Read the Institute's New Hunger Report

The Institute’s 2011 Hunger Report, Our Common Interest: Ending Hunger and Malnutrition, has just become available online at www.hungerreport.org. The 2010 Hunger Report, A Just and Sustainable Recovery, which had been the default landing page till today, remains available on the site along with the 2009 report, Global Development: Charting a New Course.

Who will feed the future? Nepal is one country where the U.S. will increase investments in agriculture. Photo: Richard Lord

At the 2009 G-8 Summit in L’Aquila, U.S. leadership was instrumental in gaining the commitment of member nations to $22 billion to improve global food and nutrition security. For its part, the Obama administration developed its own initiative, Feed the Future. Bread for the World, along with several U.S. civil society groups, provided input into the design of the program. The 2011 Hunger Report is concerned with events that led to the establishment of Feed the Future and with what it will take for the initiative to succeed.

The report argues that Feed the Future is a bold step forward in U.S. foreign assistance, possibly the best opportunity to come along in decades for the United States to contribute to lasting progress against global hunger and malnutrition. Feed the Future stands out with its dual focus on boosting incomes of smallholder farmers and improving the nutritional status of mothers and children, the groups most at risk of hunger and malnutrition.

The report starts with the spike in food prices in 2007-08 that pushed the number of people who suffer from hunger to more than a billion for the first time in history. Prices have fallen since then and so has the number of undernourished people, but as we are seeing in 2010, grain markets are still quite volatile, and so food prices remain a great concern.

For children born in the poorest parts of the world during the 2007-2008 food-price crisis, higher food prices meant that their families could not afford staple foods let alone the more nutritious foods. A series of articles in the British medical journal, the Lancet, published in early 2008 had immediate relevance, as it pointed out that malnutrition during the window of opportunity during pregnancy and in the first two years of life has irreversible consequences for a child. For children who survive early childhood malnutrition, the physical and cognitive setbacks are lifelong, leaving children more prone to illness throughout their lives and reducing earning potential.  

The 2011 Hunger Report includes several recommendations to strengthen Feed the Future and U.S. foreign assistance more broadly. Feed the Future must take a comprehensive approach to fighting hunger and malnutrition, adopting the following elements: increase the productivity of smallholder farmers, help them reach markets, take advantage of the links between agriculture and nutrition while scaling up evidence-based nutrition interventions (especially for pregnant women and young children), empower women, strengthen safety nets, and respond quickly to hunger emergencies.  

Dr. Rajiv Shah, USAID administrator, described "Our Common Interest" as "The best report I've seen in years on this issue" in remarks at the National Press Club.

Moreover, the report argues, Congress should rewrite the 1961 Foreign Assistance Act to make clear that poverty reduction and development are key elements of U.S. foreign policy and reduce earmarks to ensure that U.S. development assistance has the flexibility to respond to realities on the ground. U.S. food aid should be improved to allow for a greater focus on nutritional quality, especially to reach infants and young children. In addition, the United States should take the lead in strengthening international institutions that are complementary to U.S. bilateral assistance in fighting hunger and malnutrition.

After decades of underinvestment in agriculture, Feed the Future is a refreshing throwback to when agriculture held a much more prominent place in U.S. foreign assistance. But Feed the Future has the potential to be much stronger than earlier U.S. programs. Its focus on country-led development is encouraging, but this must include building the capacity of national governments to sustain the progress begun with foreign assistance, and should also include building the capacity of civil society to hold national governments accountable for what they do with this assistance.

The 2011 report is available online and in print and anybody who wants to order a copy can do so via the website.  The online edition includes everything in the print edition and several other features. The Hunger Report has always been a comprehensive source for data on hunger, poverty and other development indicators. The Hunger Report website allows you to visualize these data. An assortment of information covered in the report is displayed in eye-catching graphics. 

Enjoy the report. Tell us what you think of it. And please, get the word out about it.