A report released Wednesday by the U.N. agriculture agency said 34 countries around the world, nearly all of them in Africa, do not have enough food to feed their people and need help.
The number has risen since December's report with the addition of Swaziland.
The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization report blamed the food shortages on drought caused by the weather phenomenon known as El Niño, along with floods in other places and wars.
The report said the El Niño drought had "sharply reduced" crop production expectations this year in southern Africa, Central America and the Caribbean.
Fighting in such places as Syria, Yemen and Somalia is making bad growing conditions even worse. Poor crop conditions in North Korea are adding to the already desperate conditions in that dictatorship, where the U.N. report said "most households were already estimated to have borderline or poor food consumption."
The report said crop conditions for 2016 have been generally favorable in the Northern Hemisphere, and it forecast large wheat crops for most Asian countries.
