This is an I-Heart podcast.

This is Solvable. I'm Jacob Weisberg.

There's no reason in the 21st century that people should be going hungry.

But people are going hungry.

According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations,

in 2019, nearly 700 million people across the world were facing hunger and poor nutrition.

That's almost 1 in 10 people.

With the onset of the global pandemic, some experts estimate that 100 million more people might be added to that number.

It's not a time to give up against the global goals.

It's a time to redouble our effort. As part of our setback series, we're examining world hunger, both to get a sense of the

magnitude of the challenge we face and because of the new sense of opportunity as we've

come together to battle this pandemic.

What we really need now is a radical reset at this moment, the commitment globally and nationally to reverse the trend.

Abby Maxman is president and CEO of Oxfam America.

There is enough food for all of us, and when we work together, global hunger is solvable.

One thing I'd love to understand better is global hunger is solvable.

One thing I'd love to understand better is the impact that the pandemic has had on global hunger. I've seen estimates from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization that COVID-19 might have

added something between 80 and 130 million people to the total

number of undernourished in the world. Are those accurate numbers? And how much did it increase

from the baseline before the pandemic? Well, the numbers that you were already quoting are ones we are seeing consistent

in terms of the rise of people who are living in hunger and certainly the number of people

facing on the verge of the word that we don't use lightly, famine.

...