Rebalancing Globally photo by Laura Elizabeth Pohl
The United States responds directly to hunger and malnutrition in the developing world with food aid and agricultural development assistance.
U.S. food aid programs and agricultural development assistance are increasingly focused on pregnant and lactating women and children younger than 2. Even brief episodes of hunger among people in these vulnerable groups are cause for alarm. A third of all child deaths are attributable to malnutrition, while survivors face lifelong physical and/or cognitive disabilities.
The United States should strengthen its traditional role as the largest provider of food aid, while also moving quickly to improve its nutritional quality. New mothers, young children, and other vulnerable people, such as those living with HIV/AIDS, can benefit from highly nutritious forms of food aid now available. These cost more than the foods normally included in U.S. food aid, but it is possible to reduce costs by purchasing in or near the countries where they are needed and by phasing out the inefficient practice of monetizing food aid to conduct development projects.
The United States should strengthen its commitment to Feed the Future, the innovative U.S. Global Hunger and Food Security Initiative critical to long-term progress against hunger and malnutrition. Feed the Future represents the U.S. government’s strongest support in decades for agricultural development in poor countries. The focus on agriculture is especially valuable because the vast majority of poor people in developing countries earn their living by farming, and the majority of these farmers are women.
The United States must make larger investments in agricultural research to help meet the global need to produce crops that can feed a growing population, respond to shifts in dietary patterns, and adapt to changes in climate. Current funding for both U.S. research institutions and the international network of agricultural research centers is hardly adequate to meet these challenges.
All poverty-focused development assistance is instrumental in helping poor countries achieve the Millennium Development Goals. Cuts to U.S. foreign assistance, including USAID’s operating budget, would harm efforts to make foreign assistance more effective, efficient, and sustainable.
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