Vision and Focus

Ugandan children pumping water to carry back to their homes. Having a source of clean drinking water can reduce malnutrition.

Bread for the World President David Beckmann, in testimony before the U.S. House Committee on Foreign Affairs in 2009, said that the then recently-proposed Global Hunger and Food Security Initiative, before it was named Feed the Future, “is remarkable for its vision. It recognizes that a comprehensive strategy to address hunger must go beyond simply increasing agricultural production, and that improving maternal and child nutrition is a central component of the administration’s plan. Focusing our agriculture and food security investments on improving the nutrition of women and children will shape better, more targeted programs that have a lasting development impact.”¹

Feed the Future is the best opportunity to come along in decades for the United States to contribute to lasting progress against hunger and malnutrition. Only time and the actions of the initiative’s backers will tell whether it is a fleeting opportunity, since for all its clarity of vision and focus on the right things, Feed the Future will not achieve its objectives if it is not sustained.

Changes on the scale required for significant, sustained reductions in poverty and malnutrition will take years or even decades. Effective and lasting partnerships between donors and developing countries are absolutely essential, and these cannot be created overnight. Rather, they are the kind of partnerships that require extended and often sensitive discussions over many cups of tea. Ultimately, it is the quality and duration of these relationships, even more than the dollars committed, which will make the difference to lasting progress against hunger.

Issues