Afghanistan, Africa most at risk for food shortage, UN says

Afghanistan and several African nations are the most at risk to have a food shortage, an organization that works with the United Nations said in a report Thursday.

Afghanistan was named as the country with the most vulnerable food supply, according to the study by Maplecroft, a British-based research agency.

After Afghanistan, African nations were on the rest of the top 10 list. In order, the next were the Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi, Eritrea, Sudan, Ethiopia, Angola, Liberia, Chad and Zimbabwe.

In all, African nations were 36 of the top 50 on the list.

"Sub-Saharan Africa is particularly vulnerable to food insecurity because of the frequency of extreme weather events, high rates of poverty and failing infrastructures," the organization said.

Maplecroft said it worked with the U.N.'s World Food Programme to develop the criteria to judge 163 countries. The group came up with 12 categories to help make evaluations.

Those categories included the nutritional and health status of populations, cereal production and imports, Gross Domestic Product per capita, natural disasters, conflict and the effectiveness of government, the group said.

The United States was ranked No. 158. Finland got the best rank and was considered least at risk.