2026 Food Crises Report: Why Conflict Fuels Hunger

If you want to understand why hunger keeps returning as a global emergency, this speech gives a blunt answer: food crises are not random. At the launch of the 10th Global Report on Food Crises, Minister Chapman said that, from the Middle East to Sudan and Ukraine, the world is more fragile than it has been in decades, and that more people are facing severe hunger and food insecurity. That matters because this is not simply a story about not enough food being grown. In the framing set out by the Global Report on Food Crises and the GOV.UK speech, hunger sits where conflict, weak systems, climate pressure and economic shocks meet. Once you read it that way, the crisis looks less like a sudden disaster and more like a pattern the world keeps failing to break.

The clearest warning is that conflict remains one of the leading causes of hunger and malnutrition. The Global Report on Food Crises says more than 80 per cent of people facing severe hunger live in places affected by prolonged conflict, fragility and crisis. When fighting stretches on for months or years, it does not only destroy buildings. It closes roads, blocks trade, interrupts farming, drives people from their homes and strips away the incomes that let families buy food. **What this means:** hunger in war zones is rarely about one empty field or one bad season. It is about whole systems being knocked out at once. Markets stop working, supply chains fracture, and the people hit first are usually those with the least savings, least power and fewest routes to safety.

The speech also shows why conflict cannot be looked at on its own. Climate change and economic shocks are stacking extra pressure on countries that are already struggling. Chapman pointed to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz as a fresh example, warning that higher fuel and fertiliser prices tend to hit the poorest people hardest. The knock-on effects matter. Countries that rely on fertiliser imports from the Gulf are especially exposed, including parts of Asia. Many countries in Sub-Saharan Africa face another risk: as fuel and transport costs rise, food becomes more expensive to move, sell and buy. The UN, the speech notes, does not say a global food price crisis is inevitable, but it does warn that the longer these pressures last, the greater the danger becomes.

This is where the article stops sounding like a general statement and starts reading like a critique of the aid system itself. Needs are rising faster than the world’s response. At the World Bank Spring Meetings, Chapman said there was a shared push to make finance and support ready to surge. But readiness on paper is not the same thing as help reaching people in time. You can hear the frustration in the line that 'the toolkit is fantastic but only if it’s used'. That is a useful lesson for readers too. Reports, early warnings and funding mechanisms matter, but only if governments and institutions act before a crisis becomes a headline. Otherwise the same evidence is gathered again and again while families absorb the cost.

One of the strongest arguments in the speech is that earlier action has to become more than a slogan. Chapman says people in rooms like this have agreed for years on the need to invest in resilience, yet the big step change still has not happened. In plain terms, that means too much money still arrives after livelihoods have already collapsed. The example given is the Food Crisis Preparedness Plans. Chapman recently co-chaired, with Somalia’s Deputy Prime Minister, the first global roundtable to trigger one of these plans. The value of that approach is not that it magically creates resources. It is that a country-led, evidence-based early warning system can bring partners together sooner, co-ordinate decisions better and save more lives before the emergency deepens.

The next challenge is not only spending more, but spending better. The speech argues for using forecasts more effectively and directing funding to the places where it can reduce suffering now while preventing worse need later. That sounds technical, but the idea is simple: if we can see risk building, why wait until the damage is wider and more expensive to fix? **What it means:** a late response is not neutral. When agencies work in silos or protect their own projects instead of joining forces, people pay for that delay with lost income, poorer nutrition and fewer choices. The piece is unusually candid on this point. Chapman says behaviour has to change inside the system, not just outside it.

The speech is also honest about the limits of short-term humanitarian aid. Emergency assistance remains essential for saving lives, but it cannot solve long-running problems on its own. Chapman recalls a blunt conversation with Uganda’s Finance Minister about displaced people and food security: donors arrive with short-term funding and then act surprised when the same crisis keeps returning. That criticism lands because it exposes a basic mismatch. Long-term problems need long-term finance, but also political work. The GOV.UK text says expertise in diplomacy, science, peacekeeping and trade has to be used together. In other words, food insecurity is not just an agricultural issue. It is tied to conflict resolution, public policy, climate adaptation and the way international institutions choose priorities.

The final message is about power as much as partnership. Chapman says no single government or organisation can close the gap between need and resource, which is why governments, multilateral bodies, civil society, the private sector and local communities all have to be involved. The UK’s choice to work through the Global Network Against Food Crises sits inside that argument, rather than above it. Just as important, the speech insists that local leadership cannot be an afterthought. The planned Global Partnerships Conference, organised with BII and CIFF and shaped with South Africa, is presented as one attempt to put that principle into practice. For readers, the wider lesson is clear: food and nutrition support development, stability and peace. If the response stays reactive, short-term and badly joined up, the cycle continues. If evidence is used earlier and leadership is shared more fairly, there is at least a path away from repeating the same emergency.