Close to half of the world’s hungry, or 363 million people, live in just five fast-growing, middle income countries: Brazil, China, India, Indonesia and Mexico. At the same time, the levels of overweight and obesity are rising in these countries. This is why we must also pay attention to those living in the “economic middle” as part of any strategy to effectively fight hunger and malnutrition worldwide, according to a new report released on Wednesday by the Washington-based International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). The 2014–2015 Global Food Policy Report calls on the governments of these countries described as “economic powerhouses” to reshape their food systems to focus on nutrition and health, close the gender gap in agriculture and improve rural infrastructure to ensure food security for all. The report said there were both strong advances and stubborn setbacks in food and nutrition security in 2014. Some countries made progess in reducing poverty and the number of hungry people, while in other countries conflict, climate change and disease disrupted food production and took a heavy human toll. The number of food insecure people has increased in many Arab countries since 2011, especially in Syria, Iraq and Yemen. Extreme weather conditions and climate change threatened all regions of the world, from low rainfall in the Sahel to drought in Central America and natural disasters in Asia. IFPRI Director General Shenggen Fan wrote in a foreword to the report that smallholder farmers, who produce much of the food consumed in Asia and Africa south of the Sahara, remain most vulnerable to these types of shocks. However, IFPRI’s strategy for helping those farmers sounds quite uncompromising: “Small family farmers need to move up or move out”. First, it should be determined which farmers can be profitable. Public policy should then support small family farms in either ‘moving up’ to commercially oriented and profitable farming systems or ‘moving out’ of agriculture to seek urban and nonfarm employment opportunities. Shenggen Fan is optimistic about the future: “The year 2015 offers a rare chance to reshape the global development agenda through the Sustainable Development Goals. Food and nutrition security garnered much political attention in 2014. If this momentum can be leveraged into a post-2015 plan that includes holistic and comprehensive food and nutrition investments, policies, and programs, the international community may soon have a chance to end hunger and malnutrition once and for all“, Fan concludes in his outlook. (ab)