InterAction Viewpoint: Global Food Security Strategy A Must For Economic Recovery

Any plan for recovery from the global financial crisis must include continued commitments to agricultural and rural development. L’Aquila, with its $20 billion, three-year commitment to food security, was a hopeful and necessary starting point.

The 1.4 billion people who live in or on the verge of extreme poverty are all in the developing world. A majority of those individuals (75 percent) live on farms and in rural towns and are dependent on agriculture for food, employment and income. More than 1 billion children and families go to bed hungry every night, and the ongoing economic disaster threatens to increase the number of people living below the poverty line by 46 million worldwide. The World Development Report 2008: Agriculture and Development issued by the World Bank argued convincingly that investments in agriculture and rural development are the best means of realizing broad-based economic growth.

Any commitments to agricultural and rural development must include a global food security strategy that:

• is comprehensive, addressing the full continuum of hunger-fighting programs, both humanitarian/emergency and long-term development activities;
• integrates objectives that have the greatest impacts at the community level and reach the poorest of the poor—smallholder focus, gender-sensitive, demand-driven and environmentally sustainable;
• provides innovative means for partnering with NGOs to achieve common development goals; and,
• is sustainable beyond the current political momentum, thereby providing substantial and predictable support.

Follow InterAction members' work at the Pittsburgh 2009 G20 Summit.