FAO: Food Availability, Accessibility, Affordability, and Quality Necessary for Food Security

At World Nutrition Day 2026 in Rome, FAO Director-General QU Dongyu emphasized that global food security depends on food availability, accessibility, affordability, and quality. He introduced the "Four Levels of Food" framework, which outlines a pathway from basic survival staples to nutritious foods, healthy diets, and advanced functional foods like bio-fortified crops. To support this vision, FAO is actively helping countries reshape their agrifood systems by diversifying production, reducing post-harvest losses, and protecting biodiversity. Furthermore, Qu stressed that accessibility requires targeted interventions, such as school feeding programs and market support, tailored to vulnerable groups like rural communities, indigenous peoples, and women-headed households.

Addressing the affordability crisis, Qu noted that healthy diets are unaffordable for 2.6 billion people, meaning production alone cannot solve the problem without social protection, income support, and policies that lower the cost of nutritious foods. He asserted that achieving these goals requires a unified "Delivering as One" approach, blending cross-government collaboration with partner alignments to connect agrifood policies directly to nutrition outcomes. To strengthen these fragmented global efforts and provide better evidence for nutrition policymaking, FAO will publish its first High-Level Report on the State of Healthy Diets later this year.

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