About the Author: Jonathan Shrier serves as Acting Special Representative for Global Food Security.

World Food Day is a reminder and call to action for the international community to strengthen efforts to end world hunger and malnutrition.

Today, nearly one billion people suffer from chronic hunger, which means that they do not get enough food to satisfy their body’s basic nutritional needs.

Feed the Future is the U.S. government’s global hunger and food security initiative and works with partner countries to support their own agriculture development objectives to increase agricultural productivity and improve nutrition, which can help reduce poverty and hunger. Seventy-five percent of the world’s poor live in rural areas in developing countries, where most people’s livelihoods rely directly on agriculture, and women in the developing world make up to forty-three percent of the agriculture…more »

By: Elisabeth Kvitashvili U.S. Alternate Permanent Representative to the United Nations Agencies in Rome, Italy, and Humanitarian Affairs Counselor for the U.S. Agency for International Development

Hunger is a chronic problem in both Chad and Niger, two of the world’s poorest countries. With large nomadic populations whose livelihood depends on their herds of camels and cattle, both countries have suffered severely from droughts. Chronic malnutrition threatens tens of thousands of children who lack access to clean water, preventative health care. and sufficient quantities of nutrient rich foods. The droughts have devastated livelihoods of both farmers and pastoralists in the Sahel, an arid and semi-arid region, sweeping through both countries that is chronically food insecure. On a recent field visit to the two countries where I was accompanied by Cristina Amaral, Africa Director of the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAO) Emergency Response Unit and Africa-based representatives of USAID’s Office of Food for Peace, I witnessed the efforts of FAO and the World Food Program (WFP), both of whom receive valuable financial support from USAID, in tackling the impacts of the drought on the most vulnerable populations. In addition to supporting the recovery of drought-affected households, both organizations are now using their resources in a more preventative fashion — in order to get at the root causes of the high levels of malnutrition in a more integrated fashion…