Remarks by USAID Administrator Shah at the World Food Prize Events
The following is an excerpt from remarks by USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah at the World Food Prize. You can read his full remarks (as prepared) on the USAID website.
Two years ago, I had the privilege of delivering an address like this one here at the World Food Prize. A year before, at the 2009 G8 Summit in L’Aquila, Italy, President Obama had rallied the world behind the need to dramatically reinvest in food security, securing $22 billion from donors and a commitment from developing countries to spend more of their own budgets on agriculture.
The truth was that these agreements could not have come at a more important time. For more than two decades, agriculture funding had been on the decline, leaving the world ill-prepared to cope with the growing challenge of food insecurity. In 2007 and 2008, soaring prices for basic staples coupled with shortsighted policy responses, like export bans and panic buying, had set the world on edge. But it also convinced global leaders that it was finally time to do things differently.
Since that time, we’ve seen the U.N. General Assembly endorse the principles agreed to at L’Aquila, the G20 include food security on its agenda, the revitalization of the U.N. food agencies, countries across the world design their own strategies for food security, and NGOs step up their own commitments to end hunger.
That food security is on the global agenda today seems normal. But it was just two years ago here in Iowa that I first introduced USAID’s Bureau of Food Security and discussed President Obama’s recently announced global food security initiative Feed the Future.
It all felt so new at the time, because it was new. It represented a new model of development, which has, in many ways, come to define the way we work around the world today:
A model that advances a far deeper focus on science, technology and innovation to dramatically expand the realm of what is possible in development.
A model that aligns resources behind comprehensive countryplans developed and supported by policymakers, technical experts and stakeholders in developing countries.
A model that engages far more broadly with private sector partners—putting behind us an old reluctance to work together, and engaging companies not as wellsprings of corporate charity, but as real partners with an interest in serving the needs of the most vulnerable.
And a model that delivers more for developing countries, but demands far more as well.
That’s the guiding framework for Feed the Future, an initiative that has brought the U.S. Government together behind country-led plans that have made tough trade-offs and focused on specific regions, policies, crops and livestock with the greatest potential for fighting hunger and transforming economies.
Three years later, it is high time we’ve taken stock of our progress and asked what we’ve achieved. We know there are many ways you can measure results in development, especially when you consider the comprehensive reach of Feed the Future. We know the first way is by measuring the number of people you’ve reached.
Over the last three years, working on the ground in 19 countries—from Guatemala to Malawi, Tanzania to Bangladesh—Feed the Future has helped 1.8 million people adopt improved technologies or management practices, growing yields and incomes.
That includes Sushmita Chaudhary, who struggled to eke out a living for her family in Nepal from cereal crops. In 2011, she decided to join a Feed the Future program that taught her about nursery management and crop rotation. She started planting high-value crops like tomatoes and cauliflower and, as a result, she earned seven times her former income and increased yields by eleven-fold.
We have also reached 8.8 million children through nutrition programs that have reduced anemia, supported community gardens, and treated acute malnutrition.