Building a World Without Hunger

For one billion people around the world, the daily effort to grow, buy or sell food is the defining struggle of their lives. This matters to them, and to all of us.

Consider the daily life of the world's typical small farmer. She lives in a rural village in sub-Saharan Africa, Asia or Latin America, and farms a piece of land she does not own. She works all day in a field. If she's lucky, drought, blight or pests don't destroy her crops, and she raises enough to feed her family. She may even have some left over to sell. But there's no road to the nearest market and no one there who can afford to buy from her.

Now let's consider the life of a young man in a crowded city 100 miles from that farmer. He has no job -- or a job that pays pennies. He goes to the market -- but the food is rotting, or priced beyond reach. He is hungry, and often angry. She has extra food to sell; he wants to buy it. But that simple transaction can't take place because of complex forces beyond their control.

Meeting the challenge of global hunger is at the heart of what we call "food security" -- empowering the world's farmers to sow and harvest plentiful crops, effectively care for livestock or catch fish -- and then ensuring that the food they produce reaches people most in need.

Food security is not only about food. It represents the convergence of complex issues: droughts and floods caused by climate change, swings in the global economy that affect food prices and threaten the fate of vital infrastructure projects, and spikes in the price of oil that increase transportation costs.