The World Is Producing More Food: Why Are Countries Falling Further Apart?

Food availability has improved across much of the world, yet the distance separating countries with stronger and weaker food supplies is widening again. Behind decades of apparent progress, a growing divergence threatens to complicate international efforts to achieve Zero Hunger.

A new study titled "The Widening Cross-Country Food Availability Gap," published in the journal Foods, challenges the assumption that rising national food supplies necessarily represent shared progress. Authored by Enes Çatı, Orhan Gündüz and Ufuk Gültekin of Malatya Turgut Özal University and Cukurova University in Türkiye, the research examines food availability across 150 countries between 2001 and 2023.

The analysis reveals a striking reversal. After narrowing rapidly during the early 2000s, differences in national dietary energy supply stabilized before widening again after the mid-2010s. Most of this renewed divergence is concentrated among countries in the lower half of the global distribution, while substantial differences increasingly emerge between countries belonging to the same geographic regions.

The findings raise a fundamental challenge for global food-security governance. International averages can improve even as particular countries lose ground, making it increasingly difficult to identify vulnerabilities through conventional monitoring systems alone.

A global food recovery that conceals a widening divide

The world's aggregate food-availability record appears encouraging. Across the 150 countries examined, average dietary energy supply adequacy increased from 113.8% of estimated requirements in 2001 to 124.8% in 2023. Median adequacy also rose, indicating that improvements extended beyond a small group of exceptionally well-supplied countries.

Still, this progress masks a reversal in the distribution of food availability. The number of countries whose national supplies fell below estimated average dietary energy requirements declined from 31 in 2001 to eight in 2013, before increasing to 12 by 2023. Improvements continued across many countries, but convergence between national food-supply positions did not.

The researchers identify three distinct phases rather than a straightforward decline followed by recovery. Cross-country disparities narrowed rapidly through the late 2000s, remained comparatively stable until the mid-2010s, and subsequently widened. Their preferred statistical model identifies changes in trajectory around 2007 and 2014, although these dates do not establish a universally applicable turning point.

The magnitude of the reversal is substantial. Dispersion in dietary energy adequacy declined from 16.5 percentage points in 2001 to 13.9 in 2013, before climbing to 16.1 by 2023. On the original measurement scale, approximately 85% of the earlier narrowing had been reversed.

The study's interpretation is supported by multiple statistical checks. Its three-phase model was preferred in 98.7% of resampling exercises, while analysis using an updated FAOSTAT dataset reproduced the broader trajectory. Nevertheless, the researchers caution against attributing the reversal to a single crisis or treating the estimated dates as precise structural breaks.

The distinction between rising supply and widening disparity changes how progress should be assessed. National food availability can improve almost everywhere while differences between countries expand, exposing vulnerabilities that global averages cannot adequately capture.

The sharpest deterioration is occurring below the global middle

Between 2013 and 2023, approximately 93.1% of the widening between the 90th and 10th percentiles of dietary energy adequacy occurred in the lower half of the international distribution.

The gap between the median country position and the 10th percentile widened by 5.4 percentage points. By comparison, the distance between the 90th percentile and the median increased by only 0.4 points. The evidence indicates that renewed divergence primarily reflects growing separation among countries occupying weaker food-availability positions.

However, the researchers uncover a crucial distinction between the fortunes of particular countries and the performance of positions within the distribution. Countries initially classified among the lowest fifth in 2008 improved by an average of 6.97 percentage points by 2023, exceeding the 4.39-point improvement among those initially occupying the highest fifth.

This apparent contradiction reflects changes in group membership. Some countries previously concentrated at the bottom improved sufficiently to move upward, while others experienced deterioration and entered the lowest category. The position remained disadvantaged even though the countries occupying it changed.

Between 2008 and 2023, twelve countries entered the lowest adequacy group while twelve exited. Countries entering included Chad, Jordan, Mozambique, Nigeria, Solomon Islands, Syria and Ukraine. The researchers also found substantial persistence among low-performing countries, with 27 of the 30 countries in the lowest group in 2023 having remained there throughout 2021–2023.

The evidence does not demonstrate increasing mobility across the international food-availability hierarchy. Instead, it reveals continuing turnover alongside persistent disadvantage, making the identification of countries entering and remaining in the lowest category particularly important for monitoring.

Country-specific declines reinforce this concern. Syria recorded a 35-percentage-point deterioration between 2008 and 2023, while Ukraine declined by 14 points and Solomon Islands by 13. Jordan, Libya and South Africa each experienced declines of 11 points.

These outcomes illustrate why identifying the countries occupying vulnerable positions is at least as important as measuring the movement of the global average.

Food insecurity's geography is more fragmented than regional averages suggest

Conventional development assessments frequently organize countries into broad geographic regions. The research demonstrates why such classifications may obscure some of the most consequential differences in food availability.

Approximately 85% of the increase in cross-country variation between 2008 and 2023 occurred within major geographic regions rather than between them. When researchers examined a more detailed classification of 22 subregions, 78.9% of the widening still occurred among countries within those subregions.

Every major region experienced an improvement in average dietary energy adequacy during the period, but the scale and distribution of those gains differed considerably. Eastern and South-Eastern Asia recorded an average increase of 11.8 percentage points, while Central and Southern Asia improved by 10.7 points.

Sub-Saharan Africa registered a smaller increase of 3.1 points, while Northern Africa and Western Asia improved by just 0.6 points. Moreover, 32% of countries in sub-Saharan Africa and 40% in Northern Africa and Western Asia experienced declining adequacy despite improvements in their respective regional averages.

The findings complicate regional approaches to food-security assistance. Geographic proximity does not necessarily imply comparable progress, and improvements in regional indicators cannot establish that individual countries are moving toward greater food availability.

The researchers also investigate whether common vulnerability indicators distinguish countries that fell behind. Surprisingly, neither cereal import dependency nor food import expenditure relative to exports exhibits a consistent statistical association with deteriorating dietary energy adequacy in the specifications examined.

This result does not invalidate concerns about international trade disruptions or imported food-price pressures. It establishes only that the selected measures of trade exposure did not systematically distinguish countries experiencing worsening availability during the period analyzed.

Political stability presents a different pattern. Changes in stability and dietary energy adequacy are positively associated during the same observation periods. However, the stability measure incorporates violence and conflict, while the statistical relationship does not establish whether political conditions preceded changes in food supply.

The researchers explicitly caution against interpreting this association as evidence that governance changes caused improvements or deterioration in national food availability. Conflict, food-supply disruptions and broader economic disturbances may affect both indicators simultaneously.

Zero Hunger needs a sharper lens on national vulnerability

The study introduces an important distinction into international food-security monitoring: aggregate improvement cannot establish whether progress is becoming more evenly distributed. By examining changes in international dispersion, country rankings and geographic patterns together, the research reveals vulnerabilities that conventional national and regional averages can conceal.

The findings support incorporating distribution-sensitive indicators into food-security monitoring systems. International organizations and governments could track countries that persistently occupy the lowest adequacy categories, identify newly deteriorating countries and examine whether apparent regional progress reflects broadly shared improvement.

Such monitoring could help development agencies distinguish persistent vulnerabilities from temporary movements, supporting more differentiated country-level assessments. For developing economies, the research provides a framework for recognizing that countries within the same region may face substantially different food-availability trajectories.

Nevertheless, the analysis has important boundaries. Dietary energy supply adequacy measures national availability relative to estimated requirements; it does not establish whether households can afford food, whether diets are nutritionally adequate or how food is distributed within individual countries.

A country can therefore report adequate aggregate dietary energy availability while significant sections of its population continue experiencing food insecurity. The research does not directly measure household welfare or establish that widening national supply disparities translate proportionately into rising hunger.

Measurement uncertainty also requires attention. FAOSTAT observations are overlapping three-year averages, historical estimates are subject to revision, and the final observation assigned to 2023 represents the 2022–2024 reporting window. These characteristics complicate precise identification of turning points.

The next research priority is to examine differences between countries entering and leaving the lowest adequacy group, separate changes in food supply from demographic changes in dietary requirements, and use independently dated conflict data to assess whether political instability precedes deterioration.