World Summit on Food Security

The World Summit on Food Security is happening right now (November 16 to 18) in Rome. According to an article in today’s New York Times, world leaders have rallied around a new strategy to fight global hunger and help poor countries feed themselves. They have not, however, pledged the $44 billion sought by the U.N. Food and Agricultural Organization to increase agricultural aid to the world’s one billion hungry people.

The article articulates that so far, “helping the world’s hungry has largely entailed wealthy nations sending food assistance” rather than developing local sustainable solutions such as trainings for local farmers in how to adopt agro-ecological farming techniques or the creation of seed banks and irrigation systems—solutions that AJWS believes are the most effective ways to halt food insecurity worldwide.

While the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization had hoped countries would agree to 2025 as a deadline to eradicate hunger, the declaration instead focused on a pledge set nine years ago to only halve the number of hungry people by 2015. Italian farmers protested outside the summit, asserting that too little is being done far too slowly.

Stay tuned for another update as the World Summit on Food Security continues.