The Covid-19 pandemic is slowing down the efforts made for decades to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) included in the 2030 Agenda. The observation was made in a report by the United Nations Organization for the Food and Agriculture (FAO) published on Wednesday September 22, 2021.

An alarming new report from the FAO shows decades of undermining development efforts. The analysis “Monitoring progress of the 2021 SDG indicators related to food and agriculture” focuses on eight of the SDGs (1, 2, 5, 6, 10, 12, 14 and 15), which have been adopted at a United Nations summit in New York. in 2015. The report indicates several areas where progress is being made. These include: implementing measures against illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing; sustainable forest management; eliminate agricultural export subsidies; investment to boost agricultural productivity in developing countries; and duty-free access for developing and least-developed countries (LDCs), particularly for agricultural products.

The report's striking findings point to areas where the world is lagging behind or making negligible progress. Thus, the document points out that the Covid-19 pandemic may have pushed an additional 83 to 132 million people into chronic hunger in 2020, making the goal of ending hunger even more remote. Also, an unacceptably high proportion of food (14 percent) is lost along the supply chain before it even reaches the consumer as agricultural systems bear the brunt of economic losses from disasters. FAO notes in its report that small-scale food producers remain disadvantaged, with women producers in developing countries earning less than men even when they are more productive. Food price volatility has increased, due to the constraints imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic and associated lockdowns. In addition, progress remains weak in maintaining plant and animal genetic diversity for food and agriculture without forgetting the gender inequalities in land rights which are omnipresent; discriminatory laws and customs remain barriers to women's land rights and water stress remains alarmingly high in many regions, threatening progress towards sustainable development.