Food Prices for Nutrition was established to provide governments and development agencies with accurate and updated metrics to inform agricultural, food systems, social protection, and health and nutrition interventions.
Food Prices for Nutrition’s outputs – indicators of the cost and affordability of diets and food groups and data for up to 180 countries – use observed consumer prices and household expenditures to provide an operational measure of people’s access to locally available foods in the proportions needed for health.
The cost and affordability (CoAHD) indicators developed by Food Prices for Nutrition underlie the estimates published in United Nations’ 2020 report The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World (SOFI) that over 3 billion – or two in five people on the planet – could not afford a healthy diet in 2017. These data were used to frame the 2021 UN Food System Summit summary and statement of action. Ongoing global food inflation and supply shocks further underscore the need for timely data on the cost and affordability of healthy diets and nutritious food items and groups. The Food Prices for Nutrition Datahub, as the authoritative source for internationally standardized statistics, indicators, and granular data, meets this need for a global cohort of policy makers, development analysts, and other users.
Since 2022, in close collaboration with Food Prices for Nutrition global partners, the World Bank and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) have led the methodological improvement for these indicators, and systematically monitor and disseminate the data series. The latest data and estimates reported in the SOFI 2024 report show that the total number of people unable to afford a healthy diet in 2022 was around about 2.8 billion, or 35.4% of the global population. This is a reduction in the global prevalence of unnaffordability following the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. However, the recovery has been uneven, with a high share of the population still unable to afford a healthy diet in low-income countries and the sub-Saharan African region.
Food Prices for Nutrition supports efforts within the framework of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to end hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition, and promote sustainable agriculture by 2030 (SDG 2). It can also support the monitoring of progress towards the World Bank’s objective of building food systems that can feed everyone, everywhere, every day by promoting “nutrition-sensitive agriculture” and improving food safety. FPN data assist policy makers and program analysts in guiding agricultural production and food distribution to ensure affordable healthy diets for all people at all times.
Food Prices for Nutrition is a partnership between Tufts University, the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and the World Bank. It is funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and UK Aid, through the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office of the United Kingdom.
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