A Women Farmers’ Cooperative on a Mission to Decrease Hunger
In Nigeria, one woman is leading her community to use sustainable farming methods, as well as technology, to thrive. A group of women farmers in Nigeria play a pivotal role…
Read MoreMeeting the Moment
Meeting the Moment:
The Feed the Future
Interagency Report
Overview
Feed the Future was born in the shadow of the 2008 global food price crisis, causing the number of hungry people worldwide to surge. A decade later, a new food security crisis emerged as the COVID-19 pandemic upended supply chains and Russia invaded Ukraine, threatening the livelihoods of millions and swelling the ranks of the global poor.
While the United States mobilized the humanitarian response to the recent global food crisis and helped save countless lives, we also mitigated a hunger crisis. The presence and partnerships forged through more than a decade of Feed the Future, coupled with the U.S. Congress allocating supplemental funds for food security, prevented an emerging crisis from devolving into the worst-case scenario.
The presence and partnerships forged through more than a decade of Feed the Future, coupled with supplemental funds from the U.S. Congress, enabled the United States to mobilize the humanitarian response to the recent global food crisis, help save countless lives, and mitigate a hunger crisis.
Feed the Future Timeline
By The Numbers
Feed the Future programming reached 33 million people in FY 2023.
6.2 million producers applied improved agricultural practices on more than 4.5 million hectares of cropland and cultivated pasture, including more than 2.8 million hectares where climate adaptation or climate risk management practices or technologies were applied.
$1.4 billion in agriculture-related financing was accessed, more than double the level just four years ago.
The value of annual sales from producers and firms supported by Feed the Future reached an initiative record of $4.6 billion. This includes more than $2.2 billion in sales by smallholder producers.
Feed the Future leveraged $677 million in private-sector investment, more than double the level of investment seen in FY 2020.
28.4 million children under five and 11.5 million pregnant women were reached with nutrition-specific interventions.
Feed the Future: A Unified Approach to Food Security and Food Systems Development
Our Progress
Feed the Future can measure its progress across five areas critical to meeting today’s challenges to ending poverty and hunger: strengthening the resilience of food systems, influencing evidence-based policy and institutional reform, driving increased private investment and financing, advancing gender equality and inclusion, and leveraging research and innovation.
We have helped to sustain farmers’ access to critical inputs and ensure productivity; maintain market stability; protect access to safe, nutritious foods; and safeguard the well-being of children and other vulnerable populations. Take a look at featured success stories from Honduras, Malawi, Nigeria and other areas of Africa to learn more about Feed the Future’s work.
Strengthening the Resilience of Food Systems
Building resilience—helping people, communities, and countries protect and improve their wellbeing in the face of accelerating shocks and stresses—is critical to addressing the food security crisis.
Accelerated Innovation Delivery Initiative (AID-I) Rapidly Helps Farmers in Fertilizer Crisis
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine threatened future crop production by causing shortages and higher prices of agricultural inputs. USAID, in collaboration with the State Department, launched the AID-I to rapidly mobilize existing, on-the-ground networks to support African farmers in six affected countries. To date, AID-I has reached two million farmers with the improved seeds, fertilizer, and practical information they need to maximize their future harvests while simultaneously supporting local businesses.
Influencing Evidence-Based Policy and Institutional Reform
Feed the Future promotes evidence-driven and transparent policy agendas, capable and accountable institutions, and adequate public and private resources to end hunger. Feed the Future helps countries adopt good regulatory practices to improve and ensure food safety.
Strengthening Data-Driven Decision-Making through Feed the Future
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine reduced the quantity of grain, fertilizer, and fuel traded on global markets and sent prices soaring. Meanwhile, governments, traders, and other stakeholders struggled to estimate how changing stock levels and rising prices would affect poverty, hunger, and malnutrition. To fill agricultural data gaps and promote evidence-informed decision-making, Feed the Future works to strengthen data systems in low-and middle-income countries. The 50x2030 initiative, a tri-party effort of the World Bank, FAO, and IFAD, works to build the capacity in these countries through high-quality, reliable and local agricultural surveys. The improved data contributes to better decision-making, reduces U.S. government expenditures on data collection, and supports improved capacity to manage shocks.
Driving Increased Private Investment and Financing
Producers and firms supported by Feed the Future have reported more than $31 billion in sales of agricultural products and services since the initiative began. But not all farmers and agri-businesses have access to finance, which is a major constraint to food systems transformation. Feed the Future is teaming up with other governments and the private sector to spur investment in Africa’s agricultural growth by utilizing new tools to de-risk investments in agriculture and food systems.
Food Safety for Food Security (FS4FS) Partnership
USAID and USDA launched FS4FS to help regulators in priority countries pursue sanitary and phytosanitary reforms through more transparent rulemaking, resulting in regulations that are simpler, safer, and smarter and translating to increased food safety, lower food costs and improved access for all citizens. Assistance to the Honduran customs and phytosanitary agencies—including the introduction of a new paperless system and joint inspections of agricultural products at the country’s largest port (Puerto Cortés)—cut processing times in half and has led to over $15 million in annual cost savings. Seeing the dividends, Honduras has committed to implement the new procedures for land, sea, and air borders.
Advancing Gender Equality and Inclusion
Women, who make up nearly half of the agricultural workforce in low-income countries, are disproportionately affected by food insecurity but are central to solving global hunger. Achieving gender parity in food systems could potentially boost global gross domestic product by nearly $1 trillion and significantly reduce food insecurity for up to 45 million people. However, women’s access to finance, digital technology, land, inputs, information, and other services has lagged, resulting in women-owned farms being 24 percent less productive than their male-owned counterparts. To address the gap, Feed the Future is committed to investing in research, programming and interventions to advance gender equality and inclusion.
Generating Resilience and Opportunities for Women (GROW)
Advancing gender equality and women’s empowerment in the agricultural sector has the potential to lift whole economies. Launched in April 2023 by USAID, the GROW commitment invested $449 million–exceeding its goal by $114 million–to tackle the persistent inequalities women face in food and water systems through programming that increases women farmers’ on-farm productivity and resilience. GROW also supports women’s full participation in diversified, climate-resilient economic opportunities beyond agriculture while tackling discriminatory social norms, policies, and practices that perpetuate gender inequities. Positioning women’s diets is a key component of strengthening their resilience within the food system.
Leveraging Research and Innovation
With better research and technology, farmers can strengthen food systems—and ultimately reduce hunger, poverty, and malnutrition. Given the United States is an agricultural powerhouse, our domestic capabilities, scientific rigor, and expertise can spur developing agricultural economies. As such, Feed the Future is investing in climate-smart, higher-yielding seed and livestock varieties; developing digital solutions to better inform and equip farmers and other market actors; and scaling access to and uptake of low-cost, efficient technologies.
USDA Launches International
Climate Hub (ICH)
The ICH conducts scientific analysis and data synthesis, creates global resources and tools, and conducts outreach to help the world’s natural resource managers adapt to the impacts of climate change. Current ICH resources include its COMET-Planner Global tool, which helps farmers predict the impact of certain conservation practices on GHG reductions; a library of U.S. international collaborations on agricultural climate challenges; a webinar series; and interactive tools to assess water levels, soil types, and impacts of natural disasters. ICH’s 236 percent increase in readership since its inauguration in May 2023 demonstrates the need for climate change information to increase the resilience of agricultural, food, and forestry systems.
Our Renewed Ambition
Feed the Future has long articulated ambitious goals of contributing to population-level impacts that go well beyond direct participants. To strengthen our accountability and learning, we will use initiative-wide performance targets against which we can measure progress, make adaptive management decisions, and ensure alignment with initiative and Agency priorities.
As we look ahead to 2030, Feed the Future has five ambitious performance targets that aim to drive progress on poverty, hunger, and malnutrition:
- $7 billion in annual sales of producers and firms receiving assistance through Feed the Future.
- 100% financing parity, where female participants of Feed the Future programs access $1 of financing for every $1 in financing accessed by male participants.
- 2.7x increase in the cultivated area under U.S. government supported climate adaptive/climate risk management smart agricultural practices, reaching 7.8 million hectares.
- $876 million in private-sector investments leveraged by the U.S. government to support food security and nutrition.
- More than half of women in Feed the Future program areas consuming a diet of minimum diversity.
Read the
Feed the Future
Interagency Report 
Join the Conversation
Now it's your turn. Share your story on social media.
Read The Latest
Food Security and Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine: How USAID is Supporting Farmers
Photo Credit: West Africa Trade and Investment Hub February 24 marks the grim second anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The invasion not only brought suffering to millions of Ukrainians,…
Read MoreWomen Scientists Advancing Agriculture Research Across Africa
Source: USAID On this year’s International Day of Women and Girls in Science, learn about the contributions and challenges these researchers face Every year, International Day of Women and Girls…
Read MoreTaking Action for Women in Agrifood Systems
Women have always worked in agrifood systems, but these systems have not always worked for women. That’s because barriers have stood in their way, preventing them from making their fullest contributions. Last year, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAO) “Status of Women in Agrifood Systems” report showed us just how slow progress has been in closing the gender gap in agriculture over the past decade. Their access to irrigation, livestock, land ownership and extension services has barely budged over the past decade. Also, they are facing these challenges at a time of immense global shocks.
Read More