The Vision

At the threshold of the twenty-first century, widespread poverty, hunger, and malnutrition threaten to destabilize global economic, social, political, and environmental conditions. Unless immediate steps are taken to reverse the trends of the 1980s and 1990s - overpopulation, mistreatment of the earth, and insufficient investment in development - even more people than today will live in abject poverty and hunger and even more children will be malnourished. Diseases spawned by hunger and malnutrition will persist, degradation of natural resources will continue, conflicts over scarce resources such as water and arable land will become even more common, and inequalities between the rich and the poor will widen. For most of humanity, the world will not be a pleasant place in the twenty-first century. Yet it does not have to be this way. With foresight and decisive action, a better world can be created for all people.

IFPRI’s 2020 Vision is a world where every person has access to sufficient food to sustain a healthy and productive life, where malnutrition is absent, and where food originates from efficient, effective, and low-cost food systems that are compatible with sustainable use of natural resources.

The 2020 Vision is based on the principle affirmed by the United Nations and its members that freedom from hunger is a human right. National governments are not obligated to physically deliver food to every citizen, but they are responsible, with assistance by the international community, to create an economic, political, and social environment in which every person is able to meet his or her food needs throughout the year, every year. The Vision builds on deliberations and recommendations from recent United Nations conferences and other fora related to food, agriculture, and the environment.