Target 2.1: End hunger and ensure access to safe food
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
Owners voting their values help. Others must carry most of it.
Why shareholder democracy is helpful
About 673 million people, 8.2 percent of the world, faced hunger in 2024. The drivers include the 2021-2023 food price surge, the war in Ukraine and extreme weather, factors mostly outside corporate control. Corporate conduct enters through price formation. SOMO finds that ADM, Bunge, COFCO, Cargill and Louis Dreyfus control 70 to 90 percent of global grain trade and hold unique access to market data. The same report finds their 2022 profits tripled against the 2016-2020 average, and it recommends merger scrutiny, windfall taxes and price-gouging laws. Owners of listed traders and food retailers can press on pricing conduct and disclosure. Humanitarian aid and national policy carry the target, so owners help at the margin.
How this was scoredHelpful
Helpful. Owners voting their values help. Others must carry most of it.
We have not yet written down the two answers behind this rating. Recording them on every item, so a reader can check the reasoning and not only the conclusion, is work in progress.
Every rating is the higher of two answers, one for what companies do and one for what they spend to stop the outcome, because the same vote reaches both. See the full method.
Sources
What civil society organizations are helping owners on this
Coordinated shareholder resolutions at Tesco and Unilever asking each company to measure and raise the share of its sales that comes from healthier food.
Tesco sets health target in response to shareholder challenge, ShareAction, 2021-03
1 campaign on record
Disclose the healthiness of its products against government-endorsed nutrition models and adopt targets to increase the share of healthy foods in its sales.
With Candriam, ACTIAM, Trinity Health, Guy's and St Thomas' Foundation, CCLA Investment Management, Greater Manchester Pension Fund
Result: Withdrawn after the company agreed to the requests
Unilever agreed to publish annual assessments of product healthiness using government-endorsed criteria, starting October 2022, and to set new targets for growing healthier product sales.
Unilever shareholder campaign wins industry-leading health transparency, ShareAction, 2022-03
How this rating was made
Every item on every one of our maps is read against one question: how far does this depend on the people who own companies voting their values? We answer it twice, once for what companies do and once for what they spend to stop the outcome, and take whichever answer is higher, since the same vote reaches both. The score carries its reasoning and its sources so that a reader can check it rather than take it.
- Pivotal. Owners voting their values can deliver most of the outcome.
- Necessary. Owners remove an obstacle nothing else removes, and others must also act.
- Helpful. Owners voting their values help, and others carry most of it.
- Independent. This moves without owners. Other levers carry it.
The advocacy record on this page holds only what a source we opened says happened. Where we searched and found nothing, the page says so rather than leaving a silence. Where a campaign names a filer the source does not name, it says that too. Ratings are ours; the list of subjects is UN Sustainable Development Goals's, and we link to their original.
How we score dependency, in full.