SOFI 2026: hunger falls to 645 million, diets cost more

World hunger fell for the third year in a row. According to The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2026 report, SOFI 2026, published on July 21, 2026, about 645 million people faced hunger in 2025, 7.8% of the planet's population. At the same time, eating well became more expensive: almost 2.7 billion people cannot afford a healthy diet.

What happened

SOFI is the annual report of five UN agencies: FAO, IFAD, UNICEF, WFP and WHO. The 2026 edition brings the figures for 2025 and a central theme: the high cost of a healthy diet.

The main figures, according to FAO:

• Chronic hunger: 7.8% of the world population in 2025, compared with 8.1% in 2024 and 8.6% in 2022. That is about 645 million people, almost 14 million fewer than the year before and 43 million fewer than in 2022.
• Moderate or severe food insecurity: 25.8% of humanity, about 2.1 billion people, who at some point in the year had to eat less or worse for lack of money or other resources.
• Cost of a healthy diet: on average, 4.28 dollars in purchasing power parity per person per day in 2025. In 2017, it was 2.94.
• Who cannot afford it: 32.7% of the world population, close to 2.69 billion people.

Africa today has the largest absolute number of hungry people, about 309 million, with a prevalence of 20%. In Africa, 66.6% of the population cannot afford a healthy diet, more than double what is seen in Asia and Latin America, according to CNN Brasil. In Latin America and the Caribbean, 22.9% of the population experienced moderate or severe food insecurity, and a healthy diet is the most expensive among the regions: 4.91 dollars in purchasing power parity per day.

FAO Director-General Qu Dongyu summed up the message this way: progress is possible, but it needs to be faster. FAO calls the improvement fragile, uneven and insufficient to meet the zero hunger goal by 2030.

Why it matters

The report dismantles a common idea: that the problem is only the quantity of food. Chronic hunger is decreasing, but the price of good food is rising. This means many people leave hunger and enter a gray zone, where there is something to eat, but not what nourishes. Rice, flour and oil fill the stomach. Fruit, greens and vegetables, which are the most expensive foods to keep fresh, are left out. And the more perishable the food, the more expensive it is to get it to the table without it spoiling: freight, refrigeration, loss.

In Bairo's view

For Bairo Leandro Gonzalez Martinez, SOFI 2026 confirms a reading he already held: hunger today is largely a lack of connection between the food that exists and the person who needs it. In his reading, when the report shows hunger falling and a healthy diet getting more expensive, it is showing the same flaw from two sides. Fresh food is what is lost most along the way and, for that reason, it is what costs most to those at the end of the line.

Bairo says he knew scarcity up close, at a time when he had people depending on him, and that later, at the wholesale supply centers, he saw the other end: good food without a destination in time. That is where the image he uses to describe Instituto CEASA comes from, that of a place where hunger stops being the problem and the pain. It is a vision, and he treats it as a vision.

Where this meets the ecosystem

Instituto CEASA, the humanitarian front founded by Bairo, proposes turning the surplus of the wholesale supply centers into long-lasting food that needs no refrigerator and travels well. The idea touches the point SOFI 2026 puts at the center: fruit, greens and vegetables reaching those who today cannot afford them. The factory is a proposal being set up, and the goal of a food that lasts up to two years without refrigeration depends on a stability study and sanitary registration before it reaches any table. The Institute's stated official address is institutoceasa.org (site under construction).

On the side of those who produce and sell, CEASA Bank, an agribusiness financial platform that operates on the infrastructure of an authorized institution, proposes giving traders at the supply centers real-time price and volume information. Knowing early what will be left over is the first step for the surplus to find a destination.

Sources

• FAO, 07/21/2026: UN report: Global hunger levels ease for third consecutive year as regional disparities persist
• WHO, 07/21/2026: same joint release from the five agencies
• CNN Brasil, July 2026: Fome global diminui pelo terceiro ano consecutivo, aponta relatório da ONU (Global hunger falls for the third consecutive year, UN report shows)
• g1, 07/21/2026: Fome no mundo cai pelo terceiro ano seguido, mas alimentação saudável segue inacessível para bilhões (World hunger falls for the third year in a row, but healthy food remains out of reach for billions)

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• Brazil off the Hunger Map: what the exit says, what's left
• Hunger in Colombia: what DANE measured in 2025
• Instituto CEASA: what it is and why it matters
• Why use CEASA surplus against hunger?