Santo Domingo — The Dominican Republic has reached a landmark milestone in global food security, earning full removal from the Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAO) official hunger map after cutting its national undernourishment rate to less than 2.5% — the UN agency’s international threshold for defining endemic hunger. The milestone is formally recognized in the recently released 2026 *State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World* (SOFI) report.
FAO Director-General Qu Dongyu praised the Caribbean nation’s success, attributing the achievement to consistent, high-level political commitment and coordinated cross-sector action to eradicate hunger. He emphasized that the Dominican Republic serves as a powerful global model, proving that targeted, effective public policy can deliver transformative food security outcomes regardless of a country’s geographic or economic size.
Dominican Republic President Luis Abinader framed the win as a collective accomplishment, crediting coordinated work across smallholder farmers, the domestic private sector, civil society organizations, national public institutions, and key international partners including the FAO, the World Food Programme, and the International Fund for Agricultural Development. Moving forward, Abinader outlined that the country will shift its focus to strengthening long-term food systems stability, with priorities including boosting sustainable agricultural production, supporting small-scale family farming, upgrading national water management, expanding social protection programs, and building greater resilience to climate shocks and global geopolitical disruptions that threaten food supplies.
Minister of the Presidency José Ignacio Paliza explained that the progress traces back to a comprehensive national food security strategy rolled out in 2020, built around five core pillars: improving food availability, expanding equitable access to nutritious food, boosting nutritional outcomes for vulnerable groups, increasing climate resilience for agricultural systems, and strengthening multi-stakeholder food security governance.
Paliza highlighted the suite of targeted initiatives that drove the strategy’s success. These include the national School Feeding Program, which now provides daily meals to 2.1 million students across the country; the Aliméntate food access program that currently reaches 1.49 million low-income households; the Gas Bonus energy subsidy that benefits 1.3 million households; and a dramatic expansion of subsidized Economic Dining Halls, which grew from just 35 locations to 134, distributing 180,000 free or low-cost meals to vulnerable communities every day.
He also shared new data showing that national agricultural output hit 347 million quintals in 2025, representing a 5.6% increase over 2024 production levels. This growth was supported by targeted government policies including zero-interest financing for smallholder producers, infrastructure investments to expand irrigation access, streamlined land titling processes to formalize small farms, and government public procurement commitments that prioritize purchasing from local agricultural producers.