Open questions

The Perth Agreement asks one question: should every person on Earth, and every child yet to be born, be assured at least one nutritious meal every day?

Agreeing with that principle is one thing. Working out how it could actually be done is another, and much of it has not been worked out. This page lists the hardest questions we have not answered. It is our own examination agenda, not a defence. If you can help with any of them, please tell us or share an idea in the Student Circle.

The principle and the Meal Standard are separate. The Meal Standard is one proposed approach under examination. You can support the principle and reject the Meal Standard entirely.

1. Delivery in the hardest places

How would a daily meal reliably reach someone in a conflict zone, a remote village, a refugee camp, or a country whose economy or government has collapsed? Nobody has yet shown a way to do this everywhere, every day. What can we learn from the school meal programmes, social protection schemes and humanitarian agencies already doing parts of this work, and from where they fail?

2. Financing

Someone must grow, move, prepare and pay for every meal. There is no tested financial model behind The Perth Agreement. Who pays, how is that sustained over decades, and what happens during price spikes, droughts, wars and economic shocks?

3. Governance and accountability

Who would decide, oversee and correct any system? How would fraud, corruption and exclusion be prevented, and how could someone complain or appeal when the meal does not arrive? How would personal data be protected? These questions need answers before any technology is chosen.

4. What “nutritious” means across cultures

One nutritious meal is a minimum assurance, not a complete diet or a limit on what anyone should receive. But what counts as nutritious differs with age, health, culture, religion and local food supply. How should a meal be defined so that it is adequate, safe, culturally appropriate and locally available, without one rule imposed on everyone? One meal a day is also not full food security, and clean water matters as much as food.

5. Comparing competing ideas fairly

Different people will propose very different approaches. How should those ideas be tested and compared fairly, with evidence rather than enthusiasm? Who judges, by what criteria, and how are the results published? Small, independently evaluated pilots may be more convincing than any paper, including ours.

6. The voices of people who know hunger

People who have lived with hunger understand it in ways that governments, universities, companies and AI systems do not. How do they take a real part in shaping this, not just being consulted at the end? People who disagree, and people who have lived with hunger, are welcome to write through the contact page like anyone else.

What this page is not

Seven AI systems supported the principle — their full answers are published here. That is not evidence that any plan would work. Support for the question is not proof of a solution. An AI answer is not an endorsement by the company that makes the model. The proposed signing in August 2027 is a proposal, and any declaration will be published in advance for scrutiny.

This list will change as people point out what we have missed. Last updated 5 November 2026.