Undernutrition: When a person does not get enough nutrients because they are not eating enough, because the food they are eating is not sufficiently nutrient-rich, or because they are excreting nutrients more quickly than they can be replaced. When a person is undernourished their body does not get the nutrients needed to stay healthy, fully develop, or resist diseases. Undernourishment can also happen if illness prevents a person from using the nutrients from the food they do eat.

1. Nutrition: Tackling hunger is not just about ensuring people have something to eat, it’s about making a balanced diet of nutritious food available year-round. That’s the sort of diet that enables people to work hard and learn fast. Malnutrition is the underlying cause of nearly half of all under-5 child deaths, and the lack of access to nutritious food from the start of the pregnancy until the second birthday can lead to irreversible cognitive and physical damage. The G7 needs to address this hidden hunger, and adopt an integrated approach to agriculture, health and water and sanitation to tackle malnutrition. It’s especially important to reach women and children with solutions to improve nutrition; a focus on things such as breastfeeding, food fortification and new research can improve the next generation’s access to essential micronutrients.

2. Smallholder farmers: Smallholder farmers have a crucial role in ensuring nutritious food is accessible to everyone, especially in rural areas. At the same time they are often affected by hunger and poverty. It is estimated that more than half of the people living in extreme poverty (800 million) work in agriculture. Supporting and enabling smallholder farmers has a multiplier effect in increasing access to locally produced food in their communities and improving economic opportunities.

3. Hunger and Malnutrition in fragile contexts: Aid and food assistance needs to be focused on reaching the most vulnerable. We welcome the focus by the G7 on food security and nutrition in conflicts and crisis, but it needs to be ensured that food assistance is not jeopardising the livelihoods of small farmers and traders by distorting markets (a truckload of free rice sacks can sometimes mean that the local potato seller across the road has no customers for her produce, and then goes out of business). This can be achieved through ensuring that food assistance goes beyond merely handing out food aid, instead providing vouchers and cash transfers where it is more efficient to do so, and when it is more likely to incentivise local production.

4. Climate change and hunger: The effects of climate change are making it harder for millions of farmers to produce food, and this means that climate change and hunger aren’t separate issues at all. Soil degradation, increased natural disasters, and water scarcity are affecting some of the most vulnerable farming communities, and the G7 needs to ensure that its plan enables these farmers to continue to provide for their communities. By assisting smallholder farmers to farm in a sustainable and ecological way, it results in these communities becoming more able to get out - and stay out - of extreme poverty.