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.
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news.umich.edu]
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