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In 2024, escalating violence drove extreme hunger crises from Gaza and the Sudan to Haiti. The number of people facing, or projected to face, catastrophic hunger conditions (Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) or Cadre Harmonisé (CH) Phase 5) more than doubled, rising from 705 000 in 2023 to 1.9 million people by mid-2024 across five countries/territories. Famine conditions were declared in Zamzam Camp in the Sudan and the Famine Review Committee of the IPC was activated five times to review the situation in Gaza and the Sudan – an unprecedented record. The risk of famine persisted across the Gaza Strip and the Sudan.
Weather extremes driven by the El Niño/La Niña phenomenon and the wider climate crisis also pushed millions of people to the edge. From drought in Southern Africa and across Central America’s Dry Corridor, to severe flooding in West Africa, already vulnerable women, men, girls and boys have been pushed to the brink.
Missed opportunities in 2024
The past year highlighted significant gaps in response largely due to lack of funding. If fully funded under the 2024 appeals, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations’ (FAO’s) planned crop production interventions alone could have produced USD 2.68 billion worth of locally grown food – twice what was requested in funding, feeding millions of people.
Emergency agriculture has life-saving impacts in the form of ensuring food is available for families and communities. Over the past five years, only one major food crisis context – Afghanistan – has registered a steady reduction in acute food insecurity, thanks to sustained and scaled-up funding between 2021 and 2023. This support enabled humanitarian agencies to deliver a combination of cash, food and emergency agricultural assistance to millions of people, driving a reduction in acute food insecurity from 47 percent in 2022 to 28 percent by late 2024.
Similarly, life‑changing impacts could be delivered with the same scale‑up of finances in other major crises. However, even in Afghanistan, these gains remain fragile should funding to these activities be cut, especially if predicted climate shocks hit agricultural livelihoods in 2025.
Since the peak of humanitarian allocations in 2022, there has been a steady decline in available funds, which has been particularly evident in allocations to food sectors (down 30 percent).
Globally, the immediate future is deeply concerning, with no sign that the major drivers of acute hunger – conflict, climate extremes and economic downturns – will ease in 2025. The latest analysis warns that acute food insecurity is projected to worsen across 16 hunger hotspots from November 2024 to May 2025, covering a total of 22 countries/ territories. Deeply concerning is the evidence demonstrating that warnings of a deterioration in food security outcomes (such as the presence of IPC/ CH Phase 5 in the population) do not necessarily translate into significant changes in the humanitarian allocations to food sectors. From Haiti to Mali and South Sudan, financing trends for food, cash and emergency agriculture are simply not aligned with intensifying needs, even when these contexts record populations in IPC/CH Phase 5.
Unmet needs heighten the risk of hunger and malnutrition, and people’s exposure to highly preventable diseases. Unless the necessary resources are made available, lost lives and the reversal of hard-earned development gains will be the price to pay.
Agriculture as a lifeline
There are, however, signs of hope. Emergency agricultural assistance, especially when combined with cash, vouchers or in-kind food, enables communities to produce their own food, reduce acute malnutrition and lead their own way out of crisis.
FAO’s goal is to fight food insecurity, especially for those left furthest behind. In crises, the Organization helps people access food from day one, through life-saving and life-sustaining actions. These include cash and vouchers, which allow families to address their basic needs; animal feed and vaccinations, which provide households, particularly children, with continued access to milk, poultry and eggs; and vegetable and staple crop seeds, which produce nutrition-dense food within weeks, keeping families fed for several months – even when wars rage around them.
FAO’s work has strongly demonstrated that humanitarian action addressing both immediate and systemic causes of acute malnutrition must be implemented concurrently to ensure an effective and lasting impact. Over the past few years, FAO has collaborated with various partners to further understand, improve and disseminate the life-saving role of emergency agricultural interventions in preventing child acute malnutrition in emergency and fragile settings. By focusing on cost-effective, life-saving agricultural interventions, FAO aims to prevent children from entering the cycle of malnutrition. For example, an FAO intervention in northern Kenya provided nutrition counselling and livestock feed during the pastoral lean season, which increased milk production and consumption, and reduced child acute malnutrition by 26 percent. In northeastern Nigeria, FAO heavily invested in understanding the root causes of acute child malnutrition and the factors leading to relapse following short-term assistance. By focusing on immediate needs through locally produced supplementary feeding for children under five, and ensuring medium-term access to nutritious food, FAO’s assistance successfully prevented 35 percent of children from relapsing into malnutrition, thereby reducing the risk of mortality.
Delivering results amid crises
In 2024, FAO requested USD 1.8 billion under its Humanitarian Response Plans to reach 43 million people with a range of agricultural assistance. Despite receiving just 22 percent of those funds in 2024, by mid-year FAO had reached almost 20 million people in crisis countries with a combination of emergency and resilience assistance – not with the full package of intended assistance, but still enough to prevent the worst outcomes. Where families received life-sustaining crop production support, they saw returns of about USD 4 to every USD 1 in inputs provided by the Organization.
Despite the violence and access challenges in the Sudan, FAO and its partners distributed over 5 046 tonnes of vital crop seeds and 8 320 kg of vegetable seeds (okra) to over 2.59 million people since June 2024 in eleven states. With favourable rains this season, an estimated production of 0.9–1.4 million tonnes of sorghum grain is projected. During the first half of 2024, FAO and its partners have successfully vaccinated almost 2.8 million animals against common livestock diseases, reaching nearly 558 000 agro/pastoral households.
Anticipatory action against climate extremes
In 2023 and early 2024, the El Niño phenomenon brought significant shifts in temperature and rainfall patterns globally, provoking floods in Eastern Africa and parching droughts in Southern Africa, Central and South America, and Southeast Asia. Working with governments and partners, FAO helped 1.7 million people in 24 countries to avert the worst impacts of these weather extremes on their livelihoods. In Somalia, FAO’s work to anticipate El Niño-linked floods played a crucial role in reducing loss of life. River embankments and dykes that had been built and reinforced in Beledweyne, for example, held back water for approximately five days, while timely early warning messaging facilitated the evacuation of 90 percent of the population, and flash flood alerts mitigated loss of life. Animal mortality rates were reduced by up to 60 percent in Uganda. Similarly, drought-resistant crop seeds helped increase crop yields and areas planted. In Colombia, combined actions such as vaccination, fast-growing fodder and improved water access, reduced animal mortality by up to 30 percent.
A call to action
When crisis-hit communities are given the means to meet their own needs, they see enormous benefits in terms of reduced hunger and malnutrition, stabilized livelihoods and a step towards greater resilience. Emergency agriculture offers a pathway out of hunger, even in the midst of violence. In 2025, FAO is seeking USD 1.9 billion under the humanitarian appeals. With these funds, over 49 million people could produce their own food and make their own way out of acute food insecurity