Goal 2
Zero Hunger
The second UN Sustainable Development Goal commits the world to end hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture, by 2030.
Goal 2 is one of three UN goals this organization is aligned to, and it is the one about people.
The official wording of Goal 2 is: End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture. It is the goal that connects what a country grows to whether its people eat.
Target 2.1 is quoted in full on the UN goals website.
The goal
Goal 2 reads: End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture. Canada is one of the largest food producers on earth, and it has not met it.
24.0%
of people in Canada lived in a food-insecure household in 2025, about 9.8 million people. PROOF, University of Toronto, 2026.
The target
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.
All year round is the part that bites. Surplus produce is seasonal, and a food system that only feeds people in September has not met target 2.1.
Close to 2.2 million
visits were recorded by food banks in Canada in March 2025. Food Banks Canada, HungerCount 2025.
The numbers
Food bank visits in March 2025 were 99.4% higher than in March 2019, nearly double. Food Banks Canada, HungerCount 2025. A third of food bank visits in March 2025 were by children. Food Banks Canada, HungerCount 2025. The need does not stop at the end of the harvest.
A farm stand display of potatoes, leeks and carrots.
This is not a shortage of food, as the numbers page shows.
What Goal 2 asks
Goal 2 asks for food security for all people, all year round. The Neighbour’s Table serves it: chapters ask farms whether they have produce they cannot sell, and hand every yes to a food bank or food rescue organization that collects it with its own vehicle, so that edible food reaches people instead of landfill. That is Goal 2 and Target 12.3 served by the same yes.
The contrast
Food exists in quantity. Canada has 189,874 farms. Statistics Canada, Census of Agriculture 2021. At the same time, 8.8 million tonnes of edible food is wasted in Canada every year. Second Harvest and Value Chain Management International, 2024. The distance between the field and the table is the problem.
The research behind our work
Every figure on this site is traceable. These are the organizations whose published research we rely on.
Canada is one of the largest food producers on earth. The food exists. The distance between the field and the table is the problem.
The Neighbour’s Table, on Goal 2
Goal 12
Goal 12, target 12.3 commits the world to halving per capita global food waste at retail and consumer levels and reducing food losses along production and supply chains by 2030. Goal 13 covers the climate side, because food sent to landfill is food that fed nobody and warmed the planet on the way out.
All three goals, in one place.
Read Goal 2 first, in the official wording on the UN goals website.
