About

About

Feed the Future is the United States Government's global hunger and food security initiative. It supports country-driven approaches to address the root causes of hunger and poverty and forge long-term solutions to chronic food insecurity and undernutrition. Drawing upon resources and expertise of agencies across the U.S. Government, this Presidential Initiative is helping countries transform their own agriculture sectors to sustainably grow enough food to feed their people.

Feed the Future is the United States' contribution to a collaborative global effort that supports country-owned processes and plans for improving food security and promoting transparency. Through Feed the Future, the U.S. Government is renewing its commitment to agriculture and economic growth and focusing on harnessing the power of the private sector and research to transform agricultural development.

Feed the Future represents a $3.5 billion pledge to work with partner countries, development partners, and other stakeholders to tackle global food security challenges. Our collective efforts advance global stability and prosperity by improving the most basic of human conditions: the need that families and individuals have for a reliable source of quality food and sufficient resources to purchase it. These efforts, in turn, ultimately advance international security and benefit the American people.

Read more about Feed the Future in our overview

An Urgent Need

Enormous progress has been made in reducing global poverty, but there is much more to do. Almost one billion people — more than one seventh of the world — suffer from chronic hunger, while more than 3.5 million children die each year from undernutrition. Hunger robs the poor of healthy and productive lives and stunts the mental and physical development of the next generation.

The world's population is projected to increase to more than nine billion by 2050, requiring up to a 70 percent increase in agricultural production. Meeting this need and reducing chronic hunger are essential to the sustainable development of individuals, communities, and nations. Investments in economic growth, poverty reduction, and improved health in developing countries are also critical to U.S. national prosperity, stability, and security.

U.S. Government Response

When the global food crisis struck in 2007-2008, the U.S. government took swift action in developing countries hard-hit by food price increases. Investments of more than $1.5 billion in food and development assistance aimed to meet immediate humanitarian needs and stimulate agricultural productivity. These investments served as the precursor to Feed the Future.

At the G8 Summit in L'Aquila, Italy in July 2009, global leaders committed to "act with the scale and urgency needed to achieve sustainable global food security." They recognized that the combined effect of longstanding underinvestment in agriculture and food security, historically high and volatile food prices, and the economic and financial crisis was increasing dramatically the number of poor and hungry and jeopardizing global progress toward meeting the Millennium Development Goals. At L'Aquila, leaders called for increased investment in agriculture and rural development as a proven lever for combating food insecurity and as an engine for broader economic growth, prosperity, and stability.

As part of this global commitment, President Obama announced the U.S. Government's Feed the Future initiative, pledging $3.5 billion for agricultural development and food security over three years. The U.S. pledge helped to leverage and align more than $18.5 billion from other donors in support of a common approach defined by five foundational principles. These principles, first articulated in L'Aquila, embrace the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness and the Accra Agenda for Action, and were endorsed unanimously as the Rome Principles for Sustainable Global Food Security by 193 countries at the 2009 World Summit on Food Security.

Read more about the Feed the Future approach to reducing hunger and poverty in the Feed the Future Guide.

Rome Principles

As described in the Rome Principles, we commit to work in partnership to:

  • Invest in country-owned plans that support results-based programs and partnerships, so that assistance is tailored to the needs of individual countries through consultative processes and plans that are developed and led by country governments
  • Strengthen strategic coordination to mobilize and align the resources of the diverse partners and stakeholders — including the private sector and civil society – that are needed to achieve our common objectives
  • Ensure a comprehensive approach that accelerates inclusive agricultural-led growth and improves nutrition, while also bridging humanitarian relief and sustainable development efforts
  • Leverage the benefits of multilateral institutions so that priorities and approaches are aligned, investments are coordinated, and financial and technical assistance gaps are filled
  • Deliver on sustained and accountable commitments, phasing-in investments responsibly to ensure returns, using benchmarks and targets to measure progress toward shared goals, and holding ourselves and other stakeholders publicly accountable for achieving results.

Who is Feed the Future?

Country Partners

Country-owned plans are the foundation for countries to accelerate their progress toward the Millennium Development Goals. Our Focus Countries, through a consultative process with stakeholders, create actionable comprehensive national agriculture and food security strategies and investment plans that detail the country's priorities. Learn more about Feed the Future Countries.

Government Agencies

Feed the Future leverages the strengths of agencies across the U.S. Government. Led by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), Feed the Future also capitalizes on the resources and expertise of:

Leaders

As we search for the Feed the Future Coordinator, the U.S. effort is being led by two deputy coordinators: one responsible for diplomacy and the other for development. The Deputy Coordinators are responsible for implementing Feed the Future, including ensuring that all relevant United States Government agencies and departments are engaged in the process. Tjada McKenna is the Deputy Coordinator for Development for Feed the Future. Jonathan Shrier is the Acting Special Representative for Global Food Security and the Acting Deputy Coordinator for Diplomacy for Feed the Future.

Tjada D'Oyen McKenna
Deputy Coordinator for Development for Feed the Future
Tjada D'Oyen McKenna

Tjada D'Oyen McKenna is the Deputy Coordinator for Development for Feed the Future, the U.S. Government's global hunger and food security initiative. In this capacity, McKenna coordinates implementation of Feed the Future across the U.S. government, oversees its execution and reports on results, and leads engagement with the external community to ensure that food security remains high on the development agenda.

Feed the Future works with host government and private sector partners to address the needs of smallholder farmers and agribusinesses, emphasizing the empowerment of women; strengthen the enabling environment for strong agricultural markets; promote research and innovation for agricultural development; and increase U.S. investments in nutrition, while maintaining our support for humanitarian food assistance.

Prior to taking on the role of Deputy Coordinator for Development in October 2011, McKenna served as Deputy Assistant to the Administrator in the U.S. Agency for International Development's (USAID) Bureau for Food Security. In this role, McKenna oversaw critical elements of USAID's implementation of Feed the Future, managed an interagency effort to provide support and analyses to enable market-led growth, developed transformational private sector alliances, and fostered innovation to accelerate agricultural development and curb undernutrition.

Ms. McKenna joined USAID from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, where she served as a Senior Program Officer in the Agricultural Development Program. In this role, she developed grants and strategies to effectively link smallholder farmers in Africa and South Asia to markets. Some of her key accomplishments included working with the World Food Program to develop its Purchase for Progress program, developing the foundation's Agricultural Development Program's strategy for South Asia, creating the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa's (AGRA) Market Access Program, and developing and managing a $47 million coffee grant designed to double the income of a million smallholder farmers over a ten year period.

Ms. McKenna has held additional roles in agricultural development at Monsanto Company and as a consultant with McKinsey & Company where she co-authored the McKinsey Quarterly article, "Food for West Africa." In addition, Ms. McKenna has held strategy and business development roles at American Express and GE.

Ms. McKenna earned a BA from Harvard College in Government and an MBA from the Harvard Business School. She is a past member of the National Board of the Girl Scouts of the USA.

Jonathan Shrier
Acting Special Representative for Global Food Security
Deputy Coordinator for Diplomacy for Feed the Future
Jonathan Shrier

Mr. Shrier is Acting Special Representative for Global Food Security and Deputy Coordinator for Diplomacy for Feed the Future. He leads diplomatic efforts to advance the U.S. Government's global hunger and food security initiative, with a particular focus on major donor and strategic partner countries as well as multilateral institutions such as the G8 and G20. Mr. Shrier came to the State Department's Office of the Global Hunger and Food Security Initiative from the Secretary of State's Policy Planning Staff.

Mr. Shrier has served as the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary and Acting Assistant Secretary for Policy and International Affairs at the U.S. Department of Energy, where he helped to design and establish the Energy and Climate Partnership of the Americas launched by President Obama. While at the National Security Council and National Economic Council, Mr. Shrier coordinated interagency policy at the intersection of energy, climate, and agriculture, including responses to the spike in commodity prices in 2007-2008. A career Foreign Service Officer, Mr. Shrier handled international trade and investment issues for then Under Secretary of State for Economic, Business, and Agricultural Affairs Josette Sheeran, just prior to her appointment as head of the World Food Program.

During his service at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, Mr. Shrier worked with USAID to establish a development assistance program for Tibetan communities in China, with a focus on agriculture-led development. Mr. Shrier has earned degrees from the National Defense University (M.S. in National Security Resource Strategy), University of London (M.B.A. in International Management), London School of Economics (MSc in International Relations), and Dartmouth (A.B. in Government). His languages include Mandarin Chinese, Arabic, French, and Spanish.