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Goal 2: Zero hunger

Updated

Goal 2 is to end hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture.

Illustration: The UN

Access to sufficient and nutritious food is a human right that each state has an obligation to guarantee its citizens. Today, some 850 million people around the world live in hunger. This in itself is a human disaster, and moreover obstructs development and growth in many countries through the impact that insufficient nutrient intake has on learning and productive work. Particular focus must be on food security for girls and boys, girls in puberty and pregnant women, who face the greatest risk of starvation and malnutrition.

Food security is particularly dependent on efficient trade and markets, and also efficient infrastructure for transport and storage, as a large proportion of the world's population live in cities.

Food security is promoted through open and transparent trade, as is legally secure, gender-equal and equitable access to markets, research and innovation, financial services, information and adequate advisory services, in which the private sector can play an important role. At the same time, food waste and loss throughout the entire value chain is a major problem.

Subgoals

2.1 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

2.2 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

2.3 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

2.4 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

2.5 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

2.a 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

2.b 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

2.c 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

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