U.S. Changes Approach On Fighting Global Hunger

U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said the U.S. will shift its emphasis in the fight against global hunger from giving emergency aid to helping countries produce more of their own food, Reuters reports. Under the new approach, the U.S. will focus on providing expertise and training to boost agricultural productivity abroad,
Vilsack said in a speech to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs.

“It is a more comprehensive, holistic view of food security that focuses on the notion that we want to make food more available, we want to make it accessible and we want to make sure that it is properly used,” Vilsack said. “If we can help countries become more productive themselves then they will be in a better position to feed their own people.”

Vilsack did not provide details about how the new approach would be funded. President Obama has said his administration will ask Congress to double funding for agricultural development aid to $1 billion by 2010. The U.S. is the world’s largest donor of emergency food aid, mainly crops grown by American farmers, but spends 20 times as much on food aid to Africa as it spends on programs that could boost African food production, according to research by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs.