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“We’ve lost all the progress that we’ve made in the past fifteen years” on lowering global hunger levels, World Food Programme (WFP) Executive Director Cindy McCain warned on Thursday.
McCain spoke at an Atlantic Council event hosted on the sidelines of the Group of Twenty (G20) meeting of finance ministers and central bank governors in Rio de Janeiro. She pointed out that one in eleven people globally faced hunger last year.
On Wednesday, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva announced that Brazil—which holds the G20 presidency—will later this year launch the Global Alliance Against Hunger and Poverty to bring countries together in sharing knowledge and resources.
“We have the capability as a planet to feed everybody on the planet—we grow enough food,” McCain said, “but we don’t” due to funding and other coordination issues.
With those challenges, the Global Alliance is “a great opportunity for all of us . . . to get together, exchange ideas, brainstorm” and to “develop science and technology” tools to help, McCain said.
Below are more highlights from the conversation, moderated by Valentina Sader, deputy director at the Atlantic Council’s Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center.
Food security
- Food security is a “national security issue,” and “it should be labeled as one,” McCain argued, pointing out how access to food has shaped broader security crises in Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen.
- Yet, food security “gets kicked down” the list of priorities every time “something else happens in the world,” McCain warned.
- She said that the WFP and United Nations agencies, because they provide critical aid, are “on the front lines” of crises and the “first in and last out.”
- The WFP previously got most of its grain from Ukraine. But it has had to diversify its sources in the wake of the agricultural disruptions caused by Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. WFP is also working with other countries to help them mitigate the effects of the conflict on global food supplies.
- In the global hunger crisis, “women and children are taking the brunt,” McCain said. “You’ve never seen more of an example of it than in Gaza.”
- She added that equity and gender inclusion are important to factor into food security efforts because “a woman will feed her family,” and while doing so, “she will make sure everybody else eats” before she does.
- Moreover, with women making up around half of smallholder farmers, McCain argued that it is important to make sure that these women have the tools, expertise, seeds, and access to water that they need to farm effectively. “If a woman farms and can feed her family, she will wind up feeding the community,” McCain said.
Farm to negotiating table
- McCain noted that G20 countries include not only the world’s leading economies but also some of the planet’s largest agricultural producers. That, she said, empowers these countries to work together to address the full spectrum of food-security challenges, from poverty to improvements in agriculture.
- She added that the G20 is an optimal forum for raising the urgency around hunger because of how it brings together both governments and civil society organizations from countries that represent 85 percent of the world’s gross domestic product and over 60 percent of its population. “So the voice is huge,” she said, adding that “governments simply cannot do it all. We need everybody in on this.”
- She urged global stakeholders to “continue to elevate the conversation” about the urgency of food security—and advised countries “most affected” by food insecurity to keep conveying the plight they face. “The problem is [that] around the world, people don’t understand what’s going on” or believe that hunger and malnutrition are only problems in Africa rather than globally, she said. “It’s all about. . . making sure that people understand.”
Katherine Walla is the associate director of editorial at the Atlantic Council.
Watch the full event
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Image: Cindy McCain speaks at an Atlantic Council event on the sidelines of the G20 finance ministers and central bank governors meeting on July 25, 2024.