WASHINGTON – The ONE Campaign welcomes the introduction of S 1252, the Global Food Security Act (GFSA) of 2015. This bipartisan bill, along with its counterpart in the House (HR 1567), contains long-awaited reforms that would empower people living in the poorest places to stabilize food production and address chronic hunger – especially among women and children.

Tom Hart, U.S. Executive Director of ONE, says:

“We applaud Senators Johnny Isakson (R-GA) and Bob Casey (D-PA) for their common sense approach to addressing global food insecurity. At the heart of this legislation is the recognition that agricultural development and long-term economic growth go hand-in-hand. By harnessing the power of affordable new technologies aimed at increasing agricultural production, we can help smallholder farmers—and the communities that depend on them—not only survive, but flourish.

Helping our partners in Africa unlock their agricultural potential is not only the right thing to do—it’s the smart thing to do. As we saw during the food riots in 2007 and 2008, food insecurity is often a harbinger of regional instability and, as such, can have consequences that reverberate throughout the international economy. A world in which there are 805 million people facing chronic hunger is an unsafe and unstable world, period.”

The broad bipartisan support for these two bills is due in large part to the tremendous gains made over the past few years by ‘Feed the Future’, a program that this legislation would codify into law. Since its launch in 2010, Feed the Future helped more than 7 million smallholder farmers around the world access the knowledge, resources, and technologies that have enabled them to improve yields and boost incomes. The program also reached more than 12.5 million children with nutrition interventions.

If the bill is authorized, funding for GFSA will extend through 2020, which will give Feed the Future the stability it needs to make a difference.