University of Michigan Puts Spotlight on Smarter Food Systems to Attain Zero Hunger

Researchers from the University of Michigan (UM) reviewed the scholarly papers discussing the Zero Hunger goal of the United Nations and found that many scholars focused too narrowly on increasing crop productivity and missed other critical aspects of the food system. The review is published in the journal World Development.

The study focused on scholarly papers from three disciplinary areas (ecology and agricultural sciences, nutrition and public health, and political economy and policy science) that tackled UN's Zero Hunger goal. It was found that most of the papers were focused on boosting the yield of crops. The UM researchers stressed that according to UN, 815 million people are undernourished, and as many as 2 billion suffer from nutrient deficiencies, but the world agriculture produces enough edible calories to feed 9 billion people. Thus, they concluded that the most effective way towards the Zero Hunger goal is to put more attention to other details such as nutritional quality of diets and development of policies that increase equity and access to food.

Read the original news article from the University of Michigan and the review article in World Development.