Attachment_J.17_-_GFSStrategy.pdf

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ATTACHMENT J.17

U.S. Government Global Food Security Strategy ii

Table of Contents Executive Summary ................................................................................................................................... iii

Acronyms ..................................................................................................................................................... v

Glossary of Key Terms ............................................................................................................................. vii

1. The Global Context

2. Goal and Objectives of the Strategy: The Results Framework

Objective 1: Inclusive and Sustainable Agricultural-Led Economic Growth

Objective 2: Strengthened Resilience Among People and Systems

Objective 3: A Well-Nourished Population, Especially Women and Children

Cross-Cutting Intermediate Results

Complementary Results

3. Targeting Approach

4. U.S. Approach

Whole-of-Government Coordination

Country and Local Ownership

Sustainability

Partnerships

Science, Technology, and Innovation

5. Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning

6. References

Annex 1. Agency-specific Implementation Plans

U.S. Agency for International Development

U.S. Department of Agriculture

U.S. Department of Commerce

U.S. Department of State

U.S. Department of the Treasury

The Millennium Challenge Corporation

Overseas Private Investment Corporation

Peace Corps

Office of the United States Trade Representative

U.S. African Development Foundation

U.S. Geological Survey

Annex 2. Index of Global Food Security Act Strategy Requirements

Annex 3. Leveraging Other U.S. Government Strategies and Investments

U.S. Government Global Food Security Strategy iii

Executive Summary This Global Food Security Strategy presents an integrated whole-of-government strategy and agency-specific implementation plans as required by the Global Food Security Act of 2016 (GFSA).1 This strategy reflects the unique skills, resources, and lessons learned from U.S. federal departments and agencies that contribute to global food security, as well as input from partners throughout the private sector, academic institutions, and civil society. It charts a course for the U.S. Government to contribute to the achievement of global food security and the range of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), together with partners across the globe.

Right now, the world is closer than ever before to ending global hunger, undernutrition, and extreme poverty, but significant challenges and opportunities remain, including urbanization, gender inequality, instability and conflict, the effects of a changing climate, and environmental degradation. Despite our collective progress in global food security and nutrition over recent years, a projected 702 million people still live in extreme poverty,2 nearly 800 million people around the world are chronically undernourished,3 and 159 million children under five are stunted.4 Food security is not just an economic and humanitarian issue; it is also a matter of security, as growing concentrations of poverty and hunger leave countries and communities vulnerable to increased instability, conflict, and violence.

The U.S. Government, in partnership with other governments, civil society, multilateral development institutions, research institutions, universities, and the private sector, will build on experience to date to address these challenges, take advantage of opportunities, and advance food security and improved nutrition by focusing efforts around three interrelated and interdependent objectives:

● Inclusive and sustainable agricultural-led economic growth, as growth in the agriculture sector has been shown in some areas to be more effective than growth in other sectors at helping men and women lift themselves out of extreme poverty and hunger.5 It does this by increasing availability of food, generating income from production, creating employment and entrepreneurship opportunities throughout value chains, and spurring growth in rural and urban economies.

● Strengthened resilience among people and systems, as increasingly frequent and intense shocks and stresses threaten the ability of men, women, and families to sustainably emerge from poverty.

● A well-nourished population, especially among women and children, as undernutrition, particularly during the 1,000 days from pregnancy to a child’s second birthday, leads to lower levels of educational attainment, productivity, lifetime earnings, and economic growth rates.

Through this approach, we will strengthen the capacity of all participants throughout the food and agriculture system, paying special attention to women, the extreme poor, small-scale producers, youth, marginalized communities, and small and medium enterprises.

Several key elements of our approach strengthen our ability to achieve these objectives. The first is targeting our investments in countries and geographic areas where we have the greatest potential to sustainably improve food security and nutrition and strategically focusing our resources on those

U.S. Government Global Food Security Strategy iv approaches and interventions that evidence shows will reduce extreme poverty, hunger, and malnutrition at scale. The second is implementing a comprehensive, multi-faceted whole-of-government approach rooted in lessons learned and evidence to date that reflects emerging trends. The third is country leadership, recognizing that developing countries, above all others, must own and be empowered to lead and guide these efforts to drive progress. The fourth is partnerships with a wide range of development actors and groups, which will improve the reach, effectiveness, efficiency, and sustainability of our efforts. This includes using foreign aid strategically to catalyze domestic resource mobilization and private sector-driven trade and economic development. The fifth is harnessing the power of science, technology, and innovation to dramatically improve food and agriculture system practices as well as increase local capacity to address these issues. Finally, we will focus on the sustainability of our programs as we work to create the conditions where our assistance is no longer needed, including reducing susceptibility to recurrent food crises and large international expenditures on humanitarian assistance and ensuring a sustainable food and agriculture system with adequate and appropriate finance available to key actors.

To measure progress and remain accountable to the public, U.S. Government partners commit to continuing and strengthening our rigorous monitoring, evaluation, and learning (MEL) approach, which includes:

A common Results Framework

A performance monitoring process and standard performance indicators

An evaluation approach using impact and performance evaluations

A learning agenda that prioritizes key evidence gaps

A focus on strengthening target country data systems

Inspired by the global agenda laid out in the SDGs and the objectives of the GFSA:

Our vision is a world free from hunger, malnutrition, and extreme poverty, where thriving local economies generate increased income for all people; where people consume balanced and nutritious diets, and children grow up healthy and reach their full potential; and where resilient households and communities face fewer and less severe shocks, have less vulnerability to the shocks they do face, and are helping to accelerate inclusive, sustainable economic growth.

This strategy builds on the U.S. Government’s strong foundation of global food security and nutrition investments and aims to break silos, integrating programming across sectors and agencies for maximum impact and effective stewardship of United States taxpayer dollars. By implementing this whole-of-government strategy over the next five years, we believe that, together with our many partners across the globe, we can achieve this vision within our lifetimes.

U.S. Government Global Food Security Strategy v

Acronyms AfDB African Development Bank

AgMIP Agricultural Model Intercomparison and Improvement Project

AMR Antimicrobial Resistance

APHIS Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (within the U.S. Department of

Agriculture)

ARS Agricultural Research Service (within the U.S. Department of Agriculture)

BFS Bureau for Food Security (within the U.S. Agency for International Development)

CAFTA-DR Dominican Republic-Central America-United States Free Trade Agreement

CAADP Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme

CC Cross-cutting

CGIAR Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research

DCA Development Credit Authority

DRG Democracy, Human Rights, and Governance

ERS Economic Research Service (within the U.S. Department of Agriculture)

ESF Economic Support Fund

FAO Food and Agriculture Organization

FAS Foreign Agricultural Service (within the U.S. Department of Agriculture)

FEWS NET Famine Early Warning Systems Network

FFP Food for Peace

FY Fiscal Year

GAFSP Global Agricultural and Food Security Program

GBV Gender-based Violence

GCCI Global Climate Change Initiative

GDP Gross Domestic Product

GFSA Global Food Security Act

GFSS Global Food Security Strategy

GHI Global Health Initiative

GODAN Global Open Data for Agriculture and Nutrition

ICT Information and Communication Technology

IFAD International Fund for Agricultural Development

ILAB International Labor Affairs Bureau (within the U.S. Department of Labor)

IR Intermediate Result

ITA International Trade Administration (within the U.S. Department of Commerce)

IUU Illegal, Unregulated, and Unreported

MCC Millennium Challenge Corporation

MDB Multilateral Development Bank

MDG Millennium Development Goal

MEL Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning

NASA National Aeronautics and Space Administration

NGO Non-governmental Organization

NIFA National Institute of Food and Agriculture (within the U.S. Department of

Agriculture)

U.S. Government Global Food Security Strategy vi

NOAA National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (within the U.S. Department of

Commerce)

OES/OMC Oceans, Environment, and Science, Office of Marine Conservation (within the

U.S. Department of State)

OIP Office of Investment Policy (within the Overseas Private Investment Corporation)

OPIC Overseas Private Investment Corporation

PCV Peace Corps Volunteer

PEPFAR President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief

PMI President’s Malaria Initiative

PREPARED Planning for Resilience in East Africa through Policy, Adaptation, Research, and

Economic Development

RISE Resilience in the Sahel-Enhanced

SDG Sustainable Development Goal

S/GFS Secretary’s Office of Global Food Security (within the U.S. Department of State)

SME Small- and Medium-sized Enterprise

SPS Sanitary and Phytosanitary

UN United Nations

USADF United States African Development Foundation

USAID United States Agency for International Development

USDA United States Department of Agriculture

USTR United States Trade Representative

WASH Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene

WTO World Trade Organization

U.S. Government Global Food Security Strategy vii

Glossary of Key Terms Agricultural value chain

The set of actors and activities required to bring agricultural products from production to consumption, including processing, storage, transportation, marketing, and retail. As a product moves through an agricultural value chain, each step adds monetary value to the product.

Agriculture

The science and practice of activities related to production, processing, packaging, transporting, trade, marketing, consumption, and use of food, feed, and fiber including aquaculture, farming, wild fisheries, forestry, and pastoralism.

Agriculture and food systems

The intact or whole unit made up of interrelated components of people, behaviors, relationships, and material goods that interact in the production, processing, packaging, transporting, trade, marketing, consumption, and use of food, feed, and fiber through aquaculture, farming, wild fisheries, forestry, and pastoralism. The food and agriculture system operates within and is influenced by social, political, economic, and environmental contexts.

Appropriate congressional committees

Appropriate congressional committees as defined in the GFSA include: the Committee on Foreign

Relations of the Senate; the Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry of the Senate; the

Committee on Appropriations of the Senate; the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the House of

Representatives; the Committee on Agriculture of the House of Representatives; and the Committee on

Appropriations of the House of Representatives.

Basic sanitation service

The technical term for a sanitation facility that hygienically separates human excreta from human contact.

This is a Sustainable Development Goal indicator. A safely managed sanitation service also ensures that fecal waste is removed for treatment or safely disposed in-situ.

Climate-smart agriculture

An integrative approach to address the interlinked challenges of food security and climate change that explicitly aims for three objectives: (1) sustainably increasing agricultural productivity, to support equitable increases in farm incomes, food security and development; (2) adapting and building resilience of agricultural and food security systems to climate change at multiple levels; and (3) reducing greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture (including crops, livestock, and fisheries), either in absolute terms or by reducing emissions intensity in the context of Low Emissions Development.

Context indicator

A means to monitor factors outside the control of the activity or program that have the potential to affect the achievement of expected results. Context indicators may be tracked at any level of a Results

Framework or logic model. Context indicators may be used to track country/regional context;

U.S. Government Global Food Security Strategy viii programmatic assumptions of strategies, projects, and activities; and operational context. Context indicators do not directly measure the results of activities.

Ecosystem services

The benefits that flow from nature to people; for example, nature's contributions to the production of food and timber; life-support processes, such as water purification and coastal protection; and life-fulfilling benefits, such as places to recreate.

Extreme poverty

The inability to meet basic consumption needs on a sustainable basis. People who live in extreme poverty lack both income and assets and typically suffer from interrelated, chronic deprivations, including hunger and malnutrition, poor health, limited education and marginalization, discrimination, or exclusion. The extreme poor often lack the resilience to cope with economic setbacks, natural disasters, or illnesses. In

October 2015, the international poverty line that is used to measure extreme poverty moved from

US$1.25 based on 2005 purchasing power parity (PPP) per day per person to US$1.90 based on 2011 PPP per day per person.

Evaluation

The systematic collection and analysis of information about the characteristics and outcomes of strategies, projects, and activities conducted as a basis for judgments to improve effectiveness and cost-effectiveness and timed to inform decisions about current and future programming. Evaluation is distinct from assessment or an informal review of projects.

Feed the Future Innovation Labs

Research partnerships led by United States universities that advance solutions to reduce global hunger, poverty, and malnutrition. Includes the entities formerly known as the Collaborative Research Support

Programs (or CRSPs).

Food security and nutrition

Access to––and availability, utilization, and stability of–– sufficient food to meet caloric and nutritional needs for an active and healthy life.

Gender

The socially defined set of roles, rights, responsibilities, entitlements, and obligations of females and males in societies. The social definitions of what it means to be female or male vary among cultures and change over time.

Gender equality

Concerns fundamental social transformation, working with men and boys, women and girls, to bring about changes in attitudes, behaviors, roles, and responsibilities at home, in the workplace, and in the community. Genuine equality means expanding freedoms and improving overall quality of life so that equality is achieved without sacrificing gains for males or females.

U.S. Government Global Food Security Strategy ix

Hygienic

Conducive to maintaining health and preventing disease, especially by being clean; sanitary.

Key stakeholders

Actors engaged in efforts to advance global food security programs and objectives, including relevant federal departments and agencies; national and local governments in developing countries; other bilateral donors; international and regional organizations; international, regional, and local financial institutions;

international, regional, and local private voluntary, non-governmental, faith-based, and civil society organizations; the private sector, including agribusinesses and relevant commodities groups; agricultural producers, including producer organizations, cooperatives, small-scale producers, and women; and agricultural research and academic institutions, including land-grant universities and extension services.

Land, marine, and resource tenure

The political, economic, social, and legal structure that determines how individuals and groups access and use land, water, and other resources—including trees, minerals, fish, living marine resources, and pasture.

Tenure rules define how rights to use, control, and transfer land and resources are allocated within societies.

Malnutrition

Poor nutritional status caused by nutritional deficiency or excess. Malnutrition is a condition resulting when a person’s diet does not provide adequate nutrients for growth and maintenance or if a person is unable to fully utilize the food eaten due to illness; this consists of both under- (insufficiency) and over-

(excess) nutrition.

Monitoring

The ongoing and systematic tracking of data or information relevant to U.S. Government strategies, projects, and activities. Relevant data and informational needs are identified during planning and design, and may include output and outcome measures that are directly attributable to or affected by U.S.

Government interventions, as well as measures of the operating context and programmatic assumptions.

Multiplier(s)

The rate at which direct agricultural (or other) income or employment outcomes result in additional indirect income or employment outcomes in the overall economy. In general, small-scale producer agricultural investments have been documented to have significantly higher multipliers than investments in other sectors, with one job in agriculture often resulting in additional jobs via the linkages to additional employment and income via producer purchase of farm inputs, jobs in downstream processing, and producer expenditure on other locally supplied goods and services.

Overnutrition

The excess intake of energy or nutrients. This term includes overweight and obesity.

Performance indicator

A means to monitor expected outputs and outcomes of strategies, projects, or activities based on a Results

Framework or a project’s or activity’s logic model. Performance indicators are the basis for observing

U.S. Government Global Food Security Strategy x progress and measuring actual results compared to expected results. They help answer the extent to which an activity is progressing toward its objective(s), but alone cannot explain why such progress is or is not being made. Performance indicators are also sometimes known as performance metrics.

Protected area

A clearly defined geographical space, recognized, dedicated, and managed, through legal or other effective means, to achieve the long-term conservation of nature with associated ecosystem services and cultural values. This includes wildlife areas, national parks, and marine protected areas, among other examples.

Relevant federal departments and agency

Includes the United States Agency for International Development; U.S. Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, State, and the Treasury; Millennium Challenge Corporation; Overseas Private Investment

Corporation; Peace Corps; Office of the United States Trade Representative; United States African

Development Foundation; United States Geological Survey; and any other department or agency specified by the President.

Resilience

The ability of people, households, communities, countries, and systems to reduce, mitigate, adapt to, and recover from shocks and stresses to food security in a manner that reduces chronic vulnerability and facilitates inclusive growth.

Shock(s)

An acute, short to medium-term episode or event that has substantial, negative effects on people's current state of well-being, level of assets, livelihoods, or their ability to withstand future shocks. A shock’s onset may be slow or rapid and may affect select households (idiosyncratic shocks) or a large number or class of households (co-variate shocks) at the same time.

Small-scale producer

Farmers, pastoralists, foresters, and fishers that have a low asset base and limited resources, including land, capital, skills, and labor, and, in the case of farmers, typically farm on fewer than five hectares of land.

Stress(es)

A longer-term pressure that undermines current or future vulnerability and well-being, including—but not limited to—climate variability and change, population pressure, and environmental degradation.

Stunting

A sign of chronic malnutrition and refers to a condition that is measured by a height-to-age ratio that is more than two standard deviations below the median of the WHO Child Growth Standards. Stunting is a result of suboptimal food and nutrient intakes; insufficient preventive healthcare and unhygienic environments; poor maternal nutrition; and inappropriate infant and young child feeding and care by mothers and other members of the family and the community during the most critical periods of growth

U.S. Government Global Food Security Strategy xi and development in early life. At a population level, stunting is associated with long-term poor health, delayed motor development, impaired cognitive function, and decreased immunity.

Sustainability

The ability of a target country, community, implementing partner, or intended beneficiary to maintain, over time, the programs authorized and outcomes achieved, from an institutional and programmatic perspective without further donor assistance. Sustainability also refers to the maintenance of the factors and practices that contribute to long-term outcomes and productivity, including financial, environmental, and social sustainability.

Target country

A developing country that is selected to participate in agriculture and nutrition programs under the Global

Food Security Strategy pursuant to the selection criteria described in the “Targeting Approach” section of this document. Activities under this strategy will not be limited to target countries.

Undernourishment

When a person is not able to acquire enough food to meet the daily minimum dietary energy requirements, over a period of one year. Chronic undernourishment is an indicator for hunger.

Undernutrition

The various forms of poor nutrition caused by a complex array of factors including dietary inadequacy, infections, and sociocultural factors. Underweight, stunting, wasting, and micronutrient deficiencies are forms of undernutrition.

Youth

For the purposes of this strategy, youth means a life stage that starts in adolescence and continues through young adulthood. The specific age range associated with those stages may vary by the socio-cultural context, programmatic context, and the organization funding or implementing the program.

U.S. Government Global Food Security Strategy 1

1. The Global Context

Unprecedented Progress and Momentum The enactment of the Global Food Security Act of 2016 (GFSA), P.L. 114-195, occurred at an opportune time. For the first time in human history, the end of hunger, undernutrition, and extreme poverty is within our grasp. The world has seen dramatic declines in each of these areas, and food prices remain consistently lower and more stable after the food price spikes of 2007 and 2008.6 Developing and middle-income countries have made significant progress toward improving food security and nutrition, reducing poverty, and advancing agricultural development over the last decade. These gains were made in the context of the Millennium Development Goals, bolstered by commitments made by the United States and other countries at the 2009 G-8 Summit in L’Aquila, Italy.

L’Aquila injected the political will and additional resources for the fight against global hunger, malnutrition, and poverty. The worldwide actions resulting from L’Aquila—which included the establishment of Feed the Future, the President’s global hunger and food security initiative—increased global investment in agricultural development and nutrition. Guided by the Rome Principles for

Sustainable Global Food Security,7 these actions laid the foundation for this strategy to address the root causes of hunger, poverty, and undernutrition.

A Turning Point The adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)8 has set a shared global agenda for achieving global food security and has raised the bar from halving hunger, a target under the Millennium

Development Goals, to eliminating hunger and malnutrition in all their forms everywhere by 2030. The

Addis Ababa Action Agenda9 reinforced the importance of bringing multiple streams of financing––

As described in the Rome Principles, we commit to work in partnership to:

1. Invest in country-owned plans that support results-based programs and partnerships, so assistance is tailored to the needs of individual countries, through consultative processes and plans that are developed and led by country governments.

2. Strengthen strategic coordination to mobilize and align the resources of the diverse partners and stakeholders—including the private sector and civil society—needed to achieve our common objectives.

3. Ensure a comprehensive approach that addresses the root causes of hunger and poverty, while also bridging humanitarian relief and sustainable development efforts.

4. Leverage the benefits of multilateral institutions so priorities and approaches are aligned, investments coordinated, and financial and technical assistance gaps filled.

5. Deliver on sustained and accountable commitments, phasing in investments responsibly to ensure returns, using benchmarks and targets to measure progress toward shared goals, and holding ourselves and other stakeholders publicly accountable for achieving results.

U.S. Government Global Food Security Strategy 2 including private sector funding and domestic public resources alongside official development assistance―to the table to achieve these ambitious goals.

Despite our collective progress on food security and nutrition, a projected 702 million women, men, and children still live in extreme poverty; nearly 800 million people around the world are chronically undernourished;10 two billion are micronutrient deficient; and 159 million children under five are stunted,11 forever robbing them of opportunities to reach their full potential. Malnutrition, unsafe food, and food-borne diseases are increasing health costs and mortality while reducing educational attainment, lifetime earnings, and economic productivity and growth. Dietary changes are also resulting in some countries facing a simultaneous “double burden” of undernutrition and overnutrition, with nearly two billion adults and 41 million children under five overweight or obese12 and, as a result, prone to a variety of non-communicable diseases.

The Sustainable Development Goals

U.S. Government global food security and nutrition efforts contribute directly to SDG 1 and

SDG 2 and will also contribute to and benefit from many of the other 15 SDGs.

SDG 1: End poverty in all its forms everywhere

SDG 2: End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition, and promote sustainable agriculture

Contributing to Progress

In countries reached by U.S. Government efforts to improve global food security and nutrition, local capacity for lasting food security and good nutrition continues to grow stronger.

Poverty Reduction: U.S. Government efforts have contributed to promising reductions in poverty in Cambodia, Ethiopia, Ghana, Liberia, and Malawi of between 12 and 26 percent in areas where Feed the Future works.

Stunting Reduction: Child stunting, a measure of malnutrition, has also dropped between 12 and 32 percent in recent years in target areas of Bangladesh, Cambodia, Ghana, Honduras, Malawi, and Rwanda.

Note: As detailed in source, reductions were observed over a 2-6 year period depending on country and data source.

Source: Feed the Future. (2016). Ending hunger and poverty: A snapshot of progress.

https://www.feedthefuture.gov/resource/ending-hunger-and-poverty-snapshot-progress

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At the same time, the global community is facing emerging trends that provide both challenges and opportunities for food security in the future. According to the U.S. Intelligence Community Assessment on global food security published in 2015,13 instability and conflict, changes in climate, agricultural disease outbreaks, environmental degradation, illegal fishing and overfishing, demographic changes, intensifying urbanization, and rising food demand will all have major impacts on progress against global hunger, malnutrition, and poverty. Some of the most important opportunities and challenges are detailed below.

Food security, instability, and conflict: Food security is a development and humanitarian issue that also presents major national security challenges. Growing concentrations of poverty and hunger—exacerbated by the effects of climate variability, environmental degradation, and demographic trends—threaten global security, leaving countries and communities vulnerable to increased instability, conflict, and the potential for violence.14 The overall risk of food insecurity in many countries will increase during the next 10 years, contributing to social disruptions and political instability.15 The number of displaced people around the world is currently the highest in history at 65 million people.16 In addition to contributing to conflict and instability, food insecurity can also result from conflict and instability, as illustrated by the situation in many conflict zones around the world. Projections indicate that more than two-thirds of the world’s poor could be living in fragile countries, where state-society relations are already strained, by 2030.17

Climate and natural resource challenges: The intensifying challenge of changing climate patterns and extreme weather events such as droughts, floods, and extended periods of extreme temperatures pose major challenges to global food security,18 necessitating new food production practices along with enhanced monitoring and response to the growing threat of agricultural pests and diseases. Exacerbating the climate challenge is continued stress on ecosystems, marine environments, fisheries, and the land, water, and natural resource base upon which productive agriculture relies, and the complex intrastate governance challenges related to water resources. Responding to these challenges requires research to provide new tools and approaches for increasing agricultural productivity, monitoring and managing threats and risks, better managing and governing natural resources related to the food supply, adapting to the effects of a changing climate, and mitigating greenhouse gases, where possible.

Complex demographic challenges and relevance beyond rural areas: Demographic change presents a major challenge, with two-thirds of the world’s people expected to live in cities by 2050,19 and 90 percent of this urban growth projected to occur in Africa and Asia.20 Rapid urban growth presents unprecedented challenges but also new opportunities for global food security. Urban slum populations around the world are expected to continue swelling beyond the current one billion people,21 and current urban population growth rates across Africa are, on average, over twice as high as rural growth rates.22 These trends make investments in other aspects of the food system beyond farms and rural areas increasingly important in order to foster inclusive economic growth that enhances food security and reduces poverty. Rapidly growing secondary and tertiary cities, where the majority of urban growth will concentrate,23 and megacities offer important opportunities for enhancing food security. At the same time, continued growth of Africa’s rural population (which is predicted to continue exceeding Africa’s urban population for more than a generation), where poverty is even deeper, accentuates these challenges. An aging workforce further complicates these issues across Asia in both rural and urban areas.

U.S. Government Global Food Security Strategy 4

Continued gender inequalities: While limited access to resources and inadequate nutrition affect billions of women, men, girls, and boys, inequalities in resources, power, and roles in food and agriculture systems tend to affect women and girls more greatly. Although women comprise 43 percent of the agricultural labor force in developing countries, on average, they have disproportionately less access to resources (such as land and financing), markets, technologies and information, positions of influence, and means to manage risk.24 Lack of access to credit, limited group membership, and high workloads are among the most pressing constraints for both women and men in agriculture, although the burden of disempowerment in these constraints is almost twice as much for women.25 Social norms about women’s and men’s roles and responsibilities compound gendered barriers to resources and institutions, often limiting women’s ability to earn income, manage risk, or influence how earnings are spent or what foods are available to feed young children. Where women do not have sufficient resources or power to act for their own and their children’s health, nutritional outcomes suffer.

Opportunities for agricultural-led growth: Urban growth and accompanying diet changes provide new opportunities for enhancing food security in both urban and rural areas. Urban populations––and, increasingly, rural communities––purchase much of their food, which continues to be produced predominantly in rural areas. Urbanization and income growth are also creating new opportunities related to dietary transformation, as consumer demand for processed foods and more resource-intensive, higher-value food products increases. One of these opportunities is to focus efforts on building strong and resilient food and agriculture systems that can have a transformational effect on people’s lives and societies as a whole, not in the least by creating jobs and spurring growth in rural and urban economies.

Strengthening linkages between rural producers and growing numbers of urban consumers through the development of input and output markets and related infrastructure (e.g., roads, ports, cold storage, and wholesale markets, as well as electricity, water, and information and communications technology) is key to assuring the availability and affordability of sufficient, safe, and nutritious food. Soft infrastructure, such as an enabling environment and education for producers and other members of the agriculture and food system workforce, is also needed to operate a more sophisticated, inclusive, sustainable, and diversified agriculture and food sector and to provide new growth and employment opportunities.

Agricultural growth––across the full value chain including production, transportation, processing, trade, marketing and preparation—can reduce food prices, increase incomes, and provide employment opportunities for the rural and urban poor.

Mobile, digital, and finance opportunities: We have also witnessed incredible changes in market dynamics fueled by the explosive growth of mobile and digital technologies over the past five years.

These forces have redefined economic growth models, empowered poor people with new, powerful communications tools, and facilitated more productive interactions and financial transactions among actors across agricultural value chains. In particular, with the rapid proliferation of digital payments, including mobile money, we now have the tools and knowledge to invest in financial infrastructure that fits the needs of rural households, providing them with the financial tools necessary to both weather shocks and seize economic opportunity. This is critical since more than two billion people worldwide— who are predominantly female and live in rural areas critical to food security—currently lack relevant financial products that would enable them to save, in order to mitigate shocks that impact consumption, and invest, in order to increase profitability.26

U.S. Government Global Food Security Strategy 5

Lessons for the Way Forward Food security and malnutrition are complex, systemic challenges, and we have learned that no single intervention, policy change, or investment is sufficient to alleviate them. Building from our progress, learning from experience, and taking into consideration emerging trends, we have identified key lessons that inform our approach going forward.a

Diversity of Contexts, People, and Pathways

● Importance of resilience for addressing vulnerability: We have learned that sustainably reducing extreme poverty requires a strong focus on reducing the risk of and building resilience to shocks and stresses, including natural disasters, emergencies, food price spikes, and long-term climate variability, especially among women and vulnerable populations including the very poor, and in fragile countries coping with conflict and crisis.

● Gender integration: Targeting women as beneficiaries is not enough to reduce gender inequality and empower women and girls. We will continue to promote women’s access to resources and leadership in food and agricultural systems, challenging gender norms that hinder food security and women’s empowerment, and intentionally involve men and communities in efforts to improve nutrition, gender equality, and empowerment for women and adolescent girls.

● Youth: We have recognized that U.S. Government food security and nutrition efforts could explicitly target youth more systematically in order to address the youth demographic more effectively. We will achieve this by drawing lessons from existing evidence on approaches that work well to advance economic opportunities for youth.

● Rural and urban populations: Many rural poor can benefit as consumers, producers, and employees from progress in making food systems and agricultural value chains work better. For the urban poor, a broader set of factors such as better food access through supply chain enhancements, non-farm employment opportunities in the food and agriculture sector

(particularly in secondary and tertiary cities located close to rural production areas), non-agricultural job opportunities, and safety net policies are important.

● Recognizing different pathways out of poverty: Our efforts to strengthen agriculture and food systems that sustainably reduce poverty are primarily predicated on building strong private sector-led value chains. However, the ultra-poor, landless, and others may face constraints to engaging in these value chains due to a lack of assets or ability to manage the risks inherent in these systems. We therefore need to complement our value chain development activities with additional approaches to support various pathways out of poverty including outside of agriculture, reflecting the diversity of opportunities and constraints people face. Different contexts may require one or more approaches.

Systemic Approaches to Sustain Impact

● Strengthening interagency coordination: More sophisticated methods of U.S. interagency coordination and cooperation are needed to use the comparative strengths of agencies to deliver a comprehensive approach to global food security and nutrition. This includes improved a These lessons have been informed by multiple documents reflecting on global food security efforts since 2009, including the

Synthesis of Evaluations Related to the Feed the Future Learning Agenda and drafts of the forthcoming Feed the Future Global

Performance Evaluation.

U.S. Government Global Food Security Strategy 6 interagency planning and investments so that various U.S. efforts are more closely aligned, integrated, and mutually reinforcing for maximum impact at both headquarters and the field.

● Layering and integrating interventions for nutrition impact: While we have placed the inclusion of nutrition-sensitive agriculture/livelihood interventions and nutrition-specific interventions at the center of our approach to date, operationalizing this approach requires a skillful coordinated effort across multiple sectors, including water and sanitation, education, environment, livelihoods, social protection, health, agriculture, and disaster relief. This approach requires that we target the same populations in specific geographic locations with interventions from multiple sectors.

● Integrating development and humanitarian approaches: Achieving lasting resilience and reducing the risk of food insecurity requires integrating development efforts with humanitarian approaches in appropriate ways that meet the humanitarian mandate of saving lives and reducing suffering while also reducing the economic impact on livelihoods. We can do this in part through coordination and collaboration between humanitarian and development actors, the use of good practices for sustainable interventions, and better accounting for risk in development programs.

● The value chain approach in agriculture and food systems: To help ensure our efforts result in higher incomes for small-scale producers as well as employment and entrepreneurship opportunities in rural and urban areas, we must expand our activities and better leverage and coordinate broader U.S. strategies and investments. This will allow us to implement a comprehensive value chain approach, focusing on key intervention points and markets while enabling and encouraging production diversification and technology diffusion at scale. Stronger investments in a range of transformational aspects of the agriculture and food system, such as research, infrastructure, finance, markets, an enabling environment for producers, traders, and other businesses, workforce development are crucial to enhance links between rural and urban areas.

● Policy: Our efforts to support policy reform have generated meaningful change and will require continued long-term investment. These efforts are needed to improve the functioning of public and private sectors that can sustainably provide extension, social safety nets, research, health, inputs, and other goods and services. Through diplomacy and programmatic support, we will continue to work closely with governments and with national and local stakeholders to advance and help implement an evidence-based policy agenda consistent with international obligations and U.S. policy objectives, including through strong land, marine, and water tenure.

● Building local capacity and country ownership: To minimize continued dependence on external assistance and to promote long-term sustainability, it is critical that U.S. approaches continue to recognize the need to build capacity of individuals, institutions, and governments in targeted countries. There also needs to be closer collaboration with in-country stakeholders in planning, program implementation, determination of objectives, measurement of progress, and adaptation of strategies to meet changing needs.

Evidence, Data, and Research

● Evidence-based approach: Our continued focus on generating evidence on what works; using rigorous monitoring and evaluation approaches focused on management and learning; and building strong mechanisms for learning and adaptation are essential for us to achieve maximum results.

U.S. Government Global Food Security Strategy 7

● Data: Accurate, timely, and detailed data on global hunger, malnutrition, poverty, and agriculture are necessary to inform U.S. interventions and to measure their impacts. However, the United

States and all of our partners are hindered by limited and outdated data. Under this strategy, we will seek to improve the data that our partners and we collect and use, and explore new approaches, tools, and technologies to ensure maximum impact of our policies and programs.

● Innovative research: We will continue to advance and scale the results of high-quality biophysical and social science research to help ensure a pipeline of innovations, tools, and approaches designed to improve agriculture, food security, resilience, and nutrition priorities in the face of complex, dynamic challenges. U.S. universities are critical to efforts to strengthen capacity of partner country research institutions to engage in locally and globally relevant research.

Building on a strong foundation of comprehensive U.S. Government food security and nutrition investments, the U.S. Government’s continued, bipartisan commitment to ending hunger, malnutrition, and poverty around the world was solidified in July 2016 with the enactment of the GFSA, which calls for an interagency strategy to improve global food security and nutrition.

This strategy refines the U.S. Government’s global food security and nutrition approach, building on lessons learned and taking account of a shifting global context. As outlined in the sections that follow, this strategy aims to break silos and integrate programming across sectors and agencies for maximum impact and effective stewardship of United States taxpayer dollars.

2. Goal and Objectives of the Strategy: The Results

Framework

Inspired by the global agenda laid out in the SDGs and the objectives of the GFSA:

In support of this global vision, the below sections outline our theory of change for achieving our goal and objectives. A theory of change is a description of how we expect our activities will ultimately result in our goal through a series of causal linkages or impact pathways. Figure 1 illustrates our theory of change visually in the format of a Results Framework, which outlines our ultimate goal, the three objectives necessary to achieve that goal, and the Intermediate Results (IRs) that are necessary in order to achieve our three objectives. This figure provides a framework for presenting our strategy to achieve the

Our vision is a world free from hunger, malnutrition, and extreme poverty, where thriving local economies generate increased income for all people; where people consume balanced and nutritious diets and children grow up healthy and reach their full potential; and where resilient households and communities face fewer and less severe shocks, have less vulnerability to the shocks they do face, and are helping to accelerate inclusive, sustainable economic growth.

U.S. Government Global Food Security Strategy 8 policy objectives in the GFSA and guides the comprehensive, multi-sectoral approach and resources that the U.S. Government brings to bear on addressing food security and nutrition globally.

Our overarching goal is to sustainably reduce global hunger, malnutrition, and poverty. See Section 5 on Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning for a discussion of our target-setting approach. Reaching this goal will require an integrated effort, which, our experience to date has shown, must include achieving three main Objectives:

1. Inclusive and sustainable agricultural-led economic growth: There is broad consensus that sustainably reducing global hunger, malnutrition, and poverty will require accelerating inclusive agriculture sector-led growth that is environmentally sustainable and that local partners can maintain without further input of development assistance resources. Inclusive and sustainable agricultural-led economic growth provides many paths to poverty reduction, generating jobs and reliable incomes, directly across agricultural value chains and indirectly through multiplier effects across the broader economies of which they are a part. Growing the agriculture sector also increases the availability of affordable, diverse, and nutritious food, thereby supporting reductions in hunger and malnutrition.

2. Strengthened resilience among people and systems: Households and communities are increasingly experiencing frequent and intense shocks and stresses that threaten food security and nutrition. A reduced vulnerability to these shocks and stresses and the ability to reduce, mitigate, adapt to, manage, and recover from them is particularly important to the extreme poor and the most vulnerable. Increased resilience among people and systems is necessary for men, women, and families to sustainably escape poverty.

3. A well-nourished population, especially among women and children: Achieving our Goal requires well-nourished populations in which everyone, especially women and children, have the chance to live healthy and productive lives. Nutrition improvements are related to decreased health costs, higher economic productivity, and lower rates of mortality.27 Undernutrition, particularly during the 1,000 days from pregnancy to a child’s second birthday, leads to lower levels of educational attainment, productivity, and lifetime earnings.28 Nutrition is also vital prior to pregnancy, including in adolescent girls.

These three Objectives are interrelated and interdependent. Agriculture-led economic growth, for example, is especially effective in leading to income growth among the poor, thereby increasing their ability to afford food to improve nutritional status, especially of women and children.