Rome, Apr 4 (IANS): Agrifood systems directly employ 1.23 billion workers globally, and nearly half of the world's population live in households linked to food production, the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) said in a study.

The Rome-based agency said on Monday that the study is the "first systematic and documented global estimate of its kind".

Based on an array of sources gathered and collated by FAO, the researchers focused on entire agrifood systems rather than only on direct agricultural sectors, reflecting "the increasing importance of off-farm activities in feeding the world's population".

According to the FAO, an estimated 1.23 billion people worked in the world's agrifood systems in 2019, 857 million of them in direct agricultural production and the remainder in off-farm segments of agrifood systems, Xinhua news agency reported.

Asia has the largest share of the population employed in agrifood systems, 793 million, followed by Africa with nearly 290 million, it said.

An estimated 3.83 billion people lived in households linked to work in agrifood systems in 2019, accounting for nearly half the world's population, which was estimated at 7.7 billion then.

FAO's Ben Davis, lead author of the report, said this kind of data is essential to adequately confront the problem of global hunger.

"Policy and practical agendas on the national and global level must and are addressing the challenges facing agrifood systems in an integrated way," he added in a statement.

"To keep up, data must move beyond silo-based notions, such as farm employment, and include the whole process from food production through processing and transport to the consumer -- everything that goes into what we eat," Davis said.