GAFSP Responds to SOFI 2025: Renewed Call for Investment in Food Security

The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World (SOFI) 2025 highlights how food price inflation is eroding access to healthy diets, especially for low-income populations. GAFSP emphasizes the urgent need to channel investments toward resilient agriculture and nutrition-focused food systems.

Natasha Hayward, Global Lead, Food and Nutrition Security & Program Manager, Global Agriculture and Food Security Program (GAFSP), said: “Improving global food and nutrition security must include investing in agriculture to sustainably increase the availability of diverse and nutritious foods.

“But channeling financial resources toward agriculture and food systems in low-income countries has become increasingly challenging as development assistance comes under growing pressure. The latest SOFI report underscores how rising food prices are disproportionately impacting the poorest countries. These countries — also those least able to cope and most in need of support — are precisely the countries that the Global Agriculture and Food Security Program (GAFSP) targets for support.

GAFSP was launched to address similarly challenging circumstances during the 2007-08 food price crisis in low-income countries. Since then, the program has helped more than 20 million farmers to produce and access healthy, diverse diets but far more is needed to address the enduring challenges in food security and country resilience revealed by the latest SOFI report.

“The focus from here to 2030 must be the integration of food, climate, nature, nutrition to maximize impact, the empowerment of men and women smallholder farmers and the catalyzing of additional resources to support a more resilient and food secure future for all.”