The health crisis posed by the COVID-19 pandemic will have a negative long-term impact on global food supplies and on agricultural output and will increase hunger an malnutrition in rural and urban areas, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation warned on Thursday.
"We must increase the exchange of knowledge and leverage global momentum to promote food security and nutrition," said FAO director-general Qu Dongyu .
Qu was speaking at the launch in Rome of a global alliance to help fight hunger that was proposed by Italy.
"Across the world, countries have to make sure that food value chains continue to function well ... and that the agricultural labour force and poor consumers, both rural and urban, are not pushed beyond the poverty line," Qu said.
COVID-19 could add up to 132 million more people to the world's malnourished this year, on top of the 690 million hungry people in 2019, highlighting the challenge that the pandemic poses to eradicating hunger by 2030, FAO warned in a statement on Thursday.
The voluntary multi-stakeholder, multi-sector Food Coalition aims to boost efforts to beat hunger and ensure sustainable agri-food systems amid the COVID-19 pandemic, FAO said.
Italy will promote the Food Coalition during its G20 presidency next year, prime minister Giuseppe Conte said in an address at Thursday's launch.
