Grab and Keel

Clipped from Dipnote. The Annual World Food Day was on October 16th. Women are the key to  food security:

Photo of the Week: Observing World Food Day | U.S. Department of State Blog.

POSTED BY SARAH GOLDFARB / OCTOBER 19, 2012

Sarah Goldfarb serves as DipNote’s Associate Editor.

Every year on October 16, the international community unites around World Food Dayto increase awareness about global hunger. Today, nearly one billion people suffer from chronic hunger, and more than 3.5 million children die from undernutrition each year. As President Barack Obama said in his message recognizing World Food Day, “The United States has a moral obligation to lead the fight against global hunger, and we have put food security at the forefront of global development efforts. Through initiatives like Feed the Future, we are helping partner countries transform their agriculture sectors by investing in smallholder farmers — particularly women — who are the key to spurring economic growth and sustainably cultivating enough food to feed their people.”

In remarks at a Feed the Future event in New York last month, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said, “As a result of all the work of so many people over the last four years, food security is now at the top of our national and foreign policy agendas, as well as that of so many other nations in the world, because we understand it is a humanitarian and moral imperative, but it also directly relates to global security and stability. I’ve seen in my travels how increased investments in agriculture and nutrition are paying off in rising prosperity, healthier children, better markets, and stronger communities.”

In this week’s “Photo of the Week,” which comes to us from USAID/Kenya, a farmer, who benefits from the support of Feed the Future, shows millet grown on his farm in western Kenya on July 18, 2012. Feed the Future, the U.S. government’s global hunger and food security initiative, supports agricultural cooperatives and producers organizations throughout the world, helping link smallholder farmers to markets.

You can learn more about U.S. efforts to to improve food security and nutrition worldwide by following @FeedtheFuture, @USAID, and @StateDept on Twitter, or visiting the websites of Feed the Future, USAID, and the State Department’s Office of Global Food Security. In the comments section below, let us know how you observed World Food Day.

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