For the three-year IAP project 'food and nutrition security and agriculture' funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), four parallel regional academy network working groups were constituted: in Africa (the Network of African Science Academies, NASAC), Asia (the Association of Academies and Societies of Sciences in Asia, AASSA), the Americas (the Inter-American Network of Academies of Science, IANAS) and Europe (the European Academies’ Science Advisory Council, EASAC). The academies’ experts on food and nutrition security and agriculture from the four global regions decided on 10 guiding priority questions, the responses to which from each region formed the basis of the academies’ analysis. The four regional working groups developed their advice which were then subject to academy-nominated independent peer review and endorsed by each regional academy network. The feedback to the four regional reports was used as a resource to prepare this fifth, global report under the auspices of an expert editorial group. The global report was independently peer reviewed and endorsed by IAP.