A
s a result of rising food prices, an additional one hundred million people around the world have fallen into
poverty and are at risk of hunger. This tremendous
setback serves as a stark reminder that despite substantial
progress in recent years, developing countries, particularly
the poorest, face significant challenges to reducing hunger
and poverty.
The global hunger crisis also shows more plainly than
ever that the world is deeply and irreversibly interconnected.
Rich and poor countries, U.N. food agencies and international financial institutions, such as the World Bank, all must do
what they can to respond. But so far, the global response has
not been equal to the scale of the crisis.
Poor people are now making more difficult choices than
ever: reducing the amount of food they consume; choosing
less expensive, less nutritious foods; skipping meals; reducing spending on other important items such as health services or sending their children to school. The poorest of the
poor are coping by shifting to one meal a day and by eating
famine foods: roots, grass, mud cakes.
The United States and other rich countries can help. In
fact, their leadership now is crucial. The United States has always been generous in its response to emergencies overseas,
spearheading the very successful child survival interventions
of the 1980s and continuing to provide lifesaving humanitar-
ian assistance, which is as important now as ever. But equally
important in responding to the global food crisis, and preventing it from happening again, is assistance for long-term
development goals, especially increasing agricultural productivity in poor countries.
Foreign Aid and Development
The global hunger crisis might have been averted by
greater investment over the years in improving agricultural productivity in developing countries. Unfortunately, too
much of the non-emergency aid the United States gives is
driven not by what developing countries need, but by shortterm U.S. political and economic objectives. Funding for
these purposes is important from the U.S. perspective, but it
can work against what is good for poor people in developing
countries and undermine the effectiveness of U.S. development programs. To make development gains, like reducing
infant mortality or increasing girls’ educational achievement,
a top priority must be reducing poverty and promoting longterm development.
Effective U.S. development assistance would target resources toward enabling poor people around the world to
provide for their families free from the suffering caused by
debilitating malnutrition, illiteracy, and epidemics of disease.
Other Briefing Papers by Bread for the World Institute
2 Briefing Paper, July 2008
Available at www.bread.org