Food crisis: 1,1 billion people could be affected in 2050, according to AI model (JRC)

"By 2100, conflict and inequality-driven scenarios could expose over 1.1Bn people — including more than 600M children, mostly in Africa and Asia — to severe food crises. In contrast, sustainable pathways could more than halve the exposure", announced the Joint Research Center, on 22/01/2026.

This study, first published in December 2025 in Nature, has highlighted "how policy choices determine whether hundreds of millions face crises or far fewer are affected".

The projections are based on a AI model "capable of identifying the onset of new, severe food crises based only on temperature and precipitation data. The model was trained and tested on a large dataset of historical acute food insecurity data for the period 2010-2022, obtained from the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET, a programme established in 1985 by USAID)".

The results "corroborate the idea that climate plays a major, if the not the main role in food-security, not only through obvious direct effects - such as droughts reducing crop yields - but also through indirect, more convoluted pathways, by modulating…