Mulmillo (L) closes the eyes of her two-year-old son Mahmud moments after he died from malnutrition and related complications at a local hospital in Somalia's capital Mogadishu on August 15, 2011.
The world can be relatively proud about the progress that has been made over the past 20 years to reduce hunger. Famine is increasingly a thing of the past in all but the poorest nations, and the citizens of fast-growing developing nations like China are moving up the food chain. But 925 million people still go hungry around the world, with the vast majority found in sub-Saharan Africa or in India. At the same time, given rising population and incomes, the world may need to produce twice as much food in2050 as it does now — even as yields improvements have begun to slow. And agriculture even as it's practiced now can be extremely polluting. The challenge in Rio and beyond will be feeding the world — without destroying the planet.