Food and Farm Experts Seek Breakthroughs to Feed the Future

The Obama Administration is turning to agriculture and food industry experts to identify breakthrough ideas to double or triple food production in nations facing chronic hunger.

A February 22 meeting at the White House was the next step in the Feed the Future initiative, a three-year-old program launched in the aftermath of food shortages in 2007–2008. Various economic, market and weather events combined to drive up food prices during that time to a level that reversed a 40-year pattern of declining hunger worldwide and shoved more than 100 million people back to extreme hunger and poverty. 

The experts convened at the meeting are looking beyond the agricultural basics to technical issues such as crop genomics, seed technology, and agricultural finance and risk management. The head of USAID, Rajiv Shah, reminded the private-sector audience of the huge advances made by the Green Revolution in the 1970s and said he hoped for a repeat of that success.

• Read the full article on the U.S. Department of States IIP Digital website
• Read another article on how mobile phones lead to increased farm incomes on the IIP Digital website