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malnutrition
Land Degradation Threatens Billions of Lives Worldwide, Warns UN Food Agency
"Sustainable land management requires enabling environments that support long-term investment, innovation, and stewardship," said the head of the Food and Agriculture Organization.
Nov 03, 2025
A report published Monday by a United Nations agency revealed that nearly 1 in 5 people on Earth live in regions affected by failing crop yields driven by human-induced land degradation, “a pervasive and silent crisis that is undermining agricultural productivity and threatening ecosystem health worldwide."
According to the latest UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) State of Food and Agriculture report, "Today, nearly 1.7 billion people live in areas where land degradation contributes to yield losses and food insecurity."
"These impacts are unevenly distributed: In high-income countries, degradation is often masked by intensive input use, while in low-income countries, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, yield gaps are driven by limited access to inputs, credit, and markets," the publication continues. "The convergence of degraded land, poverty, and malnutrition creates vulnerability hotspots that demand urgent, targeted and, comprehensive responses."
#LandDegradation threatens land's ability to sustain us. The good news: Reversing 10% of degraded cropland can produce food for an additional 154 million people.
▶️Learn how smarter policies & greener practices can turn agriculture into a force for land restoration.
#SOFA2025 pic.twitter.com/8U3yQk9lX4
— Food and Agriculture Organization (@FAO) November 3, 2025
In order to measure land degradation, the report's authors compared three key indicators of current conditions in soil organic carbon, soil erosion, and soil water against conditions that would exist without human alteration of the environment. That data was then run through a machine-learning model that considers environmental and socioeconomic factors driving change to estimate the land’s baseline state without human activity.
Land supports over 95% of humanity's food production and provides critical ecosystem services that sustain life on Earth. Land degradation—which typically results from a combination of factors including natural drivers like soil erosion and salizination and human activities such as deforestation, overgrazing, and unsustainable irrigation practices—threatens billions of human and other lives.
The report notes the importance of land to living beings:
Since the invention of agriculture 12,000 years ago, land has played a central role in sustaining civilizations. As the fundamental resource of agrifood systems, it interacts with natural systems in complex ways, influencing soil quality, water resources, and biodiversity, while securing global food supplies and supporting the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Biophysically, it consists of a range of components including soil, water, flora, and fauna, and provides numerous ecosystem services including nutrient cycling, carbon sequestration, and water purification, all of which are subject to climate and weather conditions.
Socioeconomically, land supports many sectors such as agriculture, forestry, livestock, infrastructure development, mining, and tourism. Land is also deeply woven into the cultures of humanity, including those of Indigenous peoples, whose unique agrifood systems are a profound expression of ancestral lands and territories, waters, nonhuman relatives, the spiritual realm, and their collective identity and self-determination. Land, therefore, functions as the basis for human livelihoods and well-being.
"At its core, land is an essential resource for agricultural production, feeding billions of people worldwide and sustaining employment for millions of agrifood workers," the report adds. "Healthy soils, with their ability to retain water and nutrients, underpin the cultivation of crops, while pastures support livestock; together they supply diverse food products essential to diets and economies."
The report recommends steps including reversing 10% of all human-caused land degradation on existing cropland by implementing crop rotation and other sustainable management practices, which the authors say could produce enough food to feed an additional 154 million people annually.
"Reversing land degradation on existing croplands through sustainable land use and management could close yield gaps to support the livelihoods of hundreds of millions of producers," FAO Director-General Dongyu Qu wrote in the report’s foreword. "Additionally, restoring abandoned cropland could feed hundreds of millions more people."
"These findings represent real opportunities to improve food security, reduce pressure on natural ecosystems, and build more resilient agrifood systems," Qu continued. "To seize these opportunities, we must act decisively. Sustainable land management requires enabling environments that support long-term investment, innovation, and stewardship."
"Secure land tenure—for both individuals and communities—is essential," he added. "When land users have confidence in their rights, they are more likely to invest in soil conservation, crop diversity and productivity."
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To Fight Famine, 100+ Dems Call on Rubio to Surge Baby Formula, Other Aid Into Gaza
"Parents know the pain of a hungry baby's cry," said Rep. Ayanna Pressley. "Imagine, instead of fumbling for a bottle, a military blockade is preventing you from feeding your child."
Aug 26, 2025
With the number of Palestinian children who have been killed by Israel's blockade on humanitarian rising each day, more than 100 Democratic lawmakers on Tuesday called on the Trump administration to show "moral clarity" and demand that the Israeli government allow "a massive surge in humanitarian aid to enter Gaza," including shipments of baby formula.
U.S. Reps. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) and Brittany Pettersen (D-Colo.) led 101 of their colleagues in writing to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, saying they were appealing to him not only in his "capacity as a government official but as a parent" as they warned that 20,000 children in Gaza have been treated for malnutrition since April, following Israel's decision to once again block all humanitarian aid from entering the enclave.
"Parents know the pain of a hungry baby's cry," said Pressley. "Imagine, instead of fumbling for a bottle, a military blockade is preventing you from feeding your child."
The letter came days after the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) announced last week that portions of Gaza are now experiencing a "Phase 5" famine—after months of ignored warnings from human rights groups and United Nations agencies that the enclave's human-caused starvation crisis was rapidly worsening.
Pressley, Pettersen, and their colleagues said that as of their writing, at least 85 children were among those that have starved to death in Gaza; on Tuesday the Gaza Health MInistry reported that at least 303 Palestinians, including 117 children, have been killed by Israel's blockade.
"Infants in particular are especially vulnerable to death by starvation and are dying of malnutrition," said the lawmakers. "The lack of food and aid writ large means mothers do not have the basic nutrition required to sustain breastfeeding, rendering formula the only option for infant survival in many cases."
They emphasized that the only aid operations Israel is currently allowing—the distribution of aid boxes by the US-backed, privatized Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF)—have "delivered only a tiny fraction of the aid that could be delivered by the previous UN-coordinated distribution system," and has not included the allocation of baby formula.
Seeking aid at GHF hubs has also proven deadly for close to 1,000 Palestinians, as Israeli soldiers have reported that they've been ordered to shoot at civilians who approach the sites—even as Israel and its top military funder, the US government, persist in claiming the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) does not target civilians.
The Trump administration has also continued to parrot claims that Hamas is to blame for the famine in Gaza, even after the IDF admitted in July that there is no evidence that the group is stealing or diverting aid.
Since late May, wrote the lawmakers on Tuesday, an average of just 69 trucks per day have brought humanitarian aid from the UN into Gaza—far below the 500-600 trucks needed to meet humanitarian aid.
"As a result, Gaza is currently facing a dire shortage of baby formula, depriving infants of what is their only hope against starvation," said Pressley, Pettersen, and their colleagues.
In July, primary care doctor and public health expert Yipeng Ge described how his colleagues "have had baby formula confiscated by the Israeli military as they enter Gaza."
"These are not isolated incidents, but a systemic policy of genocide," said the doctor.
UN agencies have emphasized for months that trucks filled with aid, including pallets of formula, are languishing just across Gaza's borders.
"This crisis is not one of funding or resources, but of access and political will," wrote the lawmakers. "While we push for a long-lasting resolution and we are devastated that previous ceasefires were not upheld, we believe it is absolutely necessary to prioritize the safe delivery of the pallets of baby formula, specifically ready-to-feed formula, sitting at the border of Gaza to ensure that we do not lose another newborn or infant to starvation."
"All crossing points should immediately be reopened for the entry of humanitarian aid and allowed to operate simultaneously and
consistently," wrote the lawmakers, "and the Israeli government must take additional steps to vastly scale up the amount of aid allowed in through existing crossings and expand movement and access for international aid organizations throughout the Gaza Strip must also be taken, so that they can deliver this aid without diversion."
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Death, Lost Limbs, and Starvation: Gaza Children Suffer Unimaginably as World Continues to 'Look Away'
More than 17,000 children have been reported killed over the past 20 months of bombardment by Israel. But that figure only scratches the surface of the suffering being inflicted.
Jul 16, 2025
Several new reports from the United Nations have once again highlighted the horrific toll Israel's genocidal military onslaught has taken on the children of Gaza.
More than 17,000 children have been reported killed over the past 20 months. But that figure only scratches the surface of the suffering being inflicted.
Reports released this week detailed overwhelming malnourishment among children due to Israel's blockade of food entering the strip. Meanwhile, children losing limbs from war wounds is a daily occurrence.
As The Guardian's editorial board wrote yesterday, "a classroom-worth of children have been killed each day since the war began." Over just the past week, there have been multiple horrific massacres in which children were killed.
On Sunday, six children were killed by an Israeli drone strike while waiting to collect water, deaths Israel attributed to a "technical error." The Thursday before that, another 10 children were killed by an airstrike as they lined up outside a hospital waiting for nutritional supplements and treatment.
As The Guardian noted, these children were in such positions as a result of Israel's deliberate strangulation of their access to the resources needed to live:
Those six thirsty children should not have needed to queue for water due to what the UN calls a human-made drought. Human Rights Watch believes that thousands of Palestinians have died due to Israel's deliberate pattern of actions to deprive them of water, which it alleges amounts to the crime against humanity of extermination as well as acts of genocide.
Those 10 hungry children should not have required nutritional supplements, but Israel continues to choke off aid and civilians are starving.
On Tuesday, UNRWA reported that 1 in 10 of the children screened in its clinics suffer from acute malnutrition.
"Our health teams are confirming that malnutrition rates are increasing in Gaza, especially since the siege was tightened more than four months ago on the second of March," UNRWA's director of communications, Juliette Touma, told reporters in Geneva via a video link from Amman, Jordan.
"One nurse that we spoke to told us that in the past, he only saw these cases of malnutrition in textbooks and documentaries," Touma said. "Medicine, nutrition supplies, hygiene material, fuel are all rapidly running out."
In a post on UNRWA's blog, Touma wrote:
There are very little therapeutic supplies to treat children with malnutrition as basics are scarce in Gaza. The Israeli authorities have imposed a tight siege blocking the entry of food, medicines, medical and nutritional supplies and hygiene material includ[ing] soap. While the siege is sometimes eased, UNRWA (the largest humanitarian organisation in Gaza) has not been allowed to bring in humanitarian assistance since 2 March.
She said that UNRWA has more than 6,000 aid trucks waiting for the "green light" from Israeli authorities, who continue to block them.
"Why should babies die of malnutrition in the 21st century, especially when it's totally preventable?" she asked.
Another report from the U.N.-sponsored Global Protection Cluster found that in addition to the 17,000 children reported dead, more than 40,000 have war-related disabilities. A quarter of those require acute or ongoing rehabilitation.
It found that on average, "10 children per day lose one or both of their legs" as a result of ongoing attacks by Israeli forces.
In December, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres reported that "Gaza now has the highest number of child amputees per capita anywhere in the world—many losing limbs and undergoing surgeries without even anesthesia."
This is due in part to the war's effects on Gaza's hospitals, just 47% of which remain partially functional due to destruction by the Israeli military and supply shortages caused by the blockade.
"Gaza’s shattered health system is overwhelmed—and aid is being blocked by the government of Israel. The world cannot continue to look away," said UNRWA in a post Tuesday.
With the backing of the United States, Israel has banned UNRWA staff from entering the Gaza Strip since March, citing uncorroborated accusations that 19 out of UNRWA's approximately 13,000 staff in Gaza took part in Hamas' October 7 attack on Israel.
Since then, aid infrastructure in the strip has been largely demolished, with most of it now directed by the U.S.-Israeli-administered Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. More than 870 people have been killed in massacres at these aid sites.
"The U.N., including UNRWA and partners, must be allowed to do their work and bring in humanitarian assistance at scale, including for children, said Philippe Lazzarini, the UNRWA commissioner-general. "Any additional delay to a cease-fire now will cause more deaths."
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