The Widening Cross-Country Food Availability Gap

National food supplies have improved almost everywhere since 2000, yet progress towards Zero Hunger has stalled. This study examines how the cross-country distribution of food availability evolved and what contributed to its renewed widening, using the FAO indicator of average dietary energy supply adequacy. For 150 countries observed from 2001 to 2023, dispersion declined rapidly through the late 2000s, remained relatively stable until the mid-2010s, and subsequently increased. A continuous three-segment model outperforms both a two-segment V and a constrained plateau model (ΔAICc = 39.75 and 12.10, respectively) and is selected in 98.7% of three-year moving-block bootstrap samples. The three-phase pattern is also recovered from the latest FAOSTAT vintage, although historical revisions affect individual estimates. Most renewed widening occurs within geographic regions and subregions, while 93% of the 2013–2023 increase in the 90th–10th percentile gap originates below the median. Countries initially occupying the lowest adequacy quintile improved faster than those in the highest, but transition matrices provide no evidence of increasing mobility. Political stability and adequacy exhibit contemporaneous co-movement, although this association cannot be interpreted causally. Food-security monitoring should complement national and regional averages with distributional indicators that capture cross-country disparities. The concentration of renewed divergence within regions and in the lower half of the distribution suggests that food-security policies should target country-specific vulnerabilities rather than rely solely on broad regional classifications. In particular, tracking countries that persistently remain in or newly enter the lowest adequacy group could help prioritise support and better target food-security interventions. Overall, the findings highlight the importance of distribution-sensitive monitoring and policy approaches for advancing SDG 2 without assuming a universal turning year or a common trajectory across countries.