International Food Security Assessment: Past Progress and Prospects Through 2025

In 1996, the US, the European Community, and 184 other countries gathered at the World Food Summit (WFS) in Rome and pledged to reduce the number of food-insecure people by half by no later than 2015. This declaration emphasized improving the performance of the agricultural sectors, particularly in low-income countries. To that end, there was a call for increased public and private investment in technology and its transfer, improved input distribution, greater access to land and credit, and better integration with world markets. ERS uses its International Food Security Assessment (IFSA) model to project food availability and access in 76 low- and middle-income countries. In this analysis, a person is defined as food insecure if per capita consumption falls below a target of roughly 2,100 calories per day. Results from the IFSA model are used here to determine which of the 76 countries achieved the WFS goal. For this analysis, the period of evaluation is from 1995 to 2015.