Food Crises

The (un)affordability of healthy diets in South Asia and the implications for nutrition-sensitive food policies

The agrifood system in South Asia: Pathways to sustainable healthy diets

South Asia is home to an estimated 2.08 billion people, making it the most densely populated region on the planet. This places immense pressure on the region’s agrifood systems to ensure that healthy and affordable food is available for all, a goal that can only be met by addressing today’s multiple interconnected challenges. Overcoming bottlenecks in agrifood systems — the networks of actors, activities, infrastructure, and policies that are involved in getting food from farms to mouths — requires data and evidence on the many elements of these complex systems. Moreover, that evidence must serve as a catalytic driver of change, which further requires strong partnerships between donors, researchers, civil society, industry, and policymakers. This report begins with a summary of the latest evidence on diets in the region, and then traces the drivers of current diets, starting from the food environment experienced by consumers, back through the diverse markets and farm production, and finally looks at the role of social protection and agrifood policy. The chapters on diets include close looks at consumption of unhealthy foods, the (un)affordability of healthy diets, and behavioral and environmental drivers of food choice. Production-related chapters consider trade-offs between production and consumption as well as how farming households adapt to climate shocks. Other chapters review evidence on the roles of men, women, and adolescents at different points in agrifood systems. The final chapters address lessons learned from social protection and on structural variations in India’s agricultural value chains. Many of the chapters draw from surveys recently conducted in Bangladesh, India, and Nepal under the CGIAR Research Initiative on Transforming Agrifood Systems (TAFSSA).

Food insecurity in post-crisis Sri Lanka: Evidence from the 2024-2025 BRIGHT survey

We assess food insecurity in Sri Lanka using the BRIGHT National Household Survey data for 2024-2025, which collected data on the Food Insecurity Experience Scale (FIES) developed by the FAO. • 32.8% of households in Sri Lanka experienced moderate or severe food insecurity in the 12 months prior to the survey, with 29.6% classified as moderately and 3.2% classified as severely food insecure. In contrast, food insecurity was just 12% in the 2019 Household Income and Expenditure survey (HIES), such that food insecurity has almost tripled since the 2022 economic crisis. • A very high 54.5% of Estate households (households that reside in housing on an estate/plantation) experienced food insecurity (43.2% moderate, and 11.4% severe), compared to 35.3% of urban and 31.8% of rural households. Eastern (39.1%), Uva (38.5%), and Southern (38.1%) provinces recorded the highest food insecurity rates. • Dry-zone households show slightly higher moderate and severe insecurity (34.6%) than inter-mediate (31.1%) and wet zones (24.6%). • Households dependent on informal employment are more than twice as likely to report food in-security (41% moderate, 5% severe) compared to formal employment households (18% moderate, 1% severe). • Fishing households are the most food insecure across all livelihoods with 58% experiencing moderate or severe insecurity, including 10% reporting severe food insecurity. Households de-pendent on construction (41%), agriculture (38%), textiles/artisans (35%), manufacturing (29%), food and beverage preparation (27%) and services (23%) also reported high food insecurity. • Splitting by wealth quintiles, the poorest 20% of households in Sri Lanka have a food insecurity prevalence of 45% including 10% who are severely food insecure. Food insecurity declines as wealth increases but is still high for the second (34%) and middle quintiles (25%). • The FIES-based indicator reports much higher food insecurity in 2024 (32.8%) than the WFP’s alternative CARI method of estimating food insecurity (16%). • FIES-based measures can support more frequent monitoring of food insecurity in Sri Lanka via phone surveys and help assess the impacts of programs such as Aswesuma.