While global measures of hunger overall are slowly improving since the end of the pandemic, largely due to reductions in hunger rates in India and in South America, hunger rates in Africa and Western Asia have worsened. “According to the current projection, 512 million people in the world may be chronically undernourished in 2030, of whom 60 percent will be in Africa,” SOFI reports.
- The affordability of a healthy diet differs greatly across regions, with some regions, particularly in Asia, seeing improvements in affordability overall. However, food affordability has declined in low-income countries across regions; 72 percent of the population of low-income countries around the world are unable to afford a healthy diet, a figure that represents more than 540 million people.
- Children are among those most impacted by insufficient nutrition. SOFI estimates that two-thirds of children between 6 and 23 months of age lack access to sufficient dietary diversity to provide them with the essential vitamins and minerals needed for maintaining health and appropriate growth.
- In many countries around the globe, wages have failed to keep up with the rising costs of food, resulting in increasing levels of food insecurity. “From 2019 to 2024, [low-income countries] faced an average annual food price inflation rate of 11.4 percent, which coincided with a 6.7 percentage point increase in moderate or severe food insecurity and a 3.5 percentage point rise in severe food insecurity.”
- Within countries that are facing increased food prices, the impacts are unequal, with women and people in rural communities at higher risk of food insecurity as a result.
- A key factor in understanding the true impacts of rising food prices is the disparity between the cost of healthy foods as opposed to foods with limited nutritional value. Oils, fats, and low-nutrient starchy foods are the least expensive options for most people around the world; ultra-processed foods cost approximately half as much as nutrient-rich fruits, vegetables, and animal-sourced foods.
Addressing the global problem of rising food prices will require a combination of government actions, like price controls and trade reforms; changes in national economic policies; added government support for low-income households; and investment in domestic agriculture and infrastructure for food distribution, according to SOFI. Of course, the capacity and willingness of governments to enact such reforms differs greatly from country to country.
Buddhist Global Relief was founded by Ven. Bhikkhu Bodhi and his students to combat chronic hunger and malnutrition around the world. Your support of BGR and other hunger-relief organizations, both domestic and international, can provide a critical lifeline for people in need. For people around the world who are currently experiencing food insecurity, malnutrition, and hunger due to the high cost of food, the need is urgent.
