Together with the other members of the Sufosec Alliance and their local partner organisations, SWISSAID is working towards a fairer world without hunger. But is our approach working? The study presented in the 2026 Global Food Report explores this question, drawing on data from 12,366 households in 16 countries across Africa, Latin America and Asia.
The Sufosec Alliance publishes its Global Food Report every two years, providing an overview of the food security situation in the countries where its members run projects. At the heart of the report are the findings of the household survey. Since 2021, we have surveyed thousands of farming families every year at the end of the dry season, using the same culturally and linguistically adapted survey tools to assess their food security. This consistent approach allows us to build a representative and reliable picture over time and measure the impact of our work.
One thing is clear: hunger cannot be eradicated overnight. In 2025, 44% of households in a typical project region still did not always have enough to eat, while 6% sometimes had to go entire days without food (median values).
Looking at the developments over several years, however, a more encouraging picture emerges: hunger is declining! More specifically, food insecurity in the projects studied has fallen by 20% over the past five years. Compared with the first survey in 2021, only four in ten households now do not have enough to eat, down from six in ten. The proportion of households experiencing acute hunger has even halved, from 22% to 11%.
These figures are encouraging. The progress made is all the more significant considering that hunger remains one of the world’s greatest challenges: in 2025, around 645 million people faced hunger, while 2.69 billion could not afford a healthy, diverse diet.
However, the figures also reveal regional differences. In regions such as Logone Oriental in Chad, where many people have fled from the neighbouring Central African Republic, hunger has increased. Under such circumstances, achieving lasting improvements is difficult.
Today, many farming families also face extreme weather events such as heavy rainfall and heatwaves that destroy their crops, as well as conflicts that disrupt vital trade routes.
This makes the following question all the more important: What is helping to improve food security where progress has been made, and what makes food systems more resilient to crises? The findings point to one key factor: agroecology.
Agroecology is a sustainable approach to farming that prioritises practices such as the use of locally adapted seeds, biodiversity, and organic fertilisers and pesticides. The findings now show that the more agroecological practices a household adopts, the more food families have available. For each additional agroecological practice adopted, the odds of experiencing hunger decrease by 3%. Practices such as crop rotation, intercropping and growing a diverse range of crops complement one another and, when combined, can increase both farm yields and resilience.
Thanks to agroecology, food insecurity has fallen sharply in SWISSAID projects, for example in Fabidji in Niger (-55%) and in Lindi and Mtwara in Tanzania (-32%). What activities have been implemented in these projects? Find out more:
Agroecology, however, encompasses much more than farming practices in the field. Beyond the field, it promotes networking and local participation among farmers, enabling them to exchange ideas and learn from one another. In 2025, this social dimension was included in the study for the first time. The results are striking: Those who cooperate with others, for example to run a seed bank, are less likely to experience hunger. Each additional form of cooperation is associated with around a 15% reduction in the odds of experiencing food insecurity and around a 9% reduction in the odds of experiencing acute hunger.
What matters most for farming families’ livelihoods, however, is the combination of the two. Households that practise agroecology both on and beyond the field are better equipped to withstand hunger. In a village where farmers grow a diverse range of crops and people are actively involved in groups, there would be 25% more families with sufficient food stocks than in a village where only one of these dimensions is practised to some extent. In this way, agroecology can help households become more resilient when fluctuating prices, conflicts or extreme weather threaten their food security.
“In my fields, I grow different varieties of millet, oilseeds and pulses, following the principles of Akkadi Saalu, a traditional South Indian intercropping system. This diversity improves soil health and helps ensure that my family has enough to eat. As a farmer, I am also an entrepreneur, a student, and a guardian of nature.”
Bibi Jan, farmer und entrepreneur, India
FIES (“Food Insecurity Experience Scale”): Eight FAO-validated questions are used to assess whether a household lacked the money or resources needed to have enough to eat during the previous year.
Agroecology score: The score covers 22 agroecological practices across five dimensions: biodiversity, soil health, reduced use of agricultural inputs, crop-livestock integration and social cooperation. It records which practices farmers use. Each practice is awarded two to three points, with a maximum score of 60. Farming is considered diversified when practices from at least four of the five dimensions are applied and a score of at least 30 points is achieved.
MDD-W (“Minimum Dietary Diversity for Women”): Depending on the region, different local foods are grouped into ten categories, such as leafy vegetables, nuts and grains. The indicator measures the diversity of foods consumed by a woman farmer over the previous 24 hours. Her diet is considered diverse if she has consumed foods from at least five of the ten categories.
Agroecological practices alone are no guarantee of food security. The people who put them into practice every day are a key driving force. In many places, much of the work, from making compost to tending crops, is done by hand and largely by women. Women farmers in the Global South have passed down knowledge for generations about which seeds are particularly resilient and which plants can also be used for medicinal purposes. In short, an agroecological transition without women is unimaginable.
Yet women shoulder considerable responsibility. Not only are they responsible for feeding their families, they often also have to fetch water and care for children and older people. The success of agroecology therefore also depends on changing gender roles and empowering women in the process. SWISSAID and Sufosec Alliance projects therefore work with both women and men in communities to ease the burden on women and strengthen their participation in decision-making.
Lukas Reinhard, Senior Advisor Monitoring + Evaluation
But what about the women who provide food for their families? Are they eating well themselves? In half of all the regions surveyed, at least 69% of women meet the minimum standard for dietary diversity. The figures are particularly high in South America (88%) and South and Southeast Asia (87%). This means that they consume foods from at least five of ten food groups. Given the challenges they face every day, this is an encouraging result. Once again, social cohesion plays an important role: where women can organise and exchange ideas about nutrition, for example through women’s networks, their diets are more diverse.
Here is an overview of all Global Food Reports from the Sufosec Alliance.
