The FINANCIAL — U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Administrator Rajiv Shah announced that President Obama’s Feed the Future initiative has reached nearly 7 million smallholder farmers and helped to save 12.5 million children from the threat of hunger, poverty, and malnutrition in just the last year alone.
The FINANCIAL — U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Administrator Rajiv Shah announced that President Obama’s Feed the Future initiative has reached nearly 7 million smallholder farmers and helped to save 12.5 million children from the threat of hunger, poverty, and malnutrition in just the last year alone. Since it was formed four years ago, Feed the Future and complementary efforts have attracted billions of dollars in investments focused in agriculture, introduced affordable new technologies aimed at increasing agricultural production and managing the risks of a changing climate, and introduced nutrient-packed foods to millions of mothers and children around the world, according to USAID.
“Feed the Future has hit its stride, delivering results that are changing the face of poverty and hunger for some of the world’s poorest families,” said Administrator Shah. “Working alongside thousands of partners from the private sector, civil society, and local leaders, we are pioneering a new model of development—one grounded in country leadership, policy reforms, cutting-edge measurement and evidence, and a relentless focus on delivering real results,” Shah added.
Currently, Feed the Future works in 19 focus countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America and the Caribbean. Overall in 2013, the initiative helped nearly 7 million farmers and food producers use new technologies and management practices—such as high-yielding seed varieties—on about 9.9 million acres of land, an area greater than the states of Massachusetts and New Jersey combined. It has reached more than 12.5 million children with nutrition interventions that can help ensure a stronger and more successful future.
Feed the Future and its complementary efforts, such as Grow Africa and the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition, have helped to leverage billions of dollars in private sector commitments in African agriculture. In African countries alone, Obama Administration anti- hunger and poverty efforts have helped to reach 2.6 million farmers and gathered $7 billion in private sector commitments to African agriculture, according to USAID.
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