On World Food Day, Recommitting to Advancing Food Security Worldwide

As we grapple with a global food crisis spurred in part by a historic water crisis, this year’s World Food Day theme of Water Is Life, Water Is Food – Leave No One Behind is particularly salient. In the Horn of Africa, five consecutive failed rainy seasons and the most severe drought on record have left 23 million people suffering from a catastrophic lack of food. When rains finally returned earlier this year, prolonged dryness prevented water from soaking into the hard, baked earth and gave way to damaging floods. To make matters worse, El Niño is predicted to bring heavy rains and widespread flooding later this year, likely displacing people from their homes and putting crops and livestock at risk of mass destruction. It’s a chilling preview of how the changing climate will increasingly disrupt food supplies around the world, parching some crops and drowning others.

Through Feed the Future, in close collaboration with local partners, USAID is working with smallholder farmers and other small-scale producers to better withstand these shocks and long-term stresses. We are improving forecasting systems and sharing geospatial data from NASA with farmers in fragile areas so they can make better decisions about when to plant, harvest, and water their crops. We are helping them harness technologies including drip irrigation, drought-resilient seeds, and solar-powered pumps so they can get their crops enough water when the rains don’t come. And we are supporting farmers to use fertilizer more efficiently so they can grow and earn more, as well as reduce nutrient runoff that can pollute  groundwater and critical ecosystems. 

Ultimately, however, building more resilient food systems will require substantial investment far beyond what the public sector alone can provide. That’s why we are taking steps to increase private investment. In sub-Saharan Africa, for instance, a range of small and medium-sized agricultural businesses provide smallholder farmers with critical products, services, storage and transport, and markets they need to succeed. But those same small and medium-sized businesses are often too small for commercial lenders, or too big for microfinance banks – but traditional banks and investors are hesitant to lend to them. As a result, these businesses face an estimated $100 billion gap in unmet demand for financing, despite their potential to drive economic growth and promote food security across the continent.

Last month at the United Nations General Assembly in New York, I announced that the U.S. and Norway will invest $70 million in the Financing for Agricultural Small-and-Medium Enterprises in Africa (FASA) Fund – a first-loss fund that will make investing in these businesses less risky, and thus draw in the private-sector investment we need to build more resilient food systems.   

With populations, water scarcity, and the frequency and intensity of natural disasters rising, tackling food insecurity is one of the most complex challenges we face as an Agency. But we know real progress is possible: in Feed the Future’s first decade alone, the effort helped reduce poverty, hunger, and child stunting by 25 percent in the areas where it worked. Now is the time to redouble our efforts and build on this progress toward a more food secure world.