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Purpose. This research aims to identify the challenges of the food security indicators in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries for the period 2000–2020. Methodology / approach. The dataset of this study includes the annual secondary data covering the time 2000–2019 of the six GCC countries. The dependents variables represent the food security indicators whereas, the independents variables (explanatory) represent the challenging factors of the food security at the macro-level data. All the studied variables are reshaped in the balanced panel form; thus, the study uses a long panel, it has many periods (T = 20 years) but few entities (n = 6 countries of GCC) with the total 120 observation. The study applies three alternatives to panel data analysis. Results. The results show that population is a significant driver of food security challenges in the GCC countries. Moreover, food price inflation has a significant impact on the food availability and stability but show no significance on food access and utilization. Fertilizer consumption causes significant problems with food use. The results show that there is an evidence of significant differences in food security across the GCC countries. The random-effects estimators of regression coefficients of food availability and stability challenges are more statistically efficient than those for pooled ordinary least square and fixed effects. While the fixed effects estimators are most preferred for the coefficients of food access and utilization challenges. Originality / scientific novelty. Most scientific articles are mostly focused on examining the food security challenges from one separate aspect: economics, climate, or social aspects. Thus, the scientific novelty of the study is to investigate the combination of the food security challenges, social, economic, and agri-environmental factors in the GCC oil countries. Practical value / implications. Through this research, it is proposed that decision-makers embark on interferences that stimulate food security to meet the continual increase in population also future research should be applied to the other factors that challenged food security.