By Rich Bowden:

USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah  thinks the global battle against hunger is winnable, but has called out the big guns by asking the World Food Program (WFP) to maximize its ample resources to “break the cycle of hunger.”

Shah told a WFP conference meeting in Rome earlier this month that the United Nations food program was the “most operationally capable hunger-fighting organization in the world,” and that it should look to apply its “…infrastructure, its knowledge and its capabilities to breaking the cycle of hunger by promoting effective food systems, agriculture and nutrition in the places where we all spend our resources and work with a great deal of focus.”

He added this approach had had success in the recent aid efforts to Haiti where the “deep partnership” between the US, Europe, the WFP and the Government of Haiti combined in a logistical process that could act as a model for other countries.

With an estimated one billion people throughout the world suffering from hunger, there is more need than ever for important aid organizations such as USAID to change strategy to help alleviate such a humanitarian disaster. In explaining his organization’s “Feed the Future” program, one of the interesting solutions offered by Shah was a return to a concentration on farming assistance in the US aid budget and a focus on helping women farmers in developing countries.

Speaking to the Washington Post, Shah said almost 20 percent of the US’s aid budget went to farming in the 1970s and early 1980s, a level that has now slipped to around 3 percent.

“…as a result, the actual productivity growth of agriculture in these countries has dropped,” said Shah.

Explaining the new policy of “Feed the Future,” a collaborative venture which will look to improve the agricultural systems of at least 20 countries, Shah appears to use the same logic used by Bangladesh’s legendary founder of the microfinance-based Grameen Bank — that money invested in the women in the community is far more likely to be used for the health and welfare benefit of their families than if spent on men.

“Women play a tremendous role in both producing food and making sure it gets to children and vulnerable populations,” Shah told the Post.

“…We know that when a dollar of income goes to a woman, it’s far more likely to generate improvements in the health and welfare of families than if the dollar goes to a man.”

Shah’s outlook is guided by the direction of the US administration, which has identified hunger as a key issue and looked to take a more hands-on role. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton described chronic hunger as a priority for the Obama team in a 2009 opinion piece for The Times of India but admitted that previous food development approaches had failed.

“The truth is, we have spent too many years and too much money on development projects that have not yielded lasting results. But we have learned from these efforts,” she said.

Saying those on the ground were in a better position to decide strategies,  Clinton added: “…we know that development works best when it is seen not as aid but as investment.”

Will Shah’s vision of a victory over global hunger prove true? Or is this yet another pipedream? What types of food security and development strategies do you think would work best for developing countries?

Tags: hunger aid, mdg, USAID, Wfp, World Food Programme