A country that produces some of the world’s finest rice and cotton still struggles to feed millions of its own people. The 2026 Global Report on Food Crises 2026, released on April 24 by a United Nations-backed alliance of humanitarian and development agencies, has placed Pakistan among the ten countries where acute hunger is most severely concentrated. The list also includes conflict-ridden states such as Sudan, Syria, South Sudan and Yemen.
The numbers are deeply troubling. According to the report, around 11 million Pakistanis faced severe food insecurity in 2025. Of these, 9.3 million were classified as being in “crisis” conditions, while 1.7 million were placed in “emergency” conditions, the most severe category short of famine under the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification system. Pakistan also appears in the report’s global malnutrition risk analysis, where vulnerabilities have been identified in diet quality, access to healthcare, water and sanitation, and exposure to disease. The report further warns that inflation, projected to rise to 6 percent in 2026, will place additional pressure on millions of households already struggling to afford basic food needs.
Pakistan’s inclusion is part of a deeply alarming global picture. The 2026 Global Report on Food Crises, now in its tenth edition, found that 266 million people across 47 countries experienced high levels of acute food insecurity in 2025. This figure is almost double that recorded a decade ago. For the first time in the history of the report, famine was simultaneously confirmed in two separate contexts: Gaza and parts of Sudan. The ten worst-affected countries, including Pakistan, accounted for nearly two-thirds of all people facing acute hunger worldwide.
The report presents an unambiguous diagnosis. Pakistan’s food insecurity is rooted in long-standing structural weaknesses within its agricultural sector. Agriculture contributes roughly 19 percent to national gross domestic product and employs nearly 38 percent of the workforce. Yet the sector continues to suffer from chronic underinvestment, outdated farming practices, fragmented land ownership, weak extension services and inefficient subsidy systems. The result is a persistent productivity gap that leaves the country unable to reliably feed its rapidly growing population of more than 240 million people.
These structural weaknesses are being intensified by a worsening climate crisis, which Pakistan is particularly ill-equipped to absorb. The report notes that in 2025, heavy monsoon rains and flash floods affected more than six million people, destroying cropland, damaging irrigation networks and disrupting agricultural infrastructure. This followed years of alternating droughts and devastating floods — a destructive cycle that has severely affected livelihoods in Balochistan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Sindh, the provinces where food insecurity is most acute.
In Balochistan alone, nearly one-quarter of the assessed population is classified as facing high levels of food insecurity. In Sindh, more than three million people are experiencing similar conditions. These figures underline how climate shocks are not isolated disasters but recurring pressures that deepen already existing structural vulnerabilities.
Economic fragility has compounded the crisis. Persistent currency depreciation, rising fuel and fertiliser prices, and an expanding food import bill have sharply reduced the purchasing power of ordinary households. The Human Rights Council of Pakistan has warned that recent fuel price increases, driven by higher global energy costs, are intensifying the inflationary pressures already highlighted in the report. This is pushing poor and middle-income families further below the poverty line.
There is also a striking paradox at the heart of the crisis. According to the Pakistan Agricultural Research Council, Pakistan is the world’s third-largest food-wasting country, discarding an estimated 36 million tonnes of food every year. This happens even as millions remain unable to secure adequate nutrition. The scale of food loss reflects deep inefficiencies in storage, transport, market access and supply chain management.
The release of the report has prompted a policy response in Islamabad. The federal cabinet has approved a series of major agricultural reforms, including Pakistan’s first-ever National Agriculture Biotechnology Policy, the National Seed Policy 2025 and the Interim National Wheat Policy 2025–26. These initiatives aim to reduce dependence on food imports and strengthen domestic food self-sufficiency.
At the same time, the Ministry of National Food Security and Research initiated formal dialogue with the United Nations Committee on World Food Security on the sidelines of the FAO Regional Conference in Brunei Darussalam in late April. The purpose of these discussions is to seek international policy guidance for shaping long-term national food strategies.
Experts and development agencies broadly agree that the most urgent priority is the modernisation of Pakistan’s agricultural system. The Food and Agriculture Organization has outlined four policy pathways for Pakistan through economic modelling. Each of them stresses the need to redirect agricultural subsidies away from short-term input support and towards long-term investment in irrigation efficiency, precision agriculture, improved extension services and high-yield, climate-resilient crop varieties.
Pakistan possesses one of the largest canal irrigation systems in the world, yet much of this infrastructure is ageing and increasingly inefficient. Urgent rehabilitation is essential. Improved water management alone could significantly raise agricultural productivity in regions that currently lose enormous quantities of water through leakage, evaporation and poor maintenance.
Climate-smart agriculture must become central to the country’s agricultural future. This requires expanding the use of flood-resistant and drought-resistant seed varieties, strengthening early warning systems for extreme weather events, and investing in rural infrastructure, particularly storage facilities and cold chain networks. These interventions would sharply reduce post-harvest losses, which remain one of the most avoidable contributors to food insecurity.
The issue of food waste deserves equally urgent attention. Better storage, transport and stronger links between farmers and markets could effectively add millions of tonnes of food to national supply without bringing a single additional acre under cultivation. In a country where millions remain food insecure, reducing avoidable waste should be regarded as a national economic and humanitarian priority.
Beyond agricultural production, Pakistan must also strengthen the social protection mechanisms that translate food availability into household food access. The Benazir Income Support Programme provides an important foundation, but both coverage and cash transfer values have failed to keep pace with inflation. Expanding targeted cash support and food voucher programmes — particularly in Balochistan, Sindh and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa — would provide immediate relief to the 1.7 million Pakistanis currently facing emergency levels of food insecurity.
Pakistan’s presence on the same list as Yemen and South Sudan should serve as a moment of national reckoning. This is a country blessed with fertile soil, abundant sunlight and one of the world’s great river systems. The crisis is therefore not simply one of geography or climate. At its core, it is a crisis of governance, investment and political will.
The policy measures announced in April represent an important beginning. But policy declarations alone will not feed people. They must now be converted into operational action, institutional reform and measurable outcomes. Unless that happens quickly, Pakistan risks remaining trapped in a cycle where agricultural potential continues to coexist with widespread hunger.