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    Ending hunger

    Ending hunger: Hunger is falling. Help it fall faster.

    Hunger is falling, and the ways to bring it down further are known, from school meals to farm advice by text message. Where war drives hunger, money alone won't end it, and this chapter says so.

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    Ryan K. Hertel · heyitskenton

    The problem

    What we're up against.

    • Fewer people are hungry. Still far too many.

      An estimated 645 million people faced hunger in 2025, nearly 14 million fewer than the year before, and still more than before the pandemic. Hunger has now fallen three years in a row.

    • Africa now carries the most.

      Africa is now home to about 309 million hungry people, more than Asia's 292 million. By 2030, 510 million to 520 million people are still expected to face hunger, 56% of them in Africa.

    • The worst hunger follows conflict.

      In 2025, 266 million people in countries with food crises faced high levels of acute food insecurity. Conflict was the main driver in the places where more than half of them lived.

    What works

    Proven, and ready to grow.

    • School meals help children learn.

      In a randomized trial of Ghana's school meals program, children's scores in math and literacy rose by about 0.15 standard deviations: moderate gains, the researchers say, from a low starting point.

    • Cash can reach more people than food.

      Across programs in Ecuador, Niger, Uganda and Yemen, each cash transfer cost less to deliver than food. On the same budgets, another 44,769 people could have been helped.

    • Farmers grow more with the right support.

      In a randomized trial in western Kenya, One Acre Fund's program, which tackles several of a farmer's problems at once, raised maize harvests by 26% and profits by 16%.

    • Advice by phone.

      Across studies, farm advice delivered digitally raised yields by 4% and the odds that farmers used recommended inputs by 22%. In one Kenyan program, the text messages cost about $0.30 a farmer.

    • Advice by video.

      In India, farmers offered videos on a better way to grow rice raised their yields by 12% to 18% after a year, compared with farmers given the usual advice.

    What a family could fund

    Where the money goes furthest.

    • What each fix costs.

      The newest costing of ways to end hunger puts farm advice by phone and other digital means at about $29 a year for each person lifted out of hunger. School meals come to about $51, and emergency food aid about $56.

    • Cash, straight to families.

      GiveDirectly says that since it began, 89% of the money for its cash transfers has gone directly to the people receiving it.

    • Farm support at scale.

      One Acre Fund served 5.9 million farmers in 2025 and reports about $5.70 in new farm profits for every dollar invested in it.

    • Advice for millions of farmers.

      Precision Development reached 46.4 million farmers in India, Kenya, Ethiopia and Nigeria in 2025, at about $0.58 a user a year, by its own count.

    Honest limits

    What money can't promise.

    • Money alone won't end it.

      The World Food Program says it plainly: money alone will not solve this crisis. Where there is war, reaching people at scale depends on peace, or at least peaceful conditions.

    • Some places cost far more to reach.

      In South Sudan, airdrops are the only way to reach some of the most vulnerable people, and they cost 70 times more than reaching people by land.

    • Funding is falling.

      Contributions to the World Food Program fell from $9.8 billion in 2024 to $6.5 billion in 2025.

    • Results can fade.

      In Kenya, the text messages raised farmers' incomes in the first season but showed no impact in the second. The gains from the videos in India were smaller after two years.

    Hard questions

    Asked and answered.

    1. You might ask

      Isn't food aid just a band-aid?

      Ryan

      In part, and the research says so. The newest costing finds that quick measures, from food aid to school meals, bring important humanitarian benefits but lack sustainability, and it calls for longer-term investments alongside them. So the honest plan funds both.

    2. You might ask

      Doesn't free food hurt local farmers?

      Ryan

      It's a fair worry, and there are ways around it: buy food near where it's needed, or give cash. Buying grain locally saved over 50% on average, compared with shipping food aid from the United States. In Kenya, large cash transfers caused minimal price inflation, and each dollar added about $2.50 to the local economy.

    3. You might ask

      Won't people waste the cash?

      Ryan

      The evidence says no. A World Bank review of 19 studies found that, almost without exception, cash transfers left spending on alcohol and tobacco unchanged or lowered it.

    In the slider

    See what your fortune could do here.

    Ending hunger

    The slider prices this cause with these numbers:

    • Ending hunger by 2030 would take about $93 billion more each year.
    • Paying all of it, each year, is the whole need.
    • The newest estimate and the highest, so the slider never overstates the share.
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    More of the Blueprint

    Keep reading.

    23 more chapters on the way

    Back to Keep 100

    Sources

    Every number in this chapter, and where it came from.

    1. Source 1: The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2026: executive summary (opens in a new tab)

      FAO, IFAD, UNICEF, WFP and WHO, 21 July 2026. Checked 16 October 2026.

      Hunger here means chronic undernourishment. The estimate for 2025 ranges from 608 to 696 million people.

    2. Source 2: Q&A: The missing peace – how only an end to conflict can stop spiralling hunger (opens in a new tab)

      World Food Programme, 19 September 2025. Checked 16 October 2026.

    3. Source 3: UN report: Global hunger levels ease for third consecutive year as regional disparities persist (opens in a new tab)

      Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 21 July 2026. Checked 16 October 2026.

    4. Source 4: Global Report on Food Crises 2026: in brief (opens in a new tab)

      Global Network Against Food Crises, 24 April 2026. Checked 16 October 2026.

      Covers the countries and territories with food crises that the report analyzes.

    5. Source 5: Food for Thought? Experimental Evidence on the Learning Impacts of a Large-Scale School Feeding Program (Aurino, Gelli, Adamba, Osei-Akoto and Alderman) (opens in a new tab)

      Journal of Human Resources, January 2023. Checked 16 October 2026.

      A randomized trial of the Ghana School Feeding Program, which serves a free daily meal in government primary schools.

    6. Source 6: Costing alternative transfer modalities (Margolies and Hoddinott) (opens in a new tab)

      International Food Policy Research Institute, 2014. Checked 16 October 2026.

      Programs in Ecuador, Niger, Uganda and Yemen.

    7. Source 7: Can Smallholder Extension Transform African Agriculture? (Deutschmann, Duru, Siegal and Tjernström) (opens in a new tab)

      National Bureau of Economic Research, July 2019. Checked 16 October 2026.

      A randomized trial of One Acre Fund's program in western Kenya. A working paper, not yet peer reviewed.

    8. Source 8: Realizing the potential of digital development: The case of agricultural advice (Fabregas, Kremer and Schilbach) (opens in a new tab)

      Science, 13 December 2019. Checked 16 October 2026.

      A review pooling studies of farm advice sent by phone and other digital means.

    9. Source 9: Phone-based technology for agricultural information delivery (opens in a new tab)

      J-PAL, May 2025. Checked 16 October 2026.

      Text messages to sugar cane farmers in Kenya. The date is the page's last update.

    10. Source 10: Video-based support for small-scale farmers around the world (opens in a new tab)

      J-PAL, July 2025. Checked 16 October 2026.

      Videos about a rice-growing method, shown to farmers in Bihar, India. The date is the page's last update.

    11. Source 11: Ending Hunger by 2030: Consequences of Complacency and the New Financial Needs for Achieving SDG2 (von Braun, Chichaibelu, Laborde, Torero Cullen and Baumüller) (opens in a new tab)

      Center for Development Research (ZEF), University of Bonn, May 2024. Checked 15 October 2026.

      Ten measures that could lift about 700 million people out of hunger and malnutrition by 2030. The newest estimate, and higher than earlier ones.

    12. Source 12: FAQ (opens in a new tab)

      GiveDirectly. Checked 16 October 2026.

      GiveDirectly's own figure, since it began.

    13. Source 13: Our impact (opens in a new tab)

      One Acre Fund. Checked 16 October 2026.

      One Acre Fund's own figures, for 2025.

    14. Source 14: 2025 Annual Impact Report (opens in a new tab)

      Precision Development (PxD). Checked 16 October 2026.

      PxD's own figures. It builds digital advice services for farmers, meant for governments to run in the long term.

    15. Source 15: 2026 Global Outlook: Hunger and hope (opens in a new tab)

      World Food Programme, November 2025. Checked 16 October 2026.

    16. Source 16: Contributions to WFP in 2024 (opens in a new tab)

      World Food Programme. Checked 16 October 2026.

      Total contributions as of 10 December 2025.

    17. Source 17: Contributions to WFP in 2025 (opens in a new tab)

      World Food Programme. Checked 16 October 2026.

      Total contributions as of 16 February 2026.

    18. Source 18: The Timeliness and Cost-Effectiveness of the Local and Regional Procurement of Food Aid (Lentz, Passarelli and Barrett) (opens in a new tab)

      World Development, September 2013. Checked 16 October 2026.

      Compared with food aid shipped from the United States to the same countries.

    19. Source 19: General Equilibrium Effects of Cash Transfers: Experimental Evidence From Kenya (Egger, Haushofer, Miguel, Niehaus and Walker) (opens in a new tab)

      Econometrica, November 2022. Checked 16 October 2026.

      Cash transfers to more than 10,500 poor households across 653 randomized villages in rural Kenya.

    20. Source 20: Cash Transfers and Temptation Goods: A Review of Global Evidence (Evans and Popova, Policy Research Working Paper 6886) (opens in a new tab)

      World Bank, May 2014. Checked 16 October 2026.

      Temptation goods are alcohol, tobacco and the like.