FAO and the United States, an enduring partnership

Washington, DC – Last week, Deputy Director-General Beth Bechdol and Rein Paulsen, Director of the Office of Emergencies and Resilience of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), visited Washington, DC for high-level meetings with Members of Congress, leaders from USAID's Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance and the Bureau for Resilience, Environment, and Food Security, as well as the White House National Security Council. The discussions focused on ways in which FAO and the United States can jointly support more cost-effective and impactful responses to the growing number of protracted food security crises worldwide. In particular, DDG Bechdol and Director Paulsen emphasized the urgent need to include agricultural support as a central part of humanitarian responses to the ongoing crises in many countries.

A longstanding, engaged partnership

The partnership between the U.S. government and FAO is critical at this juncture. Protracted high levels of acute food insecurity and record humanitarian needs are being met with pressure on funding levels, which are unsustainable at the historic highs of recent years. Addressing the root causes of hunger to feed more people more efficiently is a shared objective.

From the National Security Council, Paula Tufro, Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Development, Global Health, and Humanitarian Response and Farrah Barrios, the Director for Global Food Security and Development Planning, were eager to discuss the role of agricultural aid in humanitarian responses. In meeting with these advisors to the President, DDG Bechdol highlighted the opportunity represented by prioritizing agricultural support in the early stages of crafting responses to humanitarian needs, specifying that of the groups suffering "crisis", "emergency", and "catastrophe" levels of hunger, two-thirds are farmers or live in rural areas. Paulsen reinforced the point that agricultural interventions in humanitarian crises are far less costly than direct food assistance. At present, of the global food security humanitarian assistance, only four percent has gone to emergency agricultural assistance. Not only is the need growing for humanitarian food security assistance, but the types of intervention must change to address these global food challenges.

In Afghanistan, for example, where 80 percent of households rely on the agriculture sector for survival, 2023 marked a turning point. Due to increased spending on agriculture rehabilitation levels of food insecurity dropped by 7%. This directional change can be attributed to actions taken in 2021 and 2022, when there was a doubling in the humanitarian response plan funding for the agricultural livelihoods sector. With this level of support, together with at-scale food assistance and cash transfers, the number of rural Afghans suffering from high levels of acute food insecurity fell, decreasing from 47 percent of the measured population in March to May 2022 to 40 percent in April 2023, especially at the "crisis" level. That represents over 2.4 million people who were in improved situations in the pre-harvest period.

At USAID, Dina Esposito, Assistant to the Administrator for the Bureau for Resilience, Environment and Food Security (REFS) and the Agency's Global Food Crisis Coordinator, Mia Beers, Deputy Assistant Administrator for REFS and USAID Resilience Coordinator, and USAID Chief Climate Officer Gillian Caldwell met with Bechdol and Paulsen to discuss strategic investments to assist populations who are facing food insecurity due to climate crises and conflict, in addition to the importance of achieving gender equality in agrifood systems in order to dramatically decrease levels of hunger and malnutrition.

In the U.S. Senate, DDG Bechdol and Director Paulsen met with Senators Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Member of the Senate Committees on Foreign Relations and Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry; John Boozman (R-Ark.), Ranking Member of the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee; and Jerry Moran (R-Kan.), Member of the Appropriations Committee and Co-Chair of the Senate Hunger Caucus. These productive discussions focused on the comparative advantage of investing in agriculture, especially in the emergency context. In the U.S. House of Representatives, they met with Representatives Chellie Pingree (D-Maine) who sits on both the House Appropriations and Agriculture Committees and Jim McGovern (D-Mass.), a member of the Agriculture Committee. The Representatives were interested to hear updates on global food insecurity hotspots and agricultural interventions.

According to Deputy Director-General Beth Bechdol, "In emergency and crisis situations, investing in agriculture is a cost-effective, life-saving solution. Yet, only 4% of the funding for food security in humanitarian response goes to agriculture, even though over two-thirds of the most food-insecure people live in rural areas. We need a greater balance and complementarity with direct food assistance to ensure effective multi-sectoral responses to emergencies. In places like Sudan, Somalia, Ukraine, Afghanistan and the Dry Corridor in Central America, agriculture can make the difference. We appreciate the leadership of the United States, their continuous support to FAO and commitment to building a food secure world."

Rebalancing Food Security Assistance

Funding for agriculture in humanitarian crises peaked in 2023 at just over $2 billion to address dramatic growth in needs after two years of successive global shocks, starting with COVID-19 and exacerbated by the war in Ukraine. The top bilateral resource partner was the U.S. with an estimated $160 million. Right behind the United States was the Kingdom of Norway, at almost $140 million. Independent of levels of overall spending, however, over the past several years humanitarian assistance in food security sectors has remained at four percent of overall humanitarian assistance directed toward food crises. In that period, the number of acutely food insecure people has risen from 108 million in 48 countries to 258 in 58 countries, according to the 2023 Global Report on Food Crises (GRFC). In keeping with the severe shocks of COVID-19, conflict and climate change, from 2021 to 2022 the severity of acute food insecurity increased from 21.3 percent to 22.7 percent.

What the numbers further illustrate is the protracted, persistent nature of food crises that serves as a baseline of sorts. Among the 42 countries identified as major food crises in 2023, the same nineteen countries have been classified as a major food crisis each year since 2016. Much has been learned (and much has changed since 2016), amongst which is the impact of climate change on food security and the fragility of global food supply chains in response to the shocks of conflict. 

Feeding more people by spending less

FAO has demonstrated that emergency agricultural interventions supporting rural livelihoods are five to ten times less expensive than providing direct food assistance. Not only is it more cost-effective in the short term, but in the medium-term agricultural aid is a positive contributor to local economic development. Of the 23 million people who were able to grow their own food and meet their family's cereal needs in 2022 due to FAO programmes, the economic value of their crops reached $2.75 billion. On a micro level, that meant that for every $50 provided, a rural family can produce $300 worth of food, either for their own consumption or for sale in local markets.

The path towards a food secure future for a farmer, their family and community begins with planting the right seed at the right time or keeping a farm animal fed. In 2023, FAO reached close to 38 million rural people in crisis situations with agricultural assistance. For 2024, FAO has the ambition to assist 43 million people to produce their own food, representing a quarter of the people in need and a fourteen percent increase in people assisted versus 2023. To do so, within the 2024 Humanitarian Response Plans, FAO seeks 1.8 billion USD.

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