Closing the Gap on Agricultural Funding for Global Food Security
7-8 June 2022,Washington, DC - In an acknowledgement of the leadership role that the United States plays in addressing the global food security crisis and its importance as a member country of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), Deputy Director-General Beth Bechdol returned to Washington, DC from June 7 to June 8, her third visit in just over three months. Accompanying Bechdol was Rein Paulsen, Director of FAO Emergencies and Resilience, underscoring the urgency of FAO’s call to invest in agriculture to support rural livelihoods and save lives.
DDG Bechdol and Paulsen held meetings with senior officials from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Bureau of Humanitarian Assistance (BHA), the Department of State and Members of Congress. At BHA, Bechdol and Paulsen met with Assistant to the Administrator Sarah Charles. Separately, Paulsen met with Jeff Bryan, Director Office of Africa, Rachel Grant, Director Office of the Middle East and North Africa, and James Fleming, Director of Asia and Latin America to focus on region-specific issues.
As acute food insecurity escalates, multiple food crises loom around the world. The number of people experiencing acute food insecurity had already increased to nearly 193 million in 2021, up 40 million from 2020. According to the most recent joint FAO-WFP report of ‘Hunger Hotspots – early warnings on acute food insecurity’, the already dire situation is projected to worsen. The June 2022 report, shows that Ethiopia, Nigeria, South Sudan and Yemen are expected to remain at ‘highest alert’ as hotspots with catastrophic hunger conditions forecast. Afghanistan and Somalia are new entries to this category since the last hotspots report released January 2022.
At the Department of State, Deputy DG Bechdol and Rein Paulsen held a briefing on the Ukraine crisis. FAO Representative Pierre Vauthier and other FAO personnel currently on the ground in Ukraine joined the meeting virtually. In Ukraine, FAO estimates that at least 20 percent of Ukraine’s winter crops – wheat, most notably – may not be harvested or planted. There is also growing concern about harvesting and storing the upcoming October corn crop. This will further reduce the global food supply, with serious implications for Europe, Central Asia and beyond. As food access, production and overall food availability deteriorate, efforts to bolster agricultural production and the functioning of food supply chains will be critical to averting a food crisis in 2022 and into 2023. FAO’s Ukraine Rapid Response Plan wouldsupport 1 million people to protect and maintain the agriculture sector and requires US$115 million.
The known drivers of food insecurity - conflict, climate shocks, the fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic, and public debt burdens - have been exacerbated by the effects of the war in Ukraine which has pushed world food and fuel prices to record levels. These shocks and stresses hit in contexts already characterized by rural marginalization and fragile agrifood systems – at least two-thirds of those experiencing acute hunger are in rural areas.
Funding to the humanitarian food sector grew from US$6.2 billion to nearly US$8 billion between 2016 and 2019, yet we are still falling far short of needs.Additionally, of the humanitarian funding directed to food security, only 8 percent of the total was allocated to agriculture and rural livelihoods.
In 2021, FAO reached more than 30 million people worldwide with emergency agricultural assistance and resilience-building programmes. In Afghanistan, for example, FAO supplied 1.3 million people with wheat cultivation packages that cost just under US$160 each and meet the staple cereal requirements for a family of seven for an entire year. In Ethiopia, despite access challenges, the seeds and planting materials provided by FAO and Agriculture Cluster partners allowed local farmers to produce 900,000 tonnes of food – five-times more than the humanitarian and commercial food supplies that entered the region. By 2023, FAO is aiming to reach at least 60 million people annually with humanitarian and resilience programmes.
The goal of FAO is to ramp up the scale and reach of anticipatory action, to protect communities’ lives, food security and livelihoods before they need life-saving assistance in the critical window between an early warning and a shock. Evidence shows that for every US$1 invested in anticipatory action to safeguard lives and livelihoods, up to US$7 can be saved by avoiding losses for disaster-affected communities.
Shifting to a forward-looking approach to the transformation of agrifood systems FAO Director-General QU Dongyu has made a public commitment to have 20 percent of FAO’s humanitarian and resilience funding allocated to anticipatory actions.