Goal 2: Zero Hunger
End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture.
Universal access to safe and nutritious food
By 2030, end hunger and ensure access by all people, in particular the poor and people in vulnerable situations, including infants, to safe, nutritious and sufficient food all year round.
End all forms of malnutrition
By 2030, end all forms of malnutrition, including achieving, by 2025, the internationally agreed targets on stunting and wasting in children under 5 years of age, and address the nutritional needs of adolescent girls, pregnant and lactating women and older persons.
Double the productivity and incomes of small-scale food producers
By 2030, double the agricultural productivity and incomes of small-scale food producers, in particular women, indigenous peoples, family farmers, pastoralists and fishers, including through secure and equal access to land, other productive resources and inputs, knowledge, financial services, markets and opportunities for value addition and non-farm employment.
Sustainable food production and resilient agricultural practices
By 2030, ensure sustainable food production systems and implement resilient agricultural practices that increase productivity and production, that help maintain ecosystems, that strengthen capacity for adaptation to climate change, extreme weather, drought, flooding and other disasters and that progressively improve land and soil quality.
Maintain the genetic diversity in food production
By 2020, maintain the genetic diversity of seeds, cultivated plants and farmed and domesticated animals and their related wild species, including through soundly managed and diversified seed and plant banks at the national, regional and international levels, and promote access to and fair and equitable sharing of benefits arising from the utilization of genetic resources and associated traditional knowledge, as internationally agreed.
Invest in rural infrastructure, agricultural research, technology and gene banks
Increase investment, including through enhanced international cooperation, in rural infrastructure, agricultural research and extension services, technology development and plant and livestock gene banks in order to enhance agricultural productive capacity in developing countries, in particular least developed countries.
Prevent agricultural trade restrictions, market distortions and export subsidies
Correct and prevent trade restrictions and distortions in world agricultural markets, including through the parallel elimination of all forms of agricultural export subsidies and all export measures with equivalent effect, in accordance with the mandate of the Doha Development Round.
Ensure stable food commodity markets and timely access to information
Adopt measures to ensure the proper functioning of food commodity markets and their derivatives and facilitate timely access to market information, including on food reserves, in order to help limit extreme food price volatility.
Current Situation
In 2017, 821 million people were undernourished, with children aged 5 and under making up 22% of this figure. 149 million children under age 5 have stunted growth and 49 million are affected by wasting, defined as undergoing or causing decay or loss of strength.
Nutritional stunting and wasting both have devastating effects on the cognitive development of children. Sub-Saharan Africa remains the region with the highest number of malnourished people, increasing from 195 million to 237 million undernourished.
Target goals from the United Nations and other social welfare programs focus on promoting healthy diets, restructuring programs, and scaling up existing infrastructure and practices to help end hunger, achieve food security, and improve nutrition.
827 Mio
People undernourished in 2017
149 Mio
Children affected by stunted growth
Impact Opportunity
Supporting small scale and local farming is crucial to empower local communities, improve food securities, and reduce poverty.
Many smaller scale and local farms are operated by single or multifamily households that do not have the finances and resources like larger company-owned farms. Families who rely on their small scale farms for income often have no other means of income. Typically, this kind of lifestyle also means that all children available to work will stay home and help, often foregoing school.
Educating communities on sustainable production methods can make a big impact for future generations. Adjusting agriculture practices can positively affect ecosystems and mitigate the effects of extreme weather conditions such as drought, floods, and other natural disasters.
Educating communities on sustainable production methods can make a big impact for future generations.
Progress
Fragile Earth
Applying data science for a sustainable planet
Fragile Earth brings together research, industry, and policy professionals around enhancing scientific discovery in the earth sciences through the joint use of data, theory, and computation.
Since 2016 the AI for Good Foundation has organised the Fragile Earth community and associated events, bringing together researchers, subject matter experts, governments, and policy groups under one roof to learn and discuss how Artificial Intelligence can help address problems with the Earth’s biome and threats to its stability.
Syngenta AI Challenge 2020
Harnessing data to feed our rising population
The AI for Good Foundation and Syngenta, an award-winning company for its innovation in plant breeding analytics, supported this competition that recognizes and rewards innovative thinkers who use artificial intelligence (AI) tools to improve plant breeding by challenging them to create a model that predicts seed variety performance.
Participants were provided access to a real-world data set and tasked to design a model to help scientists analyze extensive soybean seed data more efficiently and effectively, improving the plant breeding process and ultimately, the world’s ability to grow more crops with fewer resources.
Research Paper
Optimizing Crop Cut Collection for Determining Field-Scale Yields in an Insurance Context
By Ritvik Sahajpal, Inbal Becker-Reshef and Sylvain Coutu
Research Paper
Resilient In-Season Crop Type Classification in Multispectral Satellite Observations using Growth Stage Normalization
By Hannah Kerner, Ritvik Sahajpal, Sergii Skakun, Inbal Becker-Reshef, Brian Barker, Mehdi Hosseini, Estefania Puricelli and Patrick Gray
The Fragile Earth 2020 paper “Resilient In-Season Crop Type Classification in Multispectral Satellite Observations using Growth Stage Normalization” presents a new method for in-season crop type classification that addresses domain shift by normalizing inputs by growth stage.
Resources
Shared Datasets
The Global Hunger Index (GHI) is a tool designed to comprehensively measure and track hunger globally, by region and country.
The Global Hunger Index (GHI) is a tool designed to comprehensively measure and track hunger globally, by region and country.
The World Food Programme (WFP) has developed the HungerMapLIVE, a global hunger monitoring system that tracks and predicts hunger in near-real time.
The Group on Earth Observations Global Agricultural Monitoring (GEOGLAM) Crop Monitor (https://cropmonitor.org/) is an international initiative that was developed under the framework of the 2011 G20 Action Plan on Food Price Volatility in Agriculture.
Created by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), an agency dedicated to international efforts to end hunger, this dataset tracks desert locust observations, as well as whether the observed locusts are adults or nymphs (known as hoppers) and whether the locusts form a group.
Ongoing Research
Published by Max Roser and Hannah Ritchie, the research looks at how many people are undernourished, where they live, childhood undernourishment and food insecurity across the world.
Publications
Goal Partners
The Hunger Project
The Hunger Project is a global, non-profit, strategic organization committed to the sustainable end of world hunger.
Think Eat Save
Think Eat Save of the Save Food Initiative, is a partnership between UNEP and FAO that aims to reduce food waste through knowledge sharing.
Food Recovery Network
Food Recovery Network is the largest student movement fighting food waste and hunger in America.
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