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World Trade Organization rules hamper public food stockholding

Nature Food volume 4, pages 196–198 (2023)Cite this article

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World Trade Organization rules must be reformed to allow governments to build and manage public food reserves, providing a critical tool in preventing or mitigating food crises.

Since the 2007–2008 and 2011 global food crises, when the price of key food staples spiked by 70–180%, there has been growing interest among many states in public food stockholding as a tool to combat food insecurity1. This interest has grown even more acute today as the world faces an unprecedented global hunger crisis. The war in Ukraine, supply chain disruptions, climate shocks, and the continued economic fallout from the COVID pandemic have driven food prices to record highs2. Nearly one-in-three people globally, more than 2.3 billion people, are now moderately or severely food insecure — an increase of 350 million since 2019 (ref. 3). Furthermore, the challenge of combating hunger and malnutrition is expected to worsen with climate change, as global crop yields decline and the growing frequency of extreme weather events, such as droughts and floods, lead to increased shocks to food supply and distribution4.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Public Policy and Global Affairs, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

    Kristen Hopewell & Matias Ezequiel Margulis

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  1. Kristen Hopewell
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  2. Matias Ezequiel Margulis
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Correspondence to Kristen Hopewell.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Nature Food thanks Sophia Murphy and Surupa Gupta for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Hopewell, K., Margulis, M.E. World Trade Organization rules hamper public food stockholding. Nat Food 4, 196–198 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43016-023-00707-y

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