What is World Food Day, and why do we care so much about it?

This year’s World Food Day theme is “Innovate today. Nourish tomorrow.” 

When we talk about ending hunger, we often see images of emergency food assistance being delivered, or of children being treated for malnutrition with ready-to-use therapeutic food (RUTF). These are key ingredients in the fight against hunger, but they don’t form the whole recipe. 

Ending hunger is only possible when we work to address both ongoing cases of malnutrition and high levels of food insecurity, while also building systems to prevent future crises from ever starting. As the FAO writes:

This means addressing the specific root causes of hunger in affected communities, coming up with screening methods to prevent malnutrition before it starts, and building long-term resilience for the millions of families whose food and income security both rely on the land. 

In 2006, Concern partnered with the International Food and Policy Research Institute and Welthungerhilfe to launch the Global Hunger Index, an award-winning, peer-reviewed report detailing the progress toward and setbacks in ending hunger. 

We published the GHI annually on or around World Food Day through 2025. This year, it was co-published by our colleagues at Welthungerhilfe and fellow Alliance2015 member Helvetas, in partnership with the Institute for International Law of Peace and Armed Conflict. It remains a vital resource for comparing levels of hunger between countries and regions, giving organisations and policy-makers the ability to direct resources where the need is greatest. 

Since the beginning, our work to fight hunger has also taken place on the ground. In 2026, the theme of innovating today to nourish tomorrow is central to many of our health and nutrition programmes. Our work is designed to address both acute and long-term crises, ending hunger before it starts with sustainable solutions.

The Mandera Triangle is a region in the Horn of Africa where Ethiopia, Kenya, and Somalia meet, and one of the areas hit hardest by multiple crises, including drought, conflict, poor access to healthcare, and limited water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) services. As a result, hunger and malnutrition are chronic challenges in this area, with global acute malnutrition rates more than double the emergency threshold. 

Translated as “to nurture” in the Somali language spoken throughout the Triangle, Hanaano is a cross-border, integrated programme led by Concern with national partners and support from Irish Aid. It supports the ultimate goal of reducing and preventing child wasting (the deadliest form of malnutrition) by addressing the root causes of hunger and malnutrition in both the short- and long-term. 

Hanaano demonstrates how integrating humanitarian response with long-term development has an impact greater than the sum of their parts. In three years, the programme has:

• Reached 300,000 participants across 105 remote communities with locally-led solutions.
• Established 90 mother-to-mother and 45 father-to-father support groups across 33 communities in Ethiopia alone.
• Supported animal health services for 2,000 families, owning a combined total of roughly 62,000 livestock.
• Presented on initial project findings on both the regional and global stage, including at COP30 in Brazil, the Africa Climate Summit in Ethiopia, and Rome Nutrition Week.

Climate hazards and hunger go hand-in-hand. Poor rainfall and less predictable weather patterns reduce harvests, which leads to less food on the table, less product to sell at the market, and less feed for livestock. 

This also fuels the cycle of poverty as it passes from one generation to the next: Children who suffer from chronic malnutrition are less likely to reach their full potential in life. In turn, they’re more likely to have children who suffer from chronic malnutrition. To end hunger in the region, we have to break these cycles. 

Having worked in Kenya since 2002, with a core focus of our work on the country’s environmental issues as they relate to small-scale farmers, Concern launched Lifesaving Education and Assistance to Farmers (LEAF) in 2019. Funded by ADM, a global leader in agricultural origination and processing, LEAF addresses hunger through two simultaneous actions: 

• Providing frontline treatment for children and mothers with acute malnutrition.
• Preventing future cases of malnutrition by building sustainable livelihoods and environmental resilience. 

In its third phase (2024-2026), LEAF reached over 93,000 direct participants across 28 communities in just 18 months. Phase IV launched earlier this year.

While the Community Management of Acute Malnutrition (CMAM) model — codeveloped by Concern in 2000 — has become the gold standard for treating hunger and malnutrition, it’s a reactive programme, responding to hunger crises after they’ve begun. 

As this year’s WFD theme suggests, we can only get so close to ending hunger by working reactively. Preventing hunger before it starts is more cost-effective. With this in mind, Concern partnered with UNICEF and the Kenyan Ministry of Health to pilot CMAM Surge in 2012, with funding from the ECHO. This model acts as an early warning system for local health clinics, who can track daily centre data against pre-set capacity thresholds and other relevant information (like weather forecasts in areas prone to drought and floods).

CMAM Surge proved so effective in its initial trials that the programme is now known as the Surge Approach or Health Surge, and is able to monitor seasonal “surges” in malnutrition as well as other preventable and treatable illnesses. Over the last 14 years, we’ve adopted the model to over a dozen countries, including Burundi, Burkina Faso, Chad, Ethiopia, Niger, Pakistan, Somalia, South Sudan, and Sudan. The programme has been formally integrated into Niger’s national CMAM protocol, and we are working on a similar scale-up in Somalia. 

The proverbial “now-more-than-ever” applies to World Food Day’s importance. Initially established to mark the anniversary of the founding of the Food and Agriculture Organisation, World Food Day goes hand-in-hand with the FAO’s mission to end world hunger and improve the standard of living for people living in rural areas. 

It also goes hand-in-hand with the missions of organisations that work with the FAO, like Concern. October 16 is a moment for us to remember that hunger, food insecurity, and malnutrition are among the most pressing issues of our time. 

The question of whether we can end hunger is often asked, with many focusing on the obstacles to Zero Hunger. The challenges are great, but World Food Day is a reminder that the reward is tremendous. What’s more, it’s necessary. 

» Related: Why is it important to end world hunger?

World Food Day is a great reason to learn more about the state of world hunger in 2026. Learn more about some of our work to end it in the stories and project profiles below.