Global Grain Progress

The 2019 increase in grain available for human consumption globally presents a tremendous opportunity for fortification.

As more grain is industrially milled, grain can be fortified with essential micronutrients to save more lives. More than ever, countries need support from FFI to better plan, implement, and monitor the fortification of industrially milled grain. Much of the global decrease in industrially milled and fortified grain 2018-2019 can be explained by two factors:

1) increasingly precise and accurate estimates of the percentage of industrially milled grain and grain fortified and 2) a global increase in the amount of industrially milled wheat.

How we calculate global estimates

We measure global progress in grain fortification through an annual survey.

We begin with data from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the UN about how much grain is available in the food supply for each country.

Flour and rice available

To calculate the amount of wheat flour available, we multiply the metric tons of wheat available in each country by the country’s average flour extraction rate. We use 75% as the default extraction rate unless we have country-specific data.

For maize flour, we use regional extraction rates of 67.5% for Africa and 72.5% for South/Central America and the Caribbean. We use an extraction rate of 70% elsewhere for maize.

No extraction rate adjustment is needed for rice as FAO data represents the “milled rice equivalent.”

Industrially milled

We then adjust the numbers to reflect industrial production. We assume that 100% of wheat flour is industrially milled, with the exception of countries with a large number of small mills, such as Afghanistan, India, Nepal, and Pakistan. In contrast, we assume that 0% of maize flour and rice are industrially milled unless we have country-specific data to indicate otherwise. The exception is that in countries in FFI’s Europe region, we assume that 100% of the maize flour and rice is industrially milled.

Percent fortified

We ask national partners in governments, milling associations, nongovernmental organizations, and UN agencies to estimate how much of each grain is fortified in their country. We then compile the country figures into global estimates.

Sources:

FAO data from 2013 for both 2018 and 2019 as 2013 is the most recent year with data from most countries.
FFI calculations.