The official wording is: "End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture".

[1][2] SDG 2 highlights the "complex inter-linkages between food security, nutrition, rural transformation and sustainable agriculture".

[7] The five outcome targets are: ending hunger and improving access to food; ending all forms of malnutrition; agricultural productivity; sustainable food production systems and resilient agricultural practices; and genetic diversity of seeds, cultivated plants and farmed and domesticated animals; investments, research and technology.

[7][9] After falling for decades,[10] under-nutrition rose after 2015, with causes including various stresses in food systems such as climate shocks, the locust crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic.

[16] In September 2019, Heads of State and Government came together during the SDG Summit to renew their commitment to implement the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

[17] This is when "the decade of action" and "delivery for sustainable development" was launched, demanding stakeholders to speed up the process and efforts of implementation.

[19] A report by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) of 2013 stated that the emphasis of the SDGs should not be on ending poverty by 2030, but on eliminating hunger and under-nutrition by 2025.

"[21] It has two indicators:[22] Stunted children are determined as having a height which falls below the median height-for-age of the World Health Organization's Child Growth Standards.

[3] The full title for Target 2.3: "By 2030 double the agricultural productivity and the incomes of small-scale food producers, particularly 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".

[21] This target has one indicator: The full title for Target 2.5: "By 2020 maintain genetic diversity of seeds, cultivated plants, farmed and domesticated animals and their related wild species, including through soundly managed and diversified seed and plant banks at national, regional and international levels, and ensure access to and fair and equitable sharing of benefits arising from the utilization of genetic resources and associated traditional knowledge as internationally agreed.

"[21] It has two indicators:[23] The FAO's Gene Bank Standards for Plant Genetic Resources is the entity that sets the benchmark for scientific and technical best practices.

An AOI larger than 1 means the agriculture section receives a higher share of government spending relative to its economic value.

[22]The full title for Target 2.b: "Correct and prevent trade restrictions and distortions in world agricultural markets, including 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".

[2] In 2017, during a side event at the High-Level Political Forum under the theme of "Accelerating progress towards achieving SDG 2: Lessons from national implementation", a series of recommendations and actions were discussed.

Stakeholders like the French UN mission, Action Against Hunger, Save The Children and Global Citizen were steering the conversation.

[36] The achievement of SDG 2 has been jeopardized by a number of factors, the most serious of which happened between 2019 and 2022; with the unprecedented 2019–2021 locust infestation in Eastern Africa, the 2020 global COVID-19 pandemic, and the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.

[39] In addition, the COVID-19 pandemic "may add between 83 and 132 million people to the total number of undernourished in the world by the end of 2020 depending on the economic growth scenario".

[37] The COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown has placed a huge amount of pressure on agricultural production, disrupted global value and supply chain.

[41] According to recent research there could be a 14% increase in the prevalence of moderate or severe wasting among children younger than five years due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

[42] According to a group of researchers at Wageningen University, the SDG 2 targets ignore the importance of value chains and food systems.

They note that SDG 2 addresses micronutrient and macronutrient deficiencies, but not overconsumption or the consumption of foods high in salt, fat, and sugars, ignoring the health problems associated with such diets.

The lack of connected or coordinated action from food production to consumption at all levels hinders progress on SDG 2.

Disaster risk management, climate change adaptation and mitigation are essential to increase harvests quality and quantity.