Feeding the future

COVID-19 disruptions to food supply chains have served to highlight a worrying trend: despite efforts to achieve zero hunger by 2030, hundreds of millions of people worldwide do not have enough nutritious food to eat. And while agriculture is increasingly vulnerable to climate extremes, it continues to be a major contributor to global greenhouse gas emissions, deforestation and biodiversity loss.

This Spotlight outlines how hunger and malnutrition are growing worldwide, and considers efforts to address the increasing burdens of undernutrition, micronutrient deficiency, and obesity. We dive into innovations, based on long-standing and new science, that could help produce higher yields in the global South, and investigate how women could be the secret ingredient needed to nourish the world.