FAO Suite of Food Security Indicators

Name: FAO Suite of Food Security Indicators
Creator: FAO Suite of Food Security Indicators
License: https://www.fao.org/contact-us/terms/db-terms-of-use/en/
Keywords: food-security, nutrition, hunger, undernourishment, health, agriculture, food, fao, united-nations, sdg, yearly, ml-features

No commercial useFreshLicense: CC-BY-4.0

Query in workbench

Downloads are disabled for this dataset: its license prohibits commercial use. The documentation, schema and sample rows stay available here.

FAO Suite of Food Security Indicators (FAOSTAT domain FS, keyless official bulk download): 68 food-security and nutrition indicators — prevalence of undernourishment (SDG 2.1.1), moderate/severe food insecurity from the Food Insecurity Experience Scale (SDG 2.1.2, with sex and urban/rural breakdowns plus confidence intervals), child stunting/wasting/overweight, adult obesity, anemia, dietary energy supply and requirements, cereal import dependency, irrigation, water and sanitation access — for ~246 areas, annually and as 3-year averages, 2000 onward. One row per area x indicator x element x period; genuine upstream gaps are kept as nulls, never imputed. Who joins this: development and humanitarian analysts join country-year panels on area_code_m49 + year_start for SDG 2 tracking; commodity and macro researchers use the undernourishment/FIES series as structural food-stress features; ML models use prevalence levels and their changes as vulnerability labels.

Source: FAO Suite of Food Security Indicators
Rows: 287,735
Columns: 18
Source cadence: Yearly
Last refreshed: Oct 1, 2026
Theme: agriculture

Column	Type	Description
area_code	integer	FAO area code (numeric identifier of the country, territory, or aggregate). (unit: FAO area code)
area_code_m49	string	UN M49 numeric area code, zero-padded. (unit: UN M49 code)
area	string	FAO area name: countries, territories, and aggregates (World, regions, income groups).
item_code	string	FAO indicator code (e.g. 210040 = prevalence of undernourishment, annual). Suffixes F/M/R/U/TSUB denote female, male, rural, urban, and town/semi-dense breakdowns.
item	string	FAO indicator name, including the reference period (annual value or 3-year average) in parentheses.
element_code	string	FAO element code: the measured value or a confidence interval bound.
element	string	'Value', 'Confidence interval: Lower bound', or 'Confidence interval: Upper bound' (bounds accompany the Food Insecurity Experience Scale indicators).
year_label	string	Reference period exactly as published by FAO: a single year (e.g. '2025') or a 3-year average window (e.g. '2000-2002').
year_start	integer	First calendar year of the reference period. (unit: year)
year_end	integer	Last calendar year of the reference period. (unit: year)
unit	string	Unit of the value as published by FAO (%, kcal/cap/d, g/cap/d, Int$/cap, million No, No, km).
value	float	Indicator value. Empty upstream cells (flags O/Q/L: missing or suppressed) and FAO left-censored cells (e.g. '<0.1') are null, never imputed — see value_raw / value_censored.
value_raw	string	Verbatim upstream Value cell, exactly as published by FAO (e.g. '<0.1' for left-censored small values).
value_censored	boolean	True when FAO left-censored the value (e.g. '<0.1', '<0.5', '<2.5'); the numeric value is then null and value_raw carries the verbatim cell. (unit: boolean)
flag	string	FAO observation flag: A = official value, E = estimated value, L = missing value (data exist but were not collected), O = missing value, Q = missing value (suppressed), X = value from external organization.
flag_description	string	Decoded flag description from the _Flags.csv codebook shipped inside the FAOSTAT bulk ZIP.
note	string	FAO observation note (e.g. 'FAO data', 'Official estimate integrated with FAO data').
row_hash	string	Deterministic 16-hex sha256 over area/item/element/period/value — stable row identity for change detection.

First 10 sample rows — a preview, not the complete dataset.

area_code	area_code_m49	area	item_code	item	element_code	element	year_label	year_start	year_end	unit	value	value_raw	value_censored	flag	flag_description	note	row_hash
2	004	Afghanistan	21010	Average dietary energy supply adequacy (percent) (3-year average)	6121	Value	2000-2002	2,000	2,002	%	87	87	false	E	Estimated value	—	7fb14ce0cede611b
2	004	Afghanistan	21010	Average dietary energy supply adequacy (percent) (3-year average)	6121	Value	2001-2003	2,001	2,003	%	88	88	false	E	Estimated value	—	6f00e0f897597f82
2	004	Afghanistan	21010	Average dietary energy supply adequacy (percent) (3-year average)	6121	Value	2002-2004	2,002	2,004	%	91	91	false	E	Estimated value	—	9368755824a649cf
2	004	Afghanistan	21010	Average dietary energy supply adequacy (percent) (3-year average)	6121	Value	2003-2005	2,003	2,005	%	93	93	false	E	Estimated value	—	9f1db91e1f48f912
2	004	Afghanistan	21010	Average dietary energy supply adequacy (percent) (3-year average)	6121	Value	2004-2006	2,004	2,006	%	95	95	false	E	Estimated value	—	98c7e76e5276246a
2	004	Afghanistan	21010	Average dietary energy supply adequacy (percent) (3-year average)	6121	Value	2005-2007	2,005	2,007	%	97	97	false	E	Estimated value	—	e49d091d6b339ece
2	004	Afghanistan	21010	Average dietary energy supply adequacy (percent) (3-year average)	6121	Value	2006-2008	2,006	2,008	%	99	99	false	E	Estimated value	—	b915ab1f6886f2be
2	004	Afghanistan	21010	Average dietary energy supply adequacy (percent) (3-year average)	6121	Value	2007-2009	2,007	2,009	%	102	102	false	E	Estimated value	—	50ab3090f4bb9e8b
2	004	Afghanistan	21010	Average dietary energy supply adequacy (percent) (3-year average)	6121	Value	2008-2010	2,008	2,010	%	104	104	false	E	Estimated value	—	1b69d50eef075a9d
2	004	Afghanistan	21010	Average dietary energy supply adequacy (percent) (3-year average)	6121	Value	2009-2011	2,009	2,011	%	105	105	false	E	Estimated value	—	253e492436dafb33

Profiled Oct 1, 2026 from snapshot 20261001T201725Z-cdd975249169

Measured

Completeness: 98.9%
Rows: 287,735
Columns: 18
Columns with gaps: 1

Column	Missing	Distinct	Range	Distribution
area_codebigint	0%	263	1 → 9,011median 173	3,979 outside 1st–99th percentile
area_code_m49varchar	0%	251	—	0341,854 0621,854 1431,854
areavarchar	0%	239	—	Central Asia1,854 Central Asia and Southern Asia1,854 Southern Asia1,854
item_codevarchar	0%	71	—	2100717,380 210071F7,380 210071M7,380
itemvarchar	0%	63	—	Number of moderately or severely food insecure female adults (million) (3-year average)7,380 Number of moderately or severely food insecure male adults (million) (3-year average)7,380 Number of moderately or severely food insecure people (million) (3-year average)7,380
element_codevarchar	0%	10	—	6121105,504 613252,403 612826,782
elementvarchar	0%	3	—	Value210,551 Confidence interval: Lower bound38,592 Confidence interval: Upper bound38,592
year_labelvarchar	0%	53	—	2020-202211,292 2021-202311,289 2019-202111,287
year_startbigint	0%	27	2,000 → 2,025median 2,016
year_endbigint	0%	27	2,000 → 2,025median 2,017
unitvarchar	0%	7	—	%147,120 million No87,971 kcal/cap/d26,782
valuedouble	19.9%	10,705	-1,894 → 174,570median 19.8	3,668 outside 1st–99th percentile
value_rawvarchar	0%	12,184	—	40,603 <0.113,947 0.15,087
value_censoredboolean	0%	2	—	false271,198 true16,537
flagvarchar	0%	6	—	E162,121 X83,595 O29,647
flag_descriptionvarchar	0%	5	—	Estimated value162,121 Value from external organization83,595 Missing value29,647
notevarchar	0%	84	—	240,411 FAO data24,870 Official estimate integrated with FAO data13,134
row_hashvarchar	0%	271,673	—	00009b56416c035b1 0000aa6cd83e72b91 0000de74ffc1efee1

Point any LLM at the metadata endpoint — the documentation above is machine-readable too (JSON-LD + Croissant).

cURL

curl "https://datazimuts.com/v1/datasets/faostat_food_security/faostat_food_security_indicators" | jq '{title, rows, columns_count, license}'

Python

import requests

ds = requests.get("https://datazimuts.com/v1/datasets/faostat_food_security/faostat_food_security_indicators").json()
print(ds["title"], ds["rows"], "rows")

# Sample rows for an LLM context window
for row in ds.get("sample_rows", [])[:5]:
    print(row)

API endpoint: https://datazimuts.com/v1/datasets/faostat_food_security/faostat_food_security_indicators

Tip: fetch /llms.txt for the full machine-readable catalog.

Cite this snapshot

Pinned to snapshot 20261001T201725Z-cdd975249169 and its content hash, so readers get exactly the data you used.

APA

FAO Suite of Food Security Indicators. (2026). FAO Suite of Food Security Indicators [Data set, snapshot 20261001T201725Z-cdd975249169, sha256 cdd975249169]. Datazimuts. Retrieved 2026-10-02, from https://datazimuts.com/en/datasets/faostat_food_security/faostat_food_security_indicators?snapshot=20261001T201725Z-cdd975249169

BibTeX

@misc{dz_faostat_food_security_faostat_food_secur_cdd97524,
  title        = {{FAO Suite of Food Security Indicators}},
  author       = {{FAO Suite of Food Security Indicators}},
  year         = {2026},
  publisher    = {Datazimuts},
  howpublished = {\url{https://datazimuts.com/en/datasets/faostat_food_security/faostat_food_security_indicators?snapshot=20261001T201725Z-cdd975249169}},
  note         = {Snapshot 20261001T201725Z-cdd975249169, sha256 cdd975249169d6efc70469dd12452098a94a360efb0ba065adfb905624ed5b05; accessed 2026-10-02}
}

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