Recently Representatives McGovern (D-MA) and Emerson (R-MO), co-chairs of the House Hunger Caucus introduced legislation designed to elevate the issues of global hunger and food security in Congress. The Roadmap to End Global Hunger and Promote Food Security Act of 2009 (H.R. 2817), acts as the legislative complement to the Roadmap to End Global Hunger, which ONE introduced to you on the blog a few months ago, and incorporates many of the Roadmap’s suggestions. The legislation is designed to showcase what, ideally, the U.S. could do to end global hunger.

Mirroring the Roadmap, the bill details a comprehensive strategy for the U.S. to follow in order to address global hunger. These actions include: implementing nutrition and safety net programs to the most vulnerable; rural agricultural development, particularly targeted at women, who make up the majority of smallholder farmers; and programs to increase the capacity of governments and individuals to feed themselves and their people. The legislation also calls for a coordinated U.S. government strategy to address global hunger, and outlines plans for the design and implementation of this national strategy. Like the Roadmap document, the legislation notes that in total, $50.3 billion over the next 5 years would be necessary to undertake all of these initiatives.

This piece of legislation will hopefully push the challenge of global hunger, and ways that the U.S. can engage to address it, to the top of the congressional agenda—much like the Lugar-Casey bill, and the administration’s commitment to agricultural development in the developing world have done so far this year.

-Beth Adler