Businesses play a central role in providing food to communities and combating hunger and malnutrition. Without careful management and safeguards, company operations can negatively impact the local food security of communities surrounding their operations and supply chain. A particular problem is abuse of land rights through land grabbing. Businesses in all sectors should ensure that land used throughout their supply chain is not, and has not, been taken without free, prior and informed consent from local communities. Companies can also negatively impact communities by restricting access to agricultural inputs including seeds, water supplies, knowledge and finance. Responsible supply chain practices that respect land rights and support smallholder farms can help two-thirds of the world’s population address hunger and achieve economic development. Business is also an emitter of greenhouse gasses, which contribute to climate change and thereby can exacerbate hunger through impacting yields.

Companies can provide leadership on Goal 2 to eliminate hunger. Business in the agriculture and food sectors, but also a variety of related sectors such as chemicals and biotechnology, are crucial to eliminating hunger through product and process innovation that reaches all global regions and communities. A key way to address hunger is by improving productivity and sustainability, market access, and access to opportunities for upgrading into more value-added activities for small-scale agriculture. This serves to provide more abundant and secure food supply for local communities and directly raise incomes of smallholder farmers. Companies can innovate, invest, and share knowledge to help increase the productivity of farmers in its supply chain and wider communities; and, they can restructure their supply chains such that a greater proportion of revenues goes to the farmers and their workers by reducing the need for intermediaries that exploit their vulnerability for their own gain. Companies can also lead by improving food distribution channels to combat malnutrition in areas with limited access to healthy foods and develop fortified crops and processed foods that are compatible with development goals for human and environmental health. To combat the significant global food waste problem, companies can lead in the development of technologies and processes to eliminate food waste from their end-to-end operations, to ensure better food availability to communities around the world.

Businesses can benefit from ending hunger as it allows them to access new and previously underserved markets. Further, existing malnutrition levels are estimated to be as high as 11 per cent of national GDP per year. The greatest market opportunities today are also the areas seeing the fastest population growth, which will increase demand for food up to 200 per cent from current levels by 2050. In many cases, reducing food waste directly improves the financial baseline: deploying sustainable agricultural solutions and reducing food loss and waste are each projected to deliver over $650 billion in annual value by 2030.

Eliminating hunger and improving agricultural incomes can have direct positive impacts on advancing Goals 1, 3 and 8 by increasing rural and developing country incomes and access to nutrition. Given the high rate of women farmers, especially in Africa and Asia, progress on Goal 2 can also further efforts to achieve gender equality (Goal 5). At the same time, businesses should be careful to reduce the risk of negative impacts. Intensive agricultural practices risk water scarcity and pollution (Goal 6), greenhouse gas emissions (Goal 13) and soil degradation (Goal 15). Leading businesses manage these risks through support for sustainable farming practices.