Goal 2: End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture
Zero Hunger is all about ensuring that everyone, everywhere, has enough nutritious food to eat every day. It involves not just feeding people today, but also changing how we grow and share food. This means supporting local farmers, protecting the soil and seeds (sustainable agriculture), and making sure children get the right nutrients to grow up strong and healthy.
Goal 2: End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture
Zero Hunger is all about ensuring that everyone, everywhere, has enough nutritious food to eat every day. It involves not just feeding people today, but also changing how we grow and share food. This means supporting local farmers, protecting the soil and seeds (sustainable agriculture), and making sure children get the right nutrients to grow up strong and healthy.
Introduction to Goal 2
A curriculum designed for Goal 2 that inspires the values and competencies behind this mission for grades 5-12.
Featured Lesson: Creative Writing
Writing Our Way to a Full Plate
Dive into Goal 2 through the lens of creative writing. This lesson provides hands-on activities and creative exploration designed to bring the concepts to life for students.
Lessons
Musical Exploration
Explore Goal 2: End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture through musical exploration.
Colorful Crops and Communities: Art for a World Without Hunger
Explore Goal 2: End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture through art.
Writing Our Way to a Full Plate
Explore Goal 2: End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture through creative writing.
A Dance for Global Goal 2: Zero Hunger
Explore Goal 2: End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture through dance/movement.
Plates of Plenty: Drama for a World Without Hunger
Explore Goal 2: End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture through drama.
Jamming for Zero Hunger
Explore Goal 2: End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture through music.
These learning objectives are organized into five categories that together form a comprehensive approach to understanding and engaging with this goal.
Knowledge
- •
Identify and define basic needs related to food (e.g., enough food, healthy food, clean water for growing food) and recognize what it means to be hungry or to have enough food to eat.
(Cr1.1.MS, Cn10.1.MS) - •
Recognize that hunger is a problem that affects people in many places around the world, and understand that different communities have diverse experiences with food.
(Cn10.1.MS, Cn11.1.MS) - •
Understand that having access to enough healthy food helps people grow strong, learn well, and feel happy.
(Cn10.1.MS, Cn11.1.MS)
Discourse
- •
Explore and describe how feelings and messages about hunger and food are expressed through various art forms (visual art, creative writing, dance, drama, music) by reflecting on visuals, words, music/sounds, movement, and stories.
(Re7.1.MS, Re8.1.MS) - •
Participate in respectful discussions about what happens when people don’t have enough food and simple ways people and communities can help each other get food.
(Re9.1.MS, Cn11.1.MS) - •
Communicate their own thoughts, feelings, and ideas about Global Goal 2: Zero Hunger through creative expression in various artistic mediums.
(Cr3.1.MS)
Attitudes
- •
Develop empathy and compassion for individuals and communities experiencing hunger, understanding the importance of everyone having access to healthy food.
(Re8.1.MS, Cn10.1.MS) - •
Appreciate the value of food and the efforts involved in growing, harvesting, and preparing it, recognizing it as a precious resource that should not be wasted.
(Cn11.1.MS) - •
Cultivate a mindset of kindness and helpfulness, fostering a personal desire to contribute to positive change and ensure everyone has enough to eat.
(Re9.1.MS)
Capacity
- •
Develop critical thinking skills by observing and discussing how different artistic elements can represent the challenges of hunger and the joy of having enough food.
(Re9.1.MS, Cn10.1.MS) - •
Practice collaboration and communication skills through engaging in group art projects, shared writing activities, and coordinated movement, drama, or musical performances to tell stories about hunger and hope.
(Cr2.1.MS, Pr5.1.MS) - •
Develop creative expression skills through purposeful experimentation with diverse artistic mediums (visual art, creative writing, dance, drama, music) to communicate their understandings and feelings about “Zero Hunger.”
(Cr3.1.MS)
Action
- •
Identify simple acts of kindness and concrete ways they can help address food needs in their daily lives and communities.
(Pr6.1.MS, Cn11.1.MS) - •
Participate in collaborative artistic projects that creatively express messages of hope, community support, and solutions for a world without hunger.
(Cr3.1.MS, Pr6.1.MS) - •
Reflect on their personal role in contributing to a world where everyone has enough food, fostering a sense of responsible global citizenship in working towards Zero Hunger.
(Re9.1.MS, Cn11.1.MS)
Empowering youth to become active agents of change in the pursuit of ending hunger, achieving food security and improved nutrition, and promoting sustainable agricutlure. Recognizing that even small, consistent actions can contribute to a larger global impact.
Taking Action Beyond the Classroom
Here are ways your students can extend their learning and apply their understanding of Global Goal 2 in their wider community and beyond.
Become a Food Storyteller: Choose a powerful piece created in the lessons. Share it with family, friends, or local community groups to advocate for safe, nutritious, and sufficient food (Target 2.1). Use art to tell a powerful story about why food is a right, not a privilege. -
Concrete Action: Aim to share your creative work and a fact about local food security with at least three people outside of school.
Design a Wasteless Wellness Kit: Brainstorm practical, creative ideas to reduce food waste at home and school. Design and share a simple visual guide (like an illustrated checklist or short drama skit) focused on improving nutritional needs (Target 2.2) and reducing waste by using leftovers creatively or proper food storage. -
Concrete Action: Design a clear, visual "Wasteless Lunchbox Pledge" or "Leftover Recipe Card" and distribute it to students in your grade or school cafeteria.
Research a Global Farming Hero: Research a real person or group from another country who successfully doubled their agricultural productivity using resilient, innovative, or traditional methods. Write a short paragraph or create a piece of art showing how their success helps feed their community. -
Concrete Action: Research a Global Farming Hero and present their story to your class, focusing on their use of sustainable practices.
Benchmarking Progress
A quick view of the official UN targets for this goal paired with the indicators that track global progress. Use these to connect classroom inquiry with real-world data.
Target 2.1
By 2030, end hunger and ensure access by all people, in particular the poor and people in vulnerable situations, including infants, to safe, nutritious and sufficient food all year round.
Indicators
- 2.1.1
Prevalence of undernourishment.
- 2.1.2
Prevalence of moderate or severe food insecurity in the population, based on the Food Insecurity Experience Scale (FIES).
Target 2.2
By 2030, end all forms of malnutrition, including achieving, by 2025, the internationally agreed targets on stunting and wasting in children under 5 years of age, and address the nutritional needs of adolescent girls, pregnant and lactating women and older persons.
Indicators
- 2.2.1
Prevalence of stunting (height for age <-2 standard deviation from the median of the World Health Organization (WHO) Child Growth Standards) among children under 5 years of age.
- 2.2.2
Prevalence of malnutrition (weight for height >+2 or <-2 standard deviation from the median of the WHO Child Growth Standards) among children under 5 years of age, by type (wasting and overweight).
- 2.2.3
Prevalence of anaemia in women aged 15 to 49 years, by pregnancy status (percentage).
Target 2.3
By 2030, double the agricultural productivity and incomes of small-scale food producers, in particular women, indigenous peoples, family farmers, pastoralists and fishers, including through secure and equal access to land, other productive resources and inputs, knowledge, financial services, markets and opportunities for value addition and non-farm employment.
Indicators
- 2.3.1
Volume of production per labour unit by classes of farming/pastoral/foresty enterprise size.
- 2.3.2
Average income of small-scale food producers, by sex and indigenous status.
Target 2.4
By 2030, ensure sustainable food production systems and implement resilient agricultural practices that increase productivity and production, that help maintain ecosystems, that strengthen capacity for adaptation to climate change, extreme weather, drought, flooding and other disasters and that progressively improve land and soil quality.
Indicators
- 2.4.1
Proportion of agricultural area under productive and sustainable agriculture.
Target 2.5
By 2020, maintain the genetic diversity of seeds, cultivated plants and farmed and domesticated animals and their related wild species, including through soundly managed and diversified seed and plant banks at the national, regional and international levels, and promote access to and fair and equitable sharing of benefits arising from the utilization of genetic resources and associated traditional knowledge, as internationally agreed.
Indicators
- 2.5.1
Number of (a) plant and (b) animal genetic resources for food and agriculture secured in either medium- or long-term conservation facilities.
- 2.5.2
Proportion of local breeds classified as being at risk of extinction.
Target 2.a
Increase investment, including through enhanced international cooperation, in rural infrastructure, agricultural research and extension services, technology development and plant and livestock gene banks in order to enhance agricultural productive capacity in developing countries, in particular least developed countries.
Indicators
- 2.a.1
The agriculture orientation index for government expenditures.
- 2.a.2
Total official flows (official development assistance plus other official flows) to the agriculture sector.
Target 2.b
Correct and prevent trade restrictions and distortions in world agricultural markets, including through the parallel elimination of all forms of agricultural export subsidies and all export measures with equivalent effect, in accordance with the mandate of the Doha Development Round.
Indicators
- 2.b.1
Agricultural export subsidies.
Target 2.c
Adopt measures to ensure the proper functioning of food commodity markets and their derivatives and facilitate timely access to market information, including on food reserves, in order to help limit extreme food price volatility.
Indicators
- 2.c.1
Indicator of food price anomalies.