Capitol Hill Briefing Highlights Need to Prioritize Agriculture in Response to Global Food Crises

6 October 2022, Washington, DC –The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) Liaison Office for North America convened a panel discussion on Capitol Hill to update Congressional staffers on the state of the global food security crisis. The event, which was hosted in partnership with the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the Alliance to End Hunger, centered on the need to incorporate agriculture into food crisis management and food insecurity prevention.  

Jocelyn Brown Hall, Director for FAO North America, shared expert insights regarding the potential for agricultural innovation in supporting pre-disaster mitigation as well as the importance of investing in research. Brown Hall described how FAO’s programming with U.S.-based partners helped blunt the effects of the desert locust upsurge, saving not only millions of hectares of crop damage but preventing millions of individuals across the Middle East, Asia, and Africa from slipping into food insecurity. Brown Hall highlighted that increased cross-sector partnership and engagement from the private sector is a growing priority for FAO.  

Gabriel Laizer, Congressional and CSO Outreach Partnership Officer at IFAD, underscored Brown Hall’s points and added that scaling technology and building capacity for proper technology utilization is a crucial element of enacting agricultural innovation. Laizer went on to discuss the need to adapt farming methods to meet the specific needs of a population in order to more efficiently support productivity, resilience, and climate adaptation. 

Expanding further on the topic of climate change, Brown Hall emphasized that addressing food loss and waste needs to be viewed as a crucial part of climate mitigation strategies. Brown Hall also underscored the importance of improving and maintaining soil health to withstand increasingly extreme and changing climate events.  

Following the discussion, the panel’s moderator, Eric Mitchell, Director of the Alliance to End Hunger, opened the floor for questions from the audience. Staff in attendance asked Brown Hall and Laizer about ways in which the U.S. Congress could assist with the global food insecurity crisis. Brown Hall highlighted that she hoped staff would share with Members that agriculture needs to be part of international aid discussions in order to prevent continual food crises.  

Among other questions, Brown Hall and Laizer were also probed about their theories on why agricultural issues tend not to be at the top of policy agendas, to which Brown Hall pointed towards the difficulty for regulatory systems to keep up with technological advances in agriculture. Laizer explained to staffers his perception that reframing global food security as a national security concern would assist in prioritizing global agricultural aid efforts for lawmakers.  

Both Brown Hall and Laizer closed the session in agreement that more proactive resource allocation and focus on the food and agriculture system would make immense strides for immediate and long-term global food security.