Can't close gap minus food security
Recently, I participated in a meeting to invigorate and encourage brainstorm around the issue of food security. The meeting was co-hosted by Meridian Institute, the German Marshall Fund of the United States, The World Bank and the International Fund for Agricultural Development. The objectives for the gathering were to:
1. Share information about key institutional food security priorities and activities and identify an efficient mechanism(s) for sustained, on-going information sharing.
2. Identify how the respective strengths of the participating institutions can be leveraged to take innovative concepts to scale in support of food security.
3. Explore how participating institutions could support the development of food security indicators for monitoring and evaluation purposes.
4. Explore how participating institutions could support efforts that better enable tracking of pledges vis-à-vis actual food security investments.
I was so pleased that the Global Harvest Initiative was included in this meeting. I was impressed by the very honest and sincere dialogue with government officials and private foundations about how all could coordinate and work better together to address the daunting tasks that lie ahead. I look forward to the continued dialogue to address the challenges in meeting the needs of our expanding population over the next several decades.
In meeting the challenge of closing a global productivity gap by 2050, a critical element to achieving that goal is food security. When it comes to food security, we have two choices: We can continue with the "business as usual" approach, largely ignoring the causes of widespread food insecurity and the growing disparity among developed and developing nations; or, we can embrace and invest in new opportunities, new technologies and new policies to support food security.
The Global Harvest Initiative chooses the latter course, and partners with groups and organizations moving in the same direction.