55 posts categorized "Malnutrition"

The new government of President Otto Perez Molina has initiated a program called “Hunger Zero” to combat chronic malnutrition in Guatemala.  Despite being a so-called Middle Income Country (a rung above the poorest countries, as measured by the size of the national economy), chronic malnutrition remains a persistent problem, with rates in certain areas as high as those in the poorest countries in Africa.

According to the head of the Food and Nutritional Security Secretariat (SESAN), Luis Enrique Monterroso, the project will begin in the hardest-hit municipalities and then expand to all 166 municipalities affected significantly by hunger. Included in the Hunger Zero program are nutrition interventions focused on the 1,000 Days "window of opportunity," from pregnancy until a child's second birthday. The government has also created the Dignity Triangle program, which focuses on food availability, access, and nutrition education.

Bread for the World is a strong supporter of the 1,000 Days Partnership and the Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) movement, which advocate for improved nutrition in pregnant women and children during this critical period. At this stage of life, the effects of malnutrition can cause irreversible damage to brain development, cognitive abilities, and resistance to diseases. Guatemala is also a supporter of these initiatives, which share key objectives with the new government’s anti-hunger programs.

The recently appointed head of SESAN happens to be a friend of Bread for the World! When Bread hosted the SUN Civil Society Working Group meeting that followed our 2011 National Gathering, Luis Enrique was there representing his country. His skills and commitment to ending hunger and malnutrition in Guatemala were evident to Otto Perez during his election campaign. He was asked to head this very important office, which is responsible for coordinating the efforts of 13 government ministries and reports directly to Guatemala's Vice President.

Todd Post, editor of Bread for the World Institute's Hunger Report, and I recently traveled to Guatemala and were able to meet with Luis Enrique in his new capacity. He is excited about the challenge before him and expressed his thanks for Bread for the World's support in giving him the opportunity to learn about SUN, which is just getting started in Guatemala.  He has already set an ambitious goal: reducing hunger by 10 percent within four years. He has also begun to work on Hunger Zero by identifying the 166 most malnourished of the country's 366 municipalities.

Guatemala is a country that faces many challenges – social, political, and economic. It is also a country that has correctly identified addressing the root causes of malnutrition as key to its future success.  Let’s follow the developments there and wish “our man in Guatemala” great success!

    Scott Bleggi is a senior international policy analyst with Bread for the World Institute.

Photo: Laura Sheahen / Catholic Relief Services 

The most important period in human development is the 1,000 days between pregnancy and age 2. Healthy development, particularly brain development, depends on getting enough nutritious food during this window.

Bread for the World is a key advocate for good nutrition during the 1,000 Days. From coordinating the Scaling Up Nutrition / 1,000 Days Civil Society Meeting with Concern Worldwide to launching Women of Faith for the 1,000 Days Movement, Bread is leading the movement to ensure that all children under age 2 have access to the right nutrients to live healthy, productive lives.

What exactly is this 1,000-day window of opportunity? This is how Bread for the World Institute explains it in the 2012 Hunger Report:

The U.N. Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) treat hunger and poverty as interdependent problems. The first MDG — dramatically reducing hunger and poverty — measures progress against hunger by gauging how many children remain chronically undernourished.

“Hunger” seems like a simpler concept than “undernutrition,” but it’s most accurate to say that it’s the effects of undernutrition that kill children or limit their potential for the rest of their lives.

Young children need calories to grow and gain weight, but vitamins and minerals matter every bit as much. In developing countries, one-third of all children are stunted or underweight as a result of undernutrition; it is the leading cause of child mortality. Reducing the high rate of undernutrition among children in the developing world is one of the greatest challenges in global health.

The most critical period in human development is the 1,000 days starting at pregnancy and lasting through a child’s second year. Healthy development, particularly brain development, depends on getting the right foods at this critical time. Hunger during this time is catastrophic, because the resulting physical and cognitive damage is lifelong and irreversible.

Early hunger and malnutrition is associated with later problems such as chronic illness and poor school attendance and learning. As adults, the survivors have lower productivity and lifetime incomes, which costs developing countries an estimated 2 to 3 percent of their economic output (Gross Domestic Product).

Until recently, international development programs did not focus much attention on improving the nutritional status of young children. But that has changed since 2008, when a series of reports on early childhood appeared in the leading medical journal The Lancet. The series emphasized the connection between nutrition during the critical 1,000-day window and development outcomes, and showed how practical, inexpensive interventions during this “window of opportunity” can dramatically alter the arc of a person’s life.

The Lancet series appeared at the height of a global hunger crisis driven by dramatic spikes in the prices of staple foods, which forced an additional 100 million people into hunger and led to rioting in a number of countries. In the aftermath, the United Nations formed a High-Level Task Force on Global Food Security. In addition, representatives of the governments and civil societies of dozens of countries came together to prepare a framework for nutrition action based on The Lancet reports. From this effort came the Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) movement to support the action plan.

During a U.N. summit on the MDGs in September 2010, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her Irish counterpart launched the “1,000 Days: Change a Life, Change the Future” initiative. 1,000 Days and SUN seek to make nutrition an integral component of development programs. SUN’s plan for accomplishing this has been endorsed by national governments, multilateral institutions such as the World Bank and other international development banks, civil society organizations, development agencies, academics, and philanthropic bodies. During the U.N. event, David Beckmann, president of Bread for the World, and Tom Arnold, CEO of Concern Worldwide, committed to convening a follow-up meeting of SUN. This meeting was held June 13, 2011, in Washington, DC, and drew government and civil society representatives from both SUN countries and developed countries. Bread for the World and Concern Worldwide continue to be instrumental in keeping policymakers focused on SUN and the critical importance of the 1,000-day window of opportunity between pregnancy and age 2.

₊Read more from the 2012 Hunger Report’s Chapter 4, Rebalancing Globally.

Kate Hagen is Hunger Report project assistant at Bread for the World Institute.

The 2012 Hunger Report executive summary is Bread for the World Institute’s overview of the state of hunger.

Tomorrow night, President Obama will deliver his 2012 State of the Union address, laying out his national priorities based on current conditions in the United States.

Will he discuss the 15 percent of Americans who wonder whether they will have enough to eat this month? Will he say it’s a top priority to make sure that no child goes to bed hungry?

2012 is a particularly important year for hungry people in the United States because Congress is scheduled to reauthorize the farm bill, which will define U.S. farm policies for the next five years. The bill shows exactly how much our country values nutritious food for all as a goal of our farm policies.

Bread for the World Institute’s 2012 Hunger Report recommends effective ways for the U.S. government to respond to the agriculture and nutrition challenges of 2012 and beyond. Read an excerpt from the executive summary of the 2012 Hunger Report: Rebalancing Act: Updating U.S. Food and Farm Policies to learn what we hope President Obama will say in the 2012 State of the Union:

The global agricultural system faces many daunting challenges. Seven billion people currently inhabit the Earth, and the population is expected to rise to 9 billion by 2050. Food production must increase as climate change puts additional stress on natural resources. Nearly one billion people around the world suffer from hunger, and in the United States one in four people participate in a federal nutrition program. U.S. food and farm policies absolutely need to be aligned.

The 2012 Hunger Report recommends ways for the federal government to better respond to the agriculture and nutrition challenges of today and tomorrow. Normally change in food and farm policy occurs incrementally. The 2012 Hunger Report calls for bolder, more determined thinking about how U.S. food and farm policies can meet the global and domestic challenges of the 21st century.

Farm policies should significantly increase production of healthy foods. But farm policies alone can’t automatically improve access to nutritious foods for low-income families. Strengthening the nutrition safety net is also critical. Nutrition programs need to do more than provide food for hungry people; they must ensure that healthy food is available to all.

The 2012 Hunger Report recommends ways for U.S. development assistance and food aid programs to work together more efficiently. Food aid programs should follow the lead of Feed the Future—the new U.S. Global Hunger and Food Security Initiative—by focusing more deliberately on improving nutrition outcomes for the most vulnerable people, especially pregnant and lactating women and children under the age of 2. This will help achieve the strongest possible nutrition outcomes with the limited resources available.

On the eve of 2012, Congress is negotiating dramatic cuts in the federal budget. Cuts to programs designed to overcome the effects of poverty are in neither the short- nor the long-term interests of the nation. The recommendations in the2012 Hunger Report are all the more relevant because the budget decisions are so urgent.

+To read more, download the executive summary of the 2012 Hunger Report: Rebalancing Act: Updating U.S. Food and Farm Policy.

Kate Hagen is Hunger Report project assistant at Bread for the World Institute.

Photo by Flickr user yeowatzup

You’ve probably read about the passing of North Korea’s longtime dictator, Kim Jong-il.  His son, Kim Jong-un, is assumed to succeed him, but not much is known about Kim Jong-un and whether he will continue his father’s legacy of dictatorship, suppressing the economy, and repressing human rights.  As we read the reports this week on the country’s political, economic, and military situation, let’s not forget that North Korea has one of the world’s highest rates of hunger and malnutrition.

In April 2011, the World Food Program (WFP) launched an emergency food aid program in North Korea aimed primarily at women and children following a brutal winter in which traditional food supplies and commercial imports fell short. At that time it was estimated that 3.5 million people were critically short on food because the North Korean government’s Public Distribution System (PDS) stocks were nearly zero. By June 2011, individual cereal rations being distributed were only about 150 grams per day – about a quarter pound.  Can you imagine living on just a bowl of cereal per day?

Overall, malnutrition rates among children in North Korea have gone down over the past 10 years, but one in every three children in the country remains chronically malnourished or “stunted,” meaning they are too short for their age. Furthermore, a quarter of all pregnant and breast-feeding women in North Korea are also malnourished.  North Korean food security experts have determined that even small shock in future food stores could trigger a severe crisis that would be difficult to contain.

The WFP reports current rations provided by the North Korean government meet well less than half of the daily calorific needs for the 68 percent of the 16 million people receiving public food rations through the PDS. People are struggling to find food by alternative means, but they lack purchasing power because of poor economic conditions in a country that remains one of the most isolated in the world.  A major crop and food security assessment mission was undertaken in October 2011.  The results are expected to show that North Korea remains one of the most food-deficit countries in the world.

As news reports continue to focus on North Korea’s political instability, it’s imperative for us to remember the persistent hunger crisis in North Korea and the people’s inability to fight for their right to adequate food for their children. 

Scott Bleggi is senior international policy analyst at Bread for the World Institute.

Time will tell, but Monday, December 12, may prove to be a major milestone for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).

On Monday, the Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress (CSPC) launched a new website called SNAP to Health, “a virtual town hall on SNAP (formerly food stamps) and nutrition in the United States.”

“Until now, there has not been a single place where interested individuals across multiple sectors could convene to discuss ideas about how to improve nutrition among SNAP beneficiaries,” wrote Susan Blumenthal in the Huffington Post.

There are plenty of good ideas floating around about how to improve SNAP, but the task of centralizing them in one place had fallen to no one until now.  Bread for the World Institute’s 2012 Hunger Report, Rebalancing Act: Updating U.S. Food and Farm Policies, considers a variety of ways to improve SNAP—for example, what you’ll find here about scaling up incentive programs to purchase fresh fruits and vegetables at farmers markets.

Over the last year, Bread activists have mostly been focused on protecting SNAP from cuts. This is by no means the time to let down your guard. But it’s also important to remember the key role SNAP plays in ensuring low-income households can afford to purchase healthy food. The boost in SNAP benefits included in the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) was probably the main reason hunger rates over the past two years did not increase, even as the economy worsened and high unemployment rates held steady.

In spite of improvements to SNAP, tens of millions of Americans are barely spending enough to maintain a healthy diet, according to a report released last week by the Food Research and Action Center (FRAC). “Less spending on food would not be a problem if households were spending amounts adequate to obtain a healthy diet even after the reduction,” wrote FRAC. “But the evidence is that they are not—that they are spending less than the USDA-defined level that many experts consider to be already inadequate.”

Using USDA data, FRAC reports that median household spending on food fell by one-eighth between 2000 and 2010. The problem is not confined to low-income households, so the drop in spending can’t all be explained by the rise in unemployment due to the recession. Other factors include flattening wage rates coupled with food inflation and other increases in living expenses.

I hope SNAP to Health will attract attention from policymakers and activists by providing a place for different interest groups to coalesce around the best way to support a program that is critical to the well-being of millions of families. The next several months are a good time to focus attention on SNAP. The farm bill is scheduled to be reauthorized in 2012, and SNAP is part of the bill. Reauthorization occurs once every five years or so, meaning this is the opportune time to improve SNAP.

Photo by Paul Alberghine, USDA/FAS

The USDA announced that it is investing $8.5 million in six organizations to research, produce, and field-test new or improved micronutrient-fortified food aid products in six countries: Cambodia, Guatemala, Guinea-Bissau, Haiti, Mozambique and Tanzania. The awards were made on the basis of proposals submitted under the McGovern-Dole International Food for Education Program.

The new products being developed are designed to meet the energy and nutrition needs of women, infants, and school-age children. Through this effort, USDA will identify products that can be programmed on a larger scale to address specific nutritional deficiencies among these groups. The McGovern-Dole Program helps low-income, food-deficit countries that are committed to universal education. It provides food donations, financial and technical assistance for school feeding, and maternal and child nutrition projects.

The awards were made under the Micronutrient-Fortified Food Aid Pilot Program. One previous award was made in 2010 for a company to test its ready-to-use, fortified dairy protein paste in a population of 4,000. The new or improved products include fortified rice, a lipid-based nutrient spread, a poultry-based fortified spread, a soy-fortified pudding, and a sorghum-cowpea fortified blended food.

This last product will be developed by Kansas State University, which is also developing other blended fortified food aid products recommended in Tufts University’s Food Aid Quality Review, prepared for the U.S. Agency for International Development. Among these are Corn Soy Blend 14 (CSB-14), which includes a component of whey protein, and Sorghum Soy Blend. The cowpea fortified food product is especially promising, since cowpeas are grown throughout Africa and if local products can be used, food aid program costs will be greatly reduced.

The United States is showing strong leadership in Maternal and Child Nutrition issues through its research and development efforts in these products. Food for Education complements the 1,000 Days partnership and the global Scaling Up Nutrition movement, which support nutrition early in life -- when it makes the most significant improvements in cognition, growth, and lifelong health.

Scott Bleggi is a senior international policy analyst with Bread for the World Institute.

Good nutrition now will help him, and his community, for the rest of his life.Photo byLaura Elizabeth Pohl for Bread for the World.

Yesterday, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton addressed a large international gathering of development practitioners attending the Fourth High-Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness in Busan, South Korea. The participants range from donors — new and old — to nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), developing country governments, and civil society groups. The fact that Clinton is the first Secretary of State to participate in such a meeting speaks volumes about the priority accorded global development at the highest levels of the administration and about the commitment to improving the quality of U.S. development assistance. More effective development assistance is a goal in particular of two signature initiatives, Feed the Future and the Global Health Initiative.

Secretary Clinton first announced that she would attend the Busan meeting in September, when she spoke at the one-year anniversary event of the Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) Movement, held during the High Level Meeting on Nutrition of the U.N. General Assembly. SUN, Clinton said, embodies the principles of aid effectiveness:

“This program has become, in a very short time, a model of how to implement successfully the principles that the international community affirmed at the High-Level Forums for Aid Effectiveness in Paris and Accra. Together, this community of countries, international organizations, NGOs, civil society groups, and private sector companies has already achieved meaningful benchmarks in the fight to strengthen global nutrition. From Tanzania, which has created a nutrition-specific line in its national budget and posted nutritionists in every district nationwide, [to] countries such as Guatemala, Uganda, Peru, Mozambique, and Burkina Faso, which have introduced new measures to improve financial accountability and strengthen their country’s commitment to nutrition, we are seeing the kinds of high-level reforms and political leadership needed to reach people on a broad scale.

"Now, this is an accomplishment not only for those whose lives are being saved and improved, but also for the people like us in this room who believe passionately in the critical role that nutrition must play in order to produce thriving children, families, and communities. And I think it’s also an indicator of our better understanding of what works in development and what it takes to make progress together, because through the SUN movement, we are seeing better results with country-owned leadership. When programs are coordinated and evidence-based, we get better outcomes. When results are measured transparently and are used to improve strategies, and when all parties are held accountable for delivering on their promises, we actually can see the progress being made.”

The SUN Movement is a different way of working. It is not housed in any institution or owned by any constituency. As Secretary Clinton’s remarks highlight, it is a collaborative effort with a common goal, supporting country-led and country-driven efforts. In just one year, 22 countries have expressed their intention to scale up nutrition—surpassing all expectations and underscoring the urgency of tackling undernutrition at the most effective time, during the 1,000-day window between pregnancy and age 2. Each country has developed national nutrition strategies and implementation plans.

Moving forward into the implementation phase, it is critical to continue this way of working together and to ensure that SUN countries can rely on support—both financial and technical—from the international community. This is important for the sustainability of maternal and child nutrition interventions and investments, and for building capacity for the long term. The U.S. government is supporting SUN through Feed the Future and the Global Health Initiative. Food aid should also be seen as an essential component of U.S. efforts to improve global maternal and child nutrition, as Bread for the World Institute points out in our just-released 2012 Hunger Report.

+The 2012 Hunger Report is available at www.hungerreport.org

       Asma Lateef is director of Bread for the World Institute.        

Rebalancing Act: Updating U.S. Food and Farm Policies, the 2012 edition of Bread for the World Institute's annual Hunger Report, was released today, November 21. This is the Institute's 22^nd annual report. Few of them have been as timely, considering the looming budget cuts Congress is negotiating.

The report argues that U.S. farm policies need to shift toward production of healthy foods. We say bluntly that current farm policies are doing a poor job of contributing to a healthy food system. There is too much support for ingredients used to produce cheap junk foods, and not enough support for foods that promote good health.

The greater share of government support to the farm sector goes to the biggest producers. Smaller producers and producers of healthy foods — i.e., fruits and vegetables — get little or no support. It's been this way for decades, but Americans are expressing more concern than ever about what we're eating and what we're getting for our tax dollars to the farm sector. The local food movement, with its emphasis on "smaller is better," is helping to reshape the farm policy debate. Farm policies are not solely to blame for Americans' low consumption of fruits and vegetables — but U.S. farms don't even produce enough healthy foods for our population to get its recommended daily allowances of vitamins and minerals. We need to ask, what are farm policies really trying to accomplish?

The report is not a diatribe against large-scale farming. We recognize the value of production agriculture in lowering food costs. The biggest beneficiaries of low food prices are low-income people – the people most vulnerable to hunger, who are therefore Bread for the World's main concern. Food production could also be a key component of the country's economic recovery strategy, a potential source of jobs. In tough times with so many people out of work, the hobbling U.S. economy simply can't afford to ignore these possibilities. 

The greatest economic challenge facing the United States, bar none, is the rising cost of health care. Obesity as a contributor to these costs is getting more attention as the problem affects more and more Americans. Hunger, on the other hand, is often overlooked as a health issue—but hungry people are by definition in poor health. Together, the costs of obesity and hunger run into the hundreds of billions of dollars per year. This calls for a much stronger tie between the foods government encourages farmers to produce and the foods government should be encouraging people to eat.

Much of the report is focused on nutrition programs, which should be serving more healthy foods to more than 30 million children (two-thirds of them low-income) who eat school lunch as well as offering incentives for the nation's 45 million SNAP (formerly food stamps) participants to purchase more fruits and vegetables. Farms are, after all, businesses that respond to consumer demand. With some help from government policies, people who would eat healthier if they could afford to could provide farmers with a much larger market to supply.

There are plenty of large-scale fruit and vegetable farmers, but the report doesn't argue that government should transfer to them the support that now goes to large corn and soy farmers. What large-scale fruit and vegetable farmers need is rational U.S. immigration policies. Most of the people who pick the fruits and vegetables we eat are unauthorized immigrants from Mexico and Central America. This is low-paying, backbreaking work that few Americans show an interest in doing. The report looks at the situation of farm workers, emphasizing how much of the food we eat—and should be eating more of—depends on a steady flow of immigrant labor. That labor pool is at risk of vanishing if the federal government doesn't intervene to halt the trend toward repressive state-level immigration policies.

Finally, the report discusses U.S. food and farm policies that affect emergency food aid and agricultural development assistance overseas. Again, the focus is largely on nutrition, particularly for vulnerable groups such as young children and pregnant and nursing women. Good nutrition during the "1,000 Days" period between pregnancy and age 2 is critical to a person's lifelong health and ability to learn. This reality has gotten much more attention in the past few years, as have the simple, cost-effective nutrition actions that can make all the difference – things like promoting exclusive breastfeeding for six months and providing fortified food aid to young survivors of humanitarian disasters. Supporting women's agricultural work is another essential component.

Normally, changes in food and farm policy are made incrementally. Given everything that is going on, though, we need bolder, more determined thinking about how policies can better meet the needs that the world is now facing. The 2012 Hunger Report has plenty of ideas to move us in the right direction.

 +View or order the 2012 Hunger Report at www.bread.org/hungerreport.

Todd Post is senior editor with Bread for the World Institute.

According to information released this morning by the Famine Early Warning System Network (FEWS NET), famine will persist for at least another month in areas of Somalia. Due to the consistent delivery of food aid and emergency supplies since the crisis began, some areas previously have been downgraded from Integrated Food Security and Phase Classification (IPC) 5, meaning “famine”, to IPC Phase 4 “emergency”.

However, according to FEWS NET officials nearly 250,000 people continue to face imminent starvation and death rates, especially among children, remain extremely high, in part due to continuing outbreaks of measles, cholera and malaria. The death toll thus far is “tens of thousands”, and food security in Somalia is the worst since the 1991/92 famine. A continued multi-sectoral response (food, water, sanitation, health, security) is still required and any significant interruption to deliveries will result in a return to famine.

The ongoing famine results from the complete lack of rain during two traditional rainy periods (Oct-Dec 2010, and Apr-Jun 2011) that contributed to crop failures, high levels of animal mortality and very high food prices. While continued, large-scale responses are critical, the flow of local and donated cereals to markets in Somalia indicate that earlier market-based interventions are working.

As we gather with family and friends this Thanksgiving, let’s say a prayer for the return of rain to Somalia and an end to the ongoing crisis there.

Scott Bleggi is the senior international policy analyst in Bread for the World Institute

A Somali woman hands her severely malnourished child to a medical officer of the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM), an active regional peacekeeping mission operated by the African Union with the approval of the United Nations. Somalia is affected by a severe drought that has ravaged large swaths of the Horn of Africa, leaving an estimated 11 million people in need of humanitarian assistance. Photo credit: UN Photo/Stuart Price

The anti-poverty campaign group ONE has released a new short film, “The F Word: Famine is the Real Obscenity,” about the hunger emergency in the Horn of Africa. In my post on August 1, “The F-Word is Famine,” I emphasize what might seem obvious, but is not always acted on: preventing such disasters is better and cheaper than waiting until tens of thousands of young children have died. This is true even though prevention efforts take time, and Bread for the World and many other groups have been making the point that development programs need to produce -- and measure -- results.

The harsh reality is that disasters are bound to happen, especially as climate change continues to put additional pressure on natural resources. We must recognize that reducing the risk they pose to human life is not optional.

Families in poor countries, as in rich ones, need social safety nets against hunger and poverty and a viable “plan B” if their primary means of earning a living fails them. Instability and famine in Somalia continue to disrupt the mobility of pastoralists and their livestock -- which is key to food security in the region. The result is a mass exodus of refugees into neighboring countries, particularly Kenya and Ethiopia. These countries, already themselves affected by the region’s severe drought, must deal with additional strain on their economies’ limited resources.

Kenya’s Ambassador to the United States, Ambassador Elkanah Odembo, will speak at the launch of the 2012 Hunger Report, Rebalancing Act: Updating U.S. Food and Farm Policies, this coming Monday, November 21. The report emphasizes that short-term relief must be linked to building long-term sustainability. This means ensuring that development assistance and food aid programs work together effectively. For example, U.S. food aid programs should dovetail with the Feed the Future model -- which aims to address the root causes of hunger while also establishing long-term solutions through country-owned investment processes.

We cannot achieve food security without investing in agriculture. The report highlights that— in the Horn of Africa as in the rest of the world -- we must invest in an agricultural transformation that builds the resilience of rural livelihoods and minimizes the damage done by future crises. This means support for climate-smart crop production, livestock rearing, fish farming, and forest maintenance practices that enable all people to have year-round access to the nutrition they need, with a special focus on the 1,000 Days between pregnancy and a child’s second birthday. The right nutrition during this 1,000-day window can profoundly improve children’s ability to grow, learn, and work their way out of poverty.

This is not all new, but agricultural development efforts are just beginning to recover from decades of neglect by both national governments and the global community. Keeping the new commitments to agricultural development is what will sustain the momentum that already exists and prevent future famines. It is because of the importance of agriculture on the African continent that the African Union’s New Partnership for Africa’s Development established the Comprehensive African Agriculture Development Program (CAADP) back in July 2003. Under CAADP, member states are moving towards the attainment of Millennium Development Goal One, to cut hunger and poverty by half by 2015.

 +The 2012 Hunger Report will be released Monday, November 21, at www.hungerreport.org.

Faustine Wabwire is a foreign assistance policy analyst with Bread for the World Institute.