Meeting here in Vatican City reminds us that for at least two millennia, humanity has lived under a principle to help others survive – to reach out to our brothers and sisters.
Although we, as a people, may still have the intention to support each other to survive and to thrive, we have not yet found an answer to do so comprehensively and to ensure that:
- people are not hungry
- children are born healthy and can thrive in infancy and as toddlers
- people living in the midst of disasters have adequate access to food
- the numbers of crises dissipate so that fewer people are unsafe and cut off from food.
Almost eighty years ago, most of the world celebrated peace. As a result, there was optimism as new organizations and systems were created to help keep the peace and support the well-being of nations. Today we can see that many of those entities, as thoughtful and hopeful as they were at their creation, have not succeeded in “ending the scourge of war” nor in ending hunger and poverty. The United Nations Security Council is perhaps the best, and worst, example, made especially poignant as we watch with sadness the loss of life in Ukraine.
Although not the topic of this session or this paper, we must at least rhetorically ask, especially while we are in these hallowed halls, how can peace be again made a higher calling, a broader priority?
Food Security Since WWII
Immediately post war, the Marshall Plan was extended to 16 countries in Europe. Millions of children had access to food in schools and families collected rations of canned food. The United States added a new component to its own schools by the addition of milk throughout the country as a result of the National School Lunch Act of 1946. Forty-two countries met in Quebec City in October 1945 to create the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) to enhance nutritional well-being, rural conditions, efficiency and distribution of food production, “and thus contributing toward an expanding world economy and ensuring humanity’s freedom from hunger”.[1]
More international organizations were created with the establishment in 1961 of what has now become the UN World Food Programme (WFP), initially designed to distribute surplus commodities from wealthy countries to countries in need, and in 1977 a finance facility called the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD).
For perhaps four decades, the agricultural and food security issues were primarily based around an anti-poverty agenda, as the vast majority of hungry people faced desperate poverty, not war and only occasionally natural disasters. With that in mind and with traditional donor governments looking for efforts to decrease poverty, improve potential commercial consumer prospects, and develop or keep international friendships during the “cold war”, as much as a quarter of Official Development Assistance (ODA) was assigned to agriculture-related support. This began to change in the 1980s.
After the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall and the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, there was much talk in donor circles of the “peace dividend” – funds that could be saved from international development accounts no longer considered necessary to keep the peace. By 2008, agricultural-related activities were approximately 4% of ODA.
Of course, in place of development expenditures, more and more resources were allocated for immediate food security needs due to the significant rise in internal strife and regional wars. Humanitarian aid grew quickly to outpace all other development priorities and continued needs of people living in poverty and severe hunger.
Organizations like WFP had been recently reorganized to be able to meet urgent hunger needs – operating more like an emergency management agency than a slow-moving bureaucracy, while others stayed in the development mode.
Why are humanitarian crises so much more compelling than crises of poverty? My theory is that human beings can see the stark nature of hunger of a war victim; they can feel the pain of flood or earthquake survivors. But it is more difficult to identify with a woman and her children who are living in peace and a calm climate but with no income and few options for food. Photos and news coverage of each circumstance are just not the same.
Traditional donor governments are democracies; they strive to make popular decisions. Each has an altruistic streak but also a mission for self-interest preservation. But self-interest is often defined as short term.
Take two cases in point. When Syrians were pouring across the border into refugee camps in Jordan, Lebanon and Türkiye, their needs for shelter and food were high. At first, donor governments were generous. But the large and mostly unwelcome influx of Syrians into Europe began just weeks after the European Union cut back on its funding for food assistance in those camps. Faced with a lack of food, people migrated to where they hoped to find it – Europe.
In Central America, for years in the 1980s and 90s, the United States funded programs in countries whose governments were allied with the US and fought the governments that were not. Once governments were generally supported by the Americans, large flows of aid stopped. Funds were not sent to build institutions of the rule of law, or education or health. Now, two generations later, hundreds of thousands of people from the region are fleeing the violence, poverty, and lack of functioning systems and moving to where they hope to find peace – the United States of America.
Perhaps governments’ international collaboration needs to refine “self-interest”.
New Crises – New Self-Interests
For decades the FAO and World Bank reported fairly stable numbers of hungry people. Today, however, is different. There are growing numbers of hungry people. The promises that were made by governments at the United Nations in 2015 – to end hunger by 2030 – will not be met in the next seven years. In fact, today’s assumption is that the number of people living without knowing where their next meal comes from will be higher in 2030 than when the promise was made.
Across the globe, people are struggling with food, fuel, fertilizer inflation. They are surprised and often harmed by severe changes in temperature, by more droughts, floods and fires. We all can see the flaws in our social support systems even more starkly as a result of tepid or negative responses during the global pandemic. Millions of people are still dodging bullets and moving households to attempt to be safe from fighting. And as if that is not enough, the two countries who supply most of the world’s wheat are mired in war.
As a March 2023 report from the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and The Rockefeller Foundation says, “While these stark, evidence-based reminders of what is at stake can weigh us down with inertia…. it can also spark actions and mobilize resources and lead to embracing disruptive new thinking and solutions”.[2]
For starters, let us flip the imperative of needs.
- Where are the people who are most at risk of hunger?
- Who are they?
- What do they need?
People living in the midst of war need war to end. That is imperative number one. Only specific people and governments can influence this. Let us encourage them to begin.
People living in conflict need help today, yes, but they also need the resilience of programming into sustainable options for tomorrow. A recent report from The Rockefeller Foundation encourages “localization” – funding that is given to local organizations for their decisions and management. Despite any reasonable ideas in this paper or stated or funded by any one of us outside a crisis area, the most workable solutions are those that will be based in the community, not in a capital.[3]
In families everywhere, the individuals most at risk are pregnant women, their infants and young children. Without adequate nutrition, the children will be stunted for life and an entire generation will be less productive than their better fed neighbors. Two studies this year, one by the Center for Development Research at the University of Bonn[4] and one by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI),[5] showed that the long-term impact of the last food price crisis in 2008-2011 was the significant stunting of children. There are two actions that could help alleviate stunting – more available social safety nets and more understanding of the critical importance of nutrition for pregnant and breastfeeding mothers.
Farmers with challenges of fast-moving changes in temperature need seeds to grow crops that are resilient and that are supported by science-based outcomes.
Communities and donors who support them need to anticipate future potentialities, according to the recent report from The Rockefeller Foundation, and invest in planning and prevention.
Donors cannot continue to use post-WWII conventional funding silos – this is for development; this is for emergencies. Nothing is for the “in-between”.
And institutions that were created in a different time should get careful review. Are they still fit for purpose? Are the funds spent in supporting their work still relevant and are they cost-effective in ending hunger and in building more productive agricultural outputs and rural communities?
And one day, maybe, the world will understand that if our mission is to end hunger, then we must partner with the person in each household who is most invested in ending hunger. More often than not, this is a woman. We must listen to women about what they need so that our investment and their labor and needs actually match.
Conclusion
In 1945, the world needed stability, clear boundaries, economic development, and peace.
In 2023, peace is still a prerequisite to prosperity and progress. But it is the need of individuals and of communities which must be recognized and for which our support for adequate nutrition must be applied. Governance, contributions, and collaboration must reflect this if we are to reverse the trend of increasing hunger.
This can be done, and we must start now.
[1] “Basic Texts of the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations”, Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations.
[2] Chicago Council on Global Affairs and The Rockefeller Foundation, “Defining the Path to Zero Hunger in an Equitable World”, March 2023.
[3] The Rockefeller Foundation, “Anticipate and Localize: Leveraging Humanitarian Funding To Create More Sustainable Food Systems”, April 2023.
[4] International Food Policy Research Institute, “Food Inflation and Child Undernutrition in Low and Middle Income Countries”, November 2022.
[5] Lukas Kornher, Awudu Abdulai, and Muhammed Usman, “The fortune of birth at the right time – The long-term effects of the 2008 food and economic crisis on child health”, Center for Development Research at the University of Bonn, 2022.