World Food Day 2024: Corporate action is needed to achieve zero hunger

The theme of today’s World Food Day is “Right to foods for a better life and a better future”. The right to food is a fundamental human right. And yet, amid abundant food production, levels of hunger and malnutrition have reached new heights in 2024. The situation is worse for those living under war. Eliminating hunger by 2030 is one of the central Sustainable Development Goals. Reaching this goal requires action from all corners of society, from farm to fork and both individually and collectively.
Companies have an important role to play in achieving zero hunger due to their influential role at all stages of food production, processing and retailing. Businesses can make more nutritious food accessible and affordable, they can support small-scale producers and the welfare of their workers, and can ensure the environmental sustainability of their practices. But this requires real change in the way that the impact of business is measured to boost motivation and stimulate further action.
WBA’s Updated Methodology for Corporate Accountability
Last week WBA published the updated methodology to assess the most influential food and agriculture companies as part of our ongoing commitment to improving corporate accountability. During 2025, WBA will work to assess if and how the 350 most influential companies are living up to this responsibility by looking at how they contribute to healthy, sustainable, and inclusive food systems. Our methodology provides a roadmap towards a transformed food system based on societal expectations and scientific research.
Our latest assessment, published in 2023, shows that most companies are not doing enough to improve the environmental sustainability of their production and are not prioritising health in their offering. While some companies are working to support small-scale producers, these efforts are falling short of closing farmers’ living income gap.
Key Changes in the 2026 Food and Agriculture Benchmark
Our updated methodology introduces a number of changes to better capture companies’ performance across different aspects of the food system.
First, we have relabelled our three measurement areas (previously Nutrition, Environment and Social Inclusion) as Healthy, Sustainable and Inclusive food systems. This wording is less neutral and points toward our ambition. We have also restructured how indicators fall into these areas to emphasise the interconnections between the different dimensions. For example, the Healthy food systems dimension – now including protein diversification and antibiotics use – encompasses the nutrition and dietary dimensions, but can also refer to the health of other species or ecosystems. This will allow us to clarify and strengthen corporate accountability expectations in the global health agenda.
Second, we have a stronger focus on responsible marketing to children, reporting on improvements and diversification of portfolios to increase the proportion of healthy options and plant-based alternatives.
Finally, for the first time we are introducing a stand-alone living income indicator. While we had previously assessed some elements of living income and small-scale producer livelihoods, this change allows us to increase the focus on this important global agenda by assessing how procurement practices contribute to closing the living income gap. A second indicator, assessing companies’ support for building the resilience of small-scale producers, underlines WBA’s commitment to ensuring that small-scale farmers and fishers are a thriving part of food systems transformation.
Call to action
With the publication of the revised methodology for the 2026 Food and Agriculture Benchmark on the days leading up to World Food Day, WBA is renewing its call for corporate accountability on the fight to end global hunger.
The revision of our methodology also underlines a need for consensus around corporate expectations for accessibility and affordability of nutritious foods. There is a lack of robust and publicly available information and data on companies’ strategies and approaches to increase affordability and accessibility for healthy products, and a lack of clearly defined and widely accepted expectations and reporting metrics for the private sector. WBA will continue advocating for increasing clarity and corporate accountability on this topic, leveraging the data and findings of the previous iterations.
We continue to work with our partners and Allies to ensure that data and insights about corporate performance are useful to, and used by, the widest possible set of stakeholders. In revising our methodology for the next assessment, we have consulted with and benefitted from discussions with a variety of actors from civil society, international organisations, and businesses. The alignment of our methodology with the Corporate Accountability Framework developed by the UN Food Systems Coordination Hub underlines the importance of the corporate expectations set out and assessed by WBA’s Food and Agriculture Benchmark.