Check out this post—in the lead-up to next week’s World Summit on Food Security—from American Jewish World Service, another entry in our Food Security in Focus series.

Why are so many people hungry? It’s a simple question with complex answers. Hunger is not driven by a lack of food in the world. Global hunger is rooted in a web of political and economic policies that prevent access to food, particularly in developing countries. Hunger is complex because food is political.

As Policy Associate at American Jewish World Service (AJWS)—an international development organization motivated by Judaism’s imperative to pursue justice—I am exploring ways in which our own U.S. aid, trade, and agriculture policies affect global hunger.

Through grantmaking, service, advocacy and education, AJWS supports grassroots organizations that are achieving food sovereignty in their own communities by developing sustainable solutions to food insecurity. My advocacy from our Washington, DC office responds to the global challenges and the local solutions of AJWS’s grassroots partners.

For example, Kenya—a country of nearly 35 million people—produces less than 50 percent of the food that its population needs to survive. Small-scale growers were long ago forced out of business by cheap subsidized imports from Western nations. Kilili Self-Help Project (KSHP), an AJWS grassroots partner, is working to reduce Kenyans’ dependency on foreign imports by promoting local, sustainable farming that helps communities feed themselves.

To support this work from here in the U.S., AJWS is pushing to fix the aid, trade and agriculture policies that perpetuate challenges faced in Kenya and elsewhere.

Food is a human right, not a privilege. It cannot be traded and treated like any other commodity. Join us in calling on our U.S. leadership to promote this principle during the upcoming World Summit on Food Security on November 16 to 18 in Rome.

Stay tuned to AJWS’s From the Ground Up campaign to learn more, and be sure to take our hunger quiz!

-Amanda Cary, Policy Associate, American Jewish World Service