中文
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By Zhao Bing
Our world faces a stark contradiction: Agriculture is producing record harvests, yet global hunger is on the rise.
In 2024, an estimated 673 million people faced hunger, corresponding to 8.2 percent of the global population. The storm is fueled by converging pressures, with immediate shocks and systemic failures. Climate change destroys crops and livestock with intensifying droughts and floods, conflict disrupts farming and trade, while economic pressures push a simple meal beyond reach.
These external shocks expose deep-seated weaknesses along the entire food journey. Many communities lack climate-resilient inputs, finance, and practical extension services, leaving productivity inconsistent and crop diversity narrow. About 14 percent of food is lost between harvest and retail because of inadequate drying and storage, weak logistics and market links. These systemic gaps create a vicious cycle: We are failing both to grow reliably in the fragile settings and to deliver what we successfully grow.
The task, therefore, is twofold: building resilient, diversified and nutrition-oriented production, and repairing the post-harvest and market systems so food actually reaches plates. The goal is not merely more food, but ensuring that safe, diverse, and affordable diets are a constant for everyone.
China's transformation: A blueprint for the world
China's monumental journey from feeding a nation to nourishing it offers lessons with global relevance. Over four decades, reforms and targeted investment lifted more than 770 million people out of poverty, and by 2021, the country officially eradicated extreme poverty. This is not a single breakthrough but a holistic system that combines policy direction with practical implementation: Strategic policy, sustained investment in physical and soft infrastructure, a crucial evolution in focus from "more" to "better" – nutrition, safety, affordability, and efficient markets.
The most valuable lesson lies not just in the policies and technologies themselves but, more crucially, in how solutions are transferred and owned locally. China's approach builds intrinsic capability, not just delivering hardware. It is about the commitment to needs-driven design with local partners, the establishment of self-sustaining training ecosystems, and the integration of solutions into national systems. This ensures that innovations are not simply transplanted, but take root and thrive within local contexts.
China's experience provides a comprehensive toolkit, offering proven pathways to build resilient and inclusive food systems worldwide.
A newly built community for poverty alleviation relocation at ancient Shexiang Town of Dafang County, southwest China's Guizhou Province, December 24, 2020. [Photo/Xinhua]
South-South in action: A bridge of hope
The spirit of South-South and Triangular Cooperation is flourishing across the Global South, becoming a vital bridge for sharing transformative and practical solutions. From Asia to Africa to Latin America, countries directly exchange policy frameworks, appropriate technologies and practical financing models through peer learning, community exchanges, regional research networks, and business collaboration. This ecosystem is broader than any single partner, it is how proven ideas travel, adapt, and scale to meet diverse local needs.
The partnership between China and the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) exemplifies this trend. With financial and technical backing from the Chinese government and partners, the WFP has implemented practical and people-centred projects worldwide. Initiatives like the Home-Grown School Feeding programmes in Uganda and Burundi keep children in school while creating reliable markets for smallholder farmers, simultaneously addressing education and agriculture challenges.
In West Africa, the WFP China Centre of Excellence has supported strengthening locally led rice value chains by establishing demonstration sites on post-harvest management and improving access to small-scale processing equipment, coupled with capacity building activities. These efforts are powerful testaments to how tailored solutions and strategic partnerships, aligned with national systems and modest catalytic investment, can generate durable benefits across sectors and borders.
The unfinished harvest: Our shared responsibility
As the UN marks its 80th anniversary, food security remains a foundation of peace, resilience, and sustainable development. Progress is real, but incomplete. Turning isolated successes into systemic change requires collective effort across sectors and borders.
Four strategic shifts are essential to bridge this gap. First, from standardized packages to needs-driven support, identifying and addressing local bottlenecks with tailored solutions.
Second, from standalone projects to systemic capacity, strengthening local institutions to ensure genuine ownership and long-term sustainability.
Third, from fragmented funding to strategically aligned resources, creating financing mechanisms that reward measurable impact and enable proven innovations to scale.
Finally, from siloed efforts to true multilateralism, bringing together communities, governments, the private sector, research bodies, and international organizations to co-create solutions that are greater than the sum of their parts.
Hunger is not inevitable. By uniting in coordinated action, we can transform today's innovations into tomorrow's lasting legacies. Together, we can build inclusive, resilient food systems that ensure better food for all, leaving no one behind in our shared future.
Zhao Bing is the Representative and Director of the United Nations World Food Programme in China.
