OFDA Response to the Global Food Crisis
The global food crisis has affected households around the world, but has had a particularly harsh impact on the most vulnerable families in developing nations. For this reason, the US Government, including USAID/OFDA, is responding to the crisis. In order to inform our response plan, we are seeking input from our partners in the field in order to better define the role that humanitarian organizations can play in addressing the impact of rising food costs.
The global cost of food and fuel is a challenge to delivering humanitarian assistance, and it is unlikely that these prices will decrease in the near future. For this reason, OFDA is seeking to adopt new approaches to providing assistance that, where possible, will address the root causes of food insecurity, rather than continually providing inputs to poor households each year at higher and higher costs.
As always, OFDA’s strategy will prioritize interventions based on assessed need and integration with other humanitarian efforts. In addition to this supplemental programming for the food crisis, OFDA will continue with its normal interventions.
East Africa (Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, and Uganda) and the West African Sahel (Mali, Mauritania, Senegal, Burkina Faso, and Niger) have been identified as priority areas for OFDA’s food crisis efforts. OFDA anticipates that these will be the areas hardest hit by increased food and transportation costs.
In addition to OFDA’s traditional one-year time frame for programming, OFDA’s strategy will include longer-term interventions that aim to achieve the sustainable results needed to pull people out of chronic food insecurity. Where appropriate, this strategy will include a combination of short-term and long-term interventions, depending on assessed need. Where appropriate, OFDA intends for multi-year food crisis initiatives to include a regional dimension or country-specific approach, and demonstrate an annual progression based upon appropriate benchmarks.
Priority sectors for the food crisis response are based on the humanitarian community’s definition of food security, which includes availability, access, and utilization. OFDA’s food crisis strategies will prioritize strengthening access to food by increasing purchasing power and strengthening livelihoods of individuals, including market access and surveillance or through micro-finance activities. In addition, OFDA will address food utilization through nutritional and health interventions. OFDA considers food availability as well-suited for development organizations, since availability deals primarily with food production, and it would be unwise to duplicate efforts. However, OFDA’s strategy may address sustainable increases in food production by vulnerable subsistence farmers or pastoralists who are often not directly targeted by development activities focused on large-scale agricultural initiatives.
Based on these parameters, OFDA encourages feedback from NGO partners related to the kinds of programs that they see as feasible and innovative in order to inform OFDA’s strategy development. We are looking for a field approach to the food crisis, so we ask our partners to urge their field staff to contact OFDA’s regional advisors to discuss issues and ideas. We are looking for creative and inventive ways to improve food security among populations that are most vulnerable to market shocks and subsequent rising food prices, and welcome input into strategic plans for both East and West Africa.
For more information on the APS for the Food Price Crisis in the Sahel Region of West Africa, please click here.
Back to Top ^
|
