Fight Hunger with Agriculture

Mar 3rd, 2009 1:38 PM UTC
By Mikiko Imai

Last week, a new report calling for a new U.S. led initiative on global agricultural development was released. The report, titled “Renewing American Leadership in the Fight Against Global Hunger and Poverty,” was produced by a group of bipartisan foreign policy and development leaders, led by Catherine Bertini (former head of UN’s World Food Programme) and Dan Glickman (former U.S. Secretary of Agriculture), convened by The Chicago Council on Global Affairs and funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

The report calls for a renewed U.S. commitment to alleviating global poverty through agricultural development in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, the two regions with the largest number of poor people, many of them small farmers and their families. The report includes five recommendations and 21 specific action suggestions for how the U.S., through increased agricultural development assistance and partnerships at home and abroad, could help achieve the Millennium Development Goals’ first goal of halving hunger and poverty by 2015. It calls for a government-led strategy to significantly increase investment in the key areas of global agricultural development where the US has much to contribute — specifically in the areas of research, education and infrastructure — and help nations in Africa and South Asia to achieve their goals of alleviating rural poverty and related hunger.

The five recommendations include:

1. Increase agricultural education and extension;
2. Increase funding for agricultural research;
3. Emphasise on expanding rural and agricultural infrastructure;
4. Reform of US and international institutions that deliver agricultural development assistance; and
5. Reform of US policies that discourage agricultural development abroad.

The report argues that the proposed recommendations can be implemented at a modest cost – total costs to the US budget is estimated at $340 million in the first year starting in 2009 (compared to $83 million now spent on these activities in SSA and S. Asia), increasing to $1.03 billion by year five and continuing to year ten.

The timing of the report release coincided with President Obama’s submission of the broad outlines of the FY10 Budget request last week which put the country on a path to double foreign assistance, a pledge made during his presidential campaign. President Obama’s budget blueprint also makes it clear that U.S. will “reach out to the global community and renew its role as a leader in global development and diplomacy” and that part of this commitment will include embarking on new initiatives that will foster global food security through sustainable agriculture. The time has come for renewed leadership from the U.S. on long-term funding for agriculture and we here at ONE will be keeping an eye on new developments.

- Mikiko Imai

TAGS: Agriculture, Development Assistance, Policy News