But the U.S. response to hunger needs a leader. The State Department and also the Roadmap to End Global Hunger legislation have called for a global hunger coordinator (czar or envoy) to work in the White House. Such an individual could keep global hunger at the top of the nation’s foreign policy agenda.

The global hunger coordinator can organize the response by the different U.S. agencies involved. In addition, such a high-level position could exert influence on improving international coordination in tackling hunger.

He makes the point that the recent crisis in Haiti has demonstrated the American public’s capacity to mobilize around the issue, and that the White House should seize on this energy to “place hunger at the top of the foreign policy agenda, where it belongs”.

You can read Lambers’ piece here.

The Global Food Security Act, which Sen. Lugar has co-authored with Senator Robert Casey, attempts to forge a unity of purpose, particularly between Congress and the White House, over ending chronic hunger in the world by reversing decades of neglect of agriculture development. It is a neglect that was prophesied by Borlaug in 1970 when he warned that the world mustn’t lose its unity of purpose in carrying the Green Revolution beyond Asia to Africa and other hungry parts of the world:

“Man can and must prevent the tragedy of famine in the future instead of merely trying with pious regret to salvage the human wreckage of the famine, as he has so often done in the past. We will be guilty of criminal negligence, without extenuation, if we permit future famines. Humanity cannot tolerate that guilt.”

Certainly we have reached that point; the neglect can no longer be tolerated. Making agriculture development a top priority of governments around the world has become a moral imperative with more than one billion people now going to bed hungry every night. And it is a security imperative as population growth combined with rising prosperity and greater demand for food in countries once plagued by famine, like China and India, is driving projections that the world will need to double food production by 2050.

The food crisis of 2008, when rising prices and dwindling surpluses triggered rioting in dozens of countries, was “a wakeup call for the development community, for international donors and for policy makers worldwide,” Lugar reminded his audience.

We can see the unity of purpose emerging on various fronts. Business leaders, humanitarian agencies, international lenders and philanthropists are embracing the need to create the conditions for the small farmers of the developing world, particularly in Africa, to be as productive as possible so they can feed their families and their countries […}

When it comes to world hunger, it’s time to say, “Enough is enough!”

Several weeks ago I had the honor and great pleasure of addressing the ONE leadership retreat and presenting a preview of my book ENOUGH: WHY THE WORLD’S POOREST STARVE IN AN AGE OF PLENTY. This week ENOUGH hit the sturdy shelves of the bookstores and the virtual shelves at amazon.com.

In the days in between, the United Nations’ food agencies confirmed what we all feared: global hunger is getting worse. The number of chronically hungry people is soaring past 1 billion – the highest number since before the Green Revolution in the 1970s and an increase of more than 11% from just last year. And for the first time in nearly 40 years, the prevalence of hunger is climbing; 15% of the world’s population is now hungry, up from 13% in the middle of this decade.

So ENOUGH, which I wrote with my Wall Street Journal colleague Scott Kilman, is more timely than ever. During the writing, we held fast to an abiding mantra: outrage and inspire, outrage and inspire. We hope that is indeed what our book does:

Outrage, that we have brought hunger with us into the 21st century in ever-increasing numbers.

Inspire, that hunger can be conquered. A mighty grassroots movement founded on a new will to end hunger is rising.

ONE is a vital leader of that movement. We hope that ENOUGH will fuel the outrage and the inspiration to continuing shouting loudly, “Enough is enough.”

-Roger Thurow