Prevention
Reducing malnutrition is key part of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 2 (SDG2), "Zero Hunger," which aims to reduce malnutrition, undernutrition, and stunted child growth. Managing severe acute undernutrition in a community setting has received significant research attention. Food security
In the 1950s and 1960s, the Green Revolution aimed to bring modern Western agricultural techniques (like nitrogen fertilizers and pesticides) to Asia. Investments in agriculture, such as fund fertilizers and seeds, increased food harvests and thus food production. Consequently, food prices and malnutrition decreased (as they had earlier in Western nations).The Green Revolution was possible in Asia because of existing infrastructure and institutions, such as a system of roads and public seed companies that made seeds available. These resources were in short supply in Africa, decreasing the Green Revolutions impact on the continent. For example, almost five million of the 13 million people in Malawi used to need emergency food aid. However, in the early 2000s, the Malawian government changed its agricultural policies, and implemented subsidies for fertilizer and seed introduced against World Bank strictures. By 2007, farmers were producing record-breaking corn harvests. Corn production leaped to 3.4 million in 2007 compared to 1.2 million in 2005, making Malawi a major food exporter. Consequently, food prices lowered and wages for farmworkers rose. Such investments in agriculture are still needed in other African countries like the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Despite the countrys great agricultural potential, the prevalence of malnutrition in the DRC is among the highest in the world.
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.