This post is part of a series produced by The Chicago Council on Global Affairs, marking the occasion of its annual Global Food Security Symposium in Washington, D.C., which will be held on May 21st. For more information on the symposium, click here. Follow @globalagdev and #globalag on twitter to join the conversation on May 21st. By Dr. Shenggan Fan Dr. Shenggen Fan has been director general of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) since 2009. The global food system continues to remain vulnerable. Progress to combat global hunger and malnutrition remains fragmented, as nearly 870 million individuals—about 1... Continue reading

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This post is part of a series produced by The Huffington Post and The Chicago Council on Global Affairs, marking the occasion of its annual Global Food Security Symposium in Washington, D.C., which will be held on May 21st. For more information on the symposium, click here. Follow @globalagdev and #globalag on twitter to join the conversation on May 21st. By Mr. Michael Hoevel Michael Hoevel is the Deputy Director of Agriculture for Impact at Imperial College London. As the expiration date of the Millennium Development Goals draws closer, our promise to eradicate extreme hunger and poverty remains largely unfulfilled.... Continue reading

This post is part of a series produced by The Chicago Council on Global Affairs, marking the occasion of its annual Global Food Security Symposium in Washington, D.C., which will be held on May 21st. For more information on the symposium, click here. Follow @GlobalAgDev and use #globalag on twitter to join the conversation on May 21. By Dr. Margaret Zeigler Margaret Zeigler is the executive director of the Global Harvest Initiative On May 21, leaders from numerous sectors will participate in the Chicago Council Global Food Security Symposium to identify opportunities to alleviate hunger and poverty through agricultural development.... Continue reading

This post is part of a series produced by The Huffington Post and The Chicago Council on Global Affairs, marking the occasion of its annual Global Food Security Symposium in Washington, D.C., which will be held on May 21st. For more information on the symposium, click here. Follow @globalagdev and #globalag on twitter to join the conversation on May 21st. By Dr. Jason Clay Jason Clay is World Wildlife Fund's senior vice president for market transformation. By the year 2050, our planet will be home to another two billion people. How and where we will we feed everyone has become... Continue reading

This post is part of a series produced by The Chicago Council on Global Affairs, marking the occasion of its annual Global Food Security Symposium in Washington, D.C., which will be held on May 21st. For more information on the symposium, click here. Follow @GlobalAgDev and use #globalag on twitter to join the conversation on May 21. By Mr. Sam Worthington Sam Worthington is the president and CEO of InterAction, an alliance of more than 180 U.S.-based NGOs. Last fall InterAction pledged that its member NGOs would spend more than $1 billion in private resources on food security, agriculture and... Continue reading

This post is part of a series produced by The Huffington Post and The Chicago Council on Global Affairs, marking the occasion of its annual Global Food Security Symposium in Washington, D.C., which will be held on May 21st. For more information on the symposium, click here. Follow @GlobalAgDevand use #globalag on twitter to join the conversation on May 21. By Mr. Roger Thurow Roger Thurow is senior fellow with Global Agricultural Development Initiative at The Chicago Council on Global Affairs. Roger Thurow’s reporting in Ethiopia was supported by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. Ten years after the Ethiopian... Continue reading

This post is part of a series produced by The Huffington Post and The Chicago Council on Global Affairs, marking the occasion of its annual Global Food Security Symposium in Washington, D.C., which will be held on May 21st. For more information on the symposium, click here. Follow @GlobalAgDev and use #globalag on twitter to join the conversation on May 21. By Betty Bugusu Betty Bugusu is the Managing Director for the International Food Technology Center (IFTC) at Purdue University. Food security is one of the most pressing challenges in the world today. The challenge is particularly important as the... Continue reading

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By Roger Thurow A mother knows. “This child is brilliant,” Harriet Okaka says about her one-year-old son, Abraham. She isn’t bragging, just observing. “I can tell, just by looking at him,” she says, “the way he plays, the way he is.” Harriet, 33, is a smallholder farmer in the northern Uganda village of Okii, near the town of Lira. Abraham is her sixth child. “The other children started walking by the time they were two years old. Abraham is walking at one,” she says. The mother has noticed things. When Abraham sees an animal, he motions for it to come,... Continue reading

By Hannah Laufer-Rottman Hannah Laufer-Rottman is Executive Director of Palms for Life Fund, a not for profit that promotes a global alliance to end poverty and hunger. An encouraging new development from the Obama Administration intends to change the way the US distributes its international food aid. But will it succeed? While the goal of reducing hunger in the world continues to be a key strategic goal of this country, the effectiveness of the policy will hinge on the application of a global, regional and country-by-country understanding of how complexities can work for or against the issue. The key elements... Continue reading

The Karimi group of Tabalab, Kenya, receives top dress fertilizer, solar lights, maize bags, sukuma seeds, and cassava cuttings at top dress delivery in Teso. Photo courtesy of the One Acre Fund blog. Continue reading

Roger Thurow, senior fellow with the Chicago Council's Global Agricultural Development Initiative, gave a TEDxChange talk in Seattle on April 3. He recounts his experiences in Ethiopia during the famine and explains why the international community needs to invest in smallholder farmers. Continue reading

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Joska Aweko (left) is working with TechnoServe junior business advisor Jane Akot to improve her farming techniques and increase the income she earns from cotton. A mother of eight, Joska was among the first to return to her village in northern Uganda after a destructive civil war had forced her family to flee their home and live in government-run camps under harsh conditions. Photo Credit: TechnoServe Continue reading

Marion Odongo of Ringa, Kenya, uses a knife to crack kernels of maize loose from a dried cob so she can store them to last her through the year. Credit: Hailey Tucker Photo courtesy of the One Acre Fund blog. One Acre Fund is an NGO in Kenya, Rwanda, and Burundi that helps 137,000 smallholder farmers grow their own way out of poverty by providing a "market bundle" that includes education, finance, seed and fertilizer, and market access. Continue reading

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By Sir Gordon Conway Professor of International Development, Agriculture for Impact, Imperial College London This originally appeared on Huffington Post. Hunger, malnutrition, poverty, climate change, environmental degradation - addressing these injustices is at the forefront of political meetings the world over. Yet these problems persist as global leaders strive to find efficient and synergistic ways of tackling them sustainably. In Africa alone over 200 million people are chronically hungry and 40% of children under the age of 5 are stunted. At the same time, the African population is still rapidly growing and experiencing serious declines in its agricultural resource base... Continue reading

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Colette Mushimiyimana prepares sticks for climbing beans she will soon plant in Mukimba, Rwanda. Credit: Franciose Umarishavu. Photo courtesy of the One Acre Fund blog. One Acre Fund is an NGO in Kenya, Rwanda, and Burundi that helps 137,000 smallholder farmers grow their own way out of poverty by providing a "market bundle" that includes education, finance, seed and fertilizer, and market access. Continue reading

Imagine This: Food Aid Reform As word spread earlier this week of the food aid reform section of President Obama’s 2014 budget, I wondered how Jerman Amente would greet the news. He was a wiry 39-year-old Ethiopian farmer and grain trader when I first met him back in 2003. The country was tipping toward a disastrous food crisis – 14 million people would be on the doorstep of starvation that year – when he invited me to see his warehouse in the crossroads town of Nazareth. He unlocked the door and threw open its large metal panels, revealing, astonishingly, a... Continue reading

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By Catherine Bertini and Dan Glickman This was originally posted on Politico. When it comes to providing hunger relief to needy people around the world, the United States has been a leader since World War II. And if early reports about the Obama administration’s 2014 budget are true, then the U.S. will have a golden opportunity to provide even more food to the hungry while spending less taxpayer dollars in the years ahead. For the past 60 years, the U.S. has invested an average of $2 billion annually in food aid and saved many millions of lives. Food aid has... Continue reading

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