The Global Food Security Strategy for 2017-2021 aims to strengthen and increase its attention on the empowerment of women and youth, the marginalized communities, small and medium enterprises, small-scale producers, and the extreme poor. The new strategy has elevated malnutrition into the global statement. It has incoroporated the elevation of resilience as a third objective and its importance in agriculture and nutrition.
Again and again, the world is on notice of the extreme urgency of strengthening the role of youth and women, if we are to sustain the reduction of global hunger. Women must be given a greater role in the community and society at large. The Intermediate Results (IR) set out in the most recent strategy, unveiled by the Global Food Security at the end of September 2016, shows what’s to be expected, going forward. The Results Framework and the building blocks to achieve the goal outcomes are detailed in the three Objectives.
The first Objective is the Inclusive and Sustainable Agricultural-led Economic Growth. Feeding the extreme poor in the rural areas is the key to sustaining poverty reduction. At the Mind the Gap- Exploring Disparities between Smallholder Farmer Practice and Potential, held by The Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Assets and Market Access (also known as BASIS), the role of farmers’ social media in improving agriculture was much emphasised.
The second Objective is the Strengthened Resilience Among People and Systems. Climate changes, diseases and much more, stress and shock the most vulnerable sector of population. Jobs, livelihood, food, nutrition are all affected by the above variables. “What Is Resilience? For USAID, resilience is the ability of people, households, communities, countries, and systems to mitigate, adapt to, and recover from shocks and stresses in a manner that reduces chronic vulnerability and facilitates inclusive growth.”
The third Objective is A Well-Nourished Population, Especially Women and Children. “To improve the nutritional status of the populations in the areas where we work, we will concentrate efforts on improving women’s and children’s nutrition, particularly during the critical 1,000-day window from pregnancy to a child’s second birthday, with a focus on reducing child stunting. ” Clearly, nutrition is the foundation to many of the other initiatives.
Going forward Feed the Future also intends to intermediate results on youth and youth progress. If the rural areas provided job opportunities or at least hope of one for the youth that would surely contribute to povery reduciton. Youth are the future of any nation. Thus, a happy and well-fed youth is creative and has passion to make a difference.
Intermediate result in the inclusion of finance and financial investment is also elevated. The role of public, private sector as well as the policies set forth on the governance of agriculture, nutrition, and the role of gender greatly impacts sustaiblity and reduction of global hunger.
Effective governance, policies, and institutions can catalyze and accelerate the food and agricultural systems transformation required to reach our goal of sustainably reducing global hunger, malnutrition, and poverty.