(NewsNation) — The global food insecurity crisis has become a complex situation in which some “solutions” end up creating more problems.

For context, hunger levels surpassed all previous records last year, according to the United Nations World Food Programme Outlook, with 193 million people documented as food-insecure — 40 million more than the year before.

As a result, tens of millions faced emergency conditions, causing more than half a million to cope with the “catastrophe” of severe famine and death.

It also does not help that climate change, which is producing historic droughts and severe flooding, is exacerbating the issue by creating harsh growing conditions in many parts of the worlds.

Some of the things we could do to improve crop production — say, churning out and exporting more fuel for ships, trucks and trains — would and could help temporarily. But that only worsens the climate situation.

And the strain on global supply chains due to the pandemic and the war in Ukraine, mean shippers are often unable to get food where it needs to be, especially the Middle East and Asia.

Ukraine produces much of the world’s wheat, and is also a major producer of corn, barley, and sunflower oil.

Grain ships just started leaving Ukrainian ports this month after being stuck there since February.

Elsewhere, farmers are struggling to pay for fertilizer, as prices have tripled this year, since Russia is one of the main exporters of its ingredients.

The result — people are going hungry.

It does not help that this comes at a time when the population hovers around the 8 billion mark, meaning more mouths to feed than ever.

In the coming decades, industry experts say, it will be imperative to find efficient ways of producing more food for distribution around the world.