Sec. 2. Findings
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Congress makes the following findings: Food and nutrition security is a foundation of development. Persistent hunger and malnutrition stunt the mental and physical development of the next generation and hinder education, health, economics and security. More than 870,000,000 people worldwide suffer from chronic food insecurity. Food insecurity and malnutrition in developing countries forces tens of millions of people into poverty, contributes to political and social instability, erodes economic growth, and undermines United States foreign assistance investments in areas including basic education, global health, environmental protection, and democratic institutions.
According to the March 2013 Worldwide Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community, food insecurity is a worldwide threat: Growing food insecurity in weakly governed countries could lead to political violence and provide opportunities for existing insurgent groups to capitalize on poor conditions, exploit international food aid, and discredit governments for their inability to address basic needs . In the next 30 years, as the world’s population increases to nine billion people, agricultural productivity will need to double to keep pace with demand.
Countries that are major agricultural exporters have greatly enhanced productivity over the past two decades, but many developing countries with good potential to improve their agricultural economies have not. Improving agricultural productivity in those countries in a sustainable and equitable manner will increase world food supplies and accelerate economic growth and incomes, while preserving natural habitat and resources. Malnutrition remains one of the world’s most pressing and costly problems—close to 200,000,000 children are chronically malnourished.
Undernutrition is responsible for 45 percent of child deaths, and eleven percent of the total global disease burden is attributable to maternal and child undernutrition. According to the Lancet more than 1 in 4 of the world’s children is stunted. Stunting leads to serious, often irreversible physical and cognitive damage. Reducing maternal and child malnutrition, especially during the 1,000 days between pregnancy and age 2, is critical to increasing child survival, improving cognitive and physical development, and strengthening the immune system to bolster resistance to disease.
Many pregnant women living in developing countries cannot access nutrition services until the fifth or sixth month of their pregnancies, leading to children born small for their gestational age. For this reason, improving the nutritional status of women and adolescent girls before and during pregnancy is vitally important. The greatest potential for achieving increased food and nutrition security for people in rural areas and augmenting world food production at relatively low cost lies in increasing the agricultural capacity, resilience, sustainability and productivity of smallholder farmers.
Farmers should be actively engaged at all stages of education, participatory research and extension processes. The most promising and scalable gains in smallholder agriculture production will come from the delivery of seed, fertilizer, and basic farmer extension education on farming techniques, such as row planting of crops. According to the World Bank, growth in the agricultural sector has been twice as effective in reducing poverty as growth in other sectors. In sub-Saharan Africa agriculture contributes about 35 percent of the total gross national product (GNP).
Approximately 75 percent of the workforce in sub-Saharan Africa is engaged in the agricultural sector and three out of five of those suffering from hunger are rural, small-scale agriculturists. Thus, nutrition, agriculture and rural development strategies must include engagement of and provision of assistance to smallholder producers. Interventions to enhance agricultural productivity, conserve natural resources, and provide linkages to services, inputs, financing and markets for smallholder agricultural producers is an effective means of increasing and diversifying food supplies, improving incomes and preserving natural habitat.
Agriculture development to increase the yield, biodiversity and resilience of smallholder farmers is an efficient engine of sustainable economic growth, and benefits these farmers’ education, income, and health. Agriculture is essential for economic growth, comprising large portions of the total labor force in many developing countries. The agricultural sector is as high as 70 to 80 percent in sub-Saharan Africa, where nearly one-half of the world’s food insecure live. In this region agriculture also contributes about 35 percent of the total gross national product (GNP).
Post-harvest losses can waste 40 percent of agriculture products and negatively impact nutritional content of crops. A renewed focus on reducing post-harvest losses is needed to meet the goal of increasing income generation from agricultural production. Women produce as much as 80 percent of food in sub-Saharan Africa, but have access to less than 10 percent of land, credit, and extension services. Women comprise 43 percent of the agricultural labor workforce in developing countries.
They make up a large proportion of smallholder farmers, including 80 percent in East Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, and face unique challenges and heightened vulnerability to food and nutrition insecurity. Increasing women’s leadership, incomes, and access to food benefits the entire household as women are more likely to share these resources with family members. The International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and others have documented growing numbers of acquisitions and lease agreements of millions of acres of land in Africa, Latin America, and Central and Southeast Asia by private investors and foreign governments.
These land acquisitions may threaten global food and nutrition security and agricultural development, increase political unrest, and deepen local poverty in developing nations unless adequate legal and procedural mechanisms are in place and functioning to protect the rights and welfare of people who depend on agriculture for their livelihood. The accelerating loss and degradation of natural ecosystems in developing countries and changing long-term weather patterns undermine and impact efforts to improve sustainable agricultural production.
According to the World Bank, changing weather patterns could reduce yields in some developing countries by as much as 50 percent. This could leave millions more children undernourished. A comprehensive approach to long-term food security and agricultural development should encompass improvements in agricultural education, agricultural productivity, agricultural extension, nutrition, household incomes, rural infrastructure, finance and markets, safety net programs, job creation, research and technology, emergency relief, global health and the environment.