Many newly made mothers face financial barriers; community-based healthcare workers have helped to alleviate these barriers, while also providing a viable alternative to traditional and expensive hospital-based medical care. Recent studies, based upon surveys conducted from 1995 to 2010, show that exclusive breastfeeding rates have risen globally, from 33% to 39%. Despite the growth rates, medical professionals acknowledge the need for improvement given the importance of exclusive breastfeeding. 21st century global initiatives
Starting around 2009, there was renewed international media and political attention focused on malnutrition. This resulted in part from spikes in food prices and the 2008 financial crisis. Additionally, there was an emerging consensus that combating malnutrition is one of the most cost-effective ways to contribute to development. This led to the 2010 launch of the UNs Scaling up Nutrition movement (SUN).In April 2012, a number of countries signed the Food Assistance Convention, the worlds first legally binding international agreement on food aid. The following month, the Copenhagen Consensus recommended that politicians and private sector philanthropists should prioritize interventions against hunger and malnutrition in order to maximize the effectiveness of aid spending. The Consensus recommended prioritizing these interventions ahead of any others, including the fights against malaria and AIDS.In June 2015, the European Union and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation launched a partnership to combat undernutrition, especially in children. The program was first implemented in Bangladesh, Burundi, Ethiopia, Kenya, Laos and Niger.
Fertilizer is also increasingly unavailable because Western environmental groups have fought to end its use due to environmental concerns. The Green Revolution pioneers Norman Borlaug and Keith Rosenberg cited as the obstacle to feeding Africa by . Future threats
In the future, variety of factors could potentially disrupt global food supply and cause widespread malnutrition. Global warming is of importance to food security. Almost all malnourished people (95%) live in the tropics and subtropics, where the climate is relatively stable. According to the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports, temperature increases in these regions are "very likely." Even small changes in temperatures can make extreme weather conditions occur more frequently. Extreme weather events, like drought, have a major impact on agricultural production, and hence nutrition. For example, the 1998–2001 Central Asian drought killed about 80 percent of livestock in Iran and caused a 50% reduction in wheat and barley crops there. Other central Asian nations experienced similar losses. An increase in extreme weather such as drought in regions such as Sub-Saharan Africa would have even greater consequences in terms of malnutrition. Even without an increase of extreme weather events, a simple increase in temperature reduces the productivity of many crop species, and decreases food security in these regions.Another threat is colony collapse disorder, a phenomenon where bees die in large numbers. Since many agricultural crops worldwide are pollinated by bees, colony collapse disorder represents a threat to the global food supply.