More than 132 million people risk falling into extreme poverty over the next four years as intensifying droughts and severe floods batter agrifood systems worldwide, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) warned Monday in Rome.

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FAO Director-General Qu Dongyu issued the warning on October 12 at the opening of the plenary sessions of the World Food Forum 2026 in Rome. The event, held under the slogan “Innovate Today, Nourish Tomorrow,” runs through Friday, October 16.

Qu Dongyu told delegates of the World Food Forum 2026 (WFF) that extreme weather now threatens global food security at a scale the world has rarely confronted. The agency’s technical models identify a single driver behind the projected plunge, the hardening of droughts and floods that strike agricultural systems.

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According to the agency’s technical projections, the intensification of extreme weather events is hitting agrifood systems hard and threatening global food security. Qu described the impact of these phenomena as severe, stressing that the consequences fall most heavily on the Global South.

The forum brings together government delegations, farming communities, scientists and international investors. Their goal is to design structural responses to a climate crisis that, in the FAO’s assessment, punishes vulnerable regions with particular harshness.

FAO stressed that the projected outcome is not inevitable. According to the organization, it can only be avoided if governments and financial actors multiply and accelerate investments in three areas: technological innovation, the strengthening of rural and smallholder resilience, and the adaptation of local crops to changing climate conditions.

World Food Forum 2026: Flagship event opens under theme “Innovate Today. Nourish Tomorrow.”@FAODG QU Dongyu also inaugurates Global Youth Forum as week-long programme gets underway#WorldFoodForumhttps://t.co/xRTTdNk0Mo

— FAO Newsroom (@FAOnews) October 12, 2026

Global South Bears Brunt

The agency also cautioned that ecological imbalances, aggravated by what it called predatory development models, are deepening inequality gaps and threaten the human right to food. Both dynamics, it said, converge in extreme poverty.

That framing sharpens the demand for deep change in international agricultural governance. Whether the projected outcome can be averted depends, according to the FAO, on urgency converting into investment.

This year’s edition places significant emphasis on Latin America, with the participation of leaders from a range of political backgrounds. The forum is scheduled to close with institutional messages from UN Secretary-General António Guterres and Pope Leo XIV, in a gathering intended to strengthen global commitments against hunger.

FAO’s projection adds to a growing body of warnings from international organizations about the links between climate change, food insecurity and poverty. Whether the forum produces concrete financial commitments, rather than statements of intent, is likely to be the key test of its outcome.

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Strategic alliances against hunger sit at the center of the agenda. For the FAO, the equation is direct. Faster funding and smarter innovation today determine how many families avoid destitution by the end of the decade.

The alert lands as the forum seeks to convert pledges into action. Delegates have five days in Rome to turn the warning into commitments, and the 132 million figure now frames every negotiation in the room.

The ‘Venezuela Feeds’ plan also seeks agro-industrial sovereignty, Acting President Rodriguez pointed out.

On Monday, Venezuelan Acting President Delcy Rodriguez announced before the 2026 World Food Forum (WFF) the launch of “Venezuela Feeds plan” and a new local economy law to achieve the “Zero Hunger” goal.

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Venezuelan Acting President Rodriguez Attends 2026 World Food Forum

“Our aspiration is clear: that Venezuela once again reaches levels compatible with zero hunger before the year 2030,” she said in her speech at the headquarters of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in Rome, Italy.

Rodriguez explained that Venezuela Feeds plan will serve “to engage all food production processes in the pursuit” of eradicating hunger, to which a new law on local economy will be added that she will present in a few days to the Venezuelan Parliament.

“Venezuela arrives at this World Food Forum with a deep conviction: food is an inalienable right, directly linked to life, dignity and the integral development of people,” she stated.

“Guaranteeing that right requires inclusive and sustained public policies, but it also requires production, investment, science, technology, financing and cooperation. It requires peace and it requires an international system capable of cooperating even above our differences,” the Venezuelan Acting President emphasized.

Rodriguez defended that food should not be an instrument of pressure or political confrontation: “There, where differences exist between states, dialogue and diplomacy must prevail. And there, where hunger exists, our common responsibility must be to find solutions.” For this reason, the Venezuelan Acting President called for an end to the application of coercive measures that violate international law and have negative implications for the realization of the right to food.

She recalled that Venezuela, after important progress in the fight against hunger in the first decades of the century, later faced “a profound internal political confrontation that caused a strong contraction of our economy, a situation that was worsened starting in 2017 with the progressive imposition of unilateral coercive measures.”

“But we have begun to reverse that reality. National dialogue with opposition factors, as well as diplomatic dialogue with the United States, has added the political stability necessary to produce and grow,” Rodriguez asserted.

She defended that “Venezuela has undertaken a process of orderly, institutional and verifiable transformation” that will also have an impact on a new agri-food policy, “because no modern food system prospers without legal security over land and property, so that those who work the land can invest in it with certainty.”

Venezuela also aspires to use its energy strength to build the productive capacities of the future, Rodriguez said, who wants “to convert part of our energy income into permanent productive capacity.”

“Energy wealth can and must become a lever to guarantee agricultural production, that people can afford quality food and that the processes of nature are respected through regenerative agriculture,” she added.

“I come from Venezuela, a country that has known adversity in all its dimensions and that today is going through one of the most decisive moments of its history, but that has never renounced hope. Today we have decided to build our future with work, dialogue, knowledge and in a process of democratic transformation that guarantees coexistence and peace,” the Venezuelan Acting President emphasized.

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Source: EFE

He highlights the ethical and political responsibility governments bear to guarantee the inalienable human right to food.

On Monday, Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel participated in the 2026 World Food Forum (WFF), organized by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in Rome, Italy.

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During his address, he expanded on his denunciation of the ethical and political responsibility governments bear to guarantee the inalienable human right to food.

The Cuban leader warned that global problems such as armed conflicts, the climate crisis and economic turmoil disproportionately affect developing nations, where more than 640 million people suffer from extreme hunger.

Diaz-Canel emphasized that the challenges facing the Cuban nation are linked not only to global economic and environmental factors but also to the cumulative impact of more than six decades of the U.S. economic, commercial, and financial blockade.

He detailed how this policy of strangulation directly restricts the Cuban people’s access to international markets, advanced technologies, financing, agricultural inputs and fuels essential to sustaining the country’s agricultural sector.

Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva affirmed Cuba during the FAO conference, saying the island’s food crisis is not due to a lack of production.

“Cuba is going hungry because they [the U.S.] don’t want it to have access to the basics.” pic.twitter.com/519PcARBTt

— Belly of the Beast (@bellybeastcuba) March 7, 2026

The Revolution’s Structural Response to the Energy Blockade

The Cuban president strongly denounced the intensification of Washington’s aggression through the imposition of an energy blockade beginning in January.

This punitive measure affects the entire agri-food value chain, disrupting planting, food refrigeration, industrial processing, the transportation of supplies and distribution logistics intended to serve the population.

Nevertheless, Diaz-Canel asserted that, in the face of this systematic aggression, the Cuban people have transformed the challenge into an opportunity to accelerate profound structural changes.

Cuba’s strategy focuses on territorial decentralization, the promotion of scientific innovation, the transition to renewable energy in local food systems and the strengthening of domestic production to reduce dependence on external inputs, consolidating the country’s resilience under extraordinarily adverse conditions.

Live | FAO World Food Forum 2026 https://t.co/7kkZBg8ZFO

— teleSUR English (@telesurenglish) October 12, 2026

Strategic Partnership with FAO and Castro’s Legacy

Diaz-Canel highlighted the support provided by the FAO, a multilateral organization that has mobilized nearly US$100 million in resources, technical assistance and training to strengthen Cuban key productive sectors.

In this context, Cuba announced its incorporation into the Global Alliance Against Hunger and Poverty by presenting two projects with significant social impact designed to protect the most vulnerable sectors of the population.

Likewise, under the Hand-in-Hand Initiative, Cuba promoted two projects aimed at strengthening coffee and honey production chains, sectors of high strategic value for boosting rural employment, environmental sustainability, and export revenue.

As Cuba marks the centennial year of the birth of Commander Fidel Castro, Diaz-Canel reaffirmed that Castro’s longstanding advocacy for the right of peoples to a dignified life continues to guide Cuba’s social model.

He concluded by calling for the consolidation of a combative and solidarity-based multilateralism, stressing that food must be a collective right rather than a commodity subject to speculation or the political blackmail of imperialism.

teleSUR/ JF

Source: teleSUR