Tag Archives: World Food Prize

Smallholder Farmers Will Feed The World

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Earlier today I presented a keynote speech at the World Food Prize 2012 Borlaug Dialogue in Des Moines, Iowa. I’d like to share with you some of what I had to say about smallholder farmers and the important role they must play in feeding the world. 

Today, our fragile and beautiful Earth is home to seven billion people. Over the next 30 years, two, maybe three billion more will join us. The global food system is struggling. Food prices peaked in 2008 and peaked again a few months ago, sparking riots and export bans. Land grabs, increasing oil prices, biofuel development, food production and distribution failures, disturbing water shortages are converging and reshaping our world and the very character of poverty and hunger.

All these forces are contributing to the distressing spike in malnutrition and poverty around the world.

The world needs smallholder farmers

Photo by Jake Lyell, courtesy of Heifer International.

But to the good, the G8, G2O, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the World Economic Forum and others have rediscovered the critical importance of agriculture and are all promising—through public-private partnerships—to do more for smallholder farmers. We laud these decisions—smallholder farmers are the best change agents we have to help feed this hungry world. Let me explain.

Heifer International is helping lead what has been called the livestock revolution. We are working to reach a rapidly growing group of smallholder farmers, mostly women, to inspire agroecological productivity, biodiversity, financial security and health to create the surplus needed to feed the world.

There are 650 million smallholder farmers in the world and 50 to 80 percent of them are women! They grow the majority of the food eaten every day. By doubling their productivity, they can help feed the world. And we will need these 300+ million women to feed us all.

Smallholder farmers in Zambia

Smallholder farmers will feed the world, but only if we help. Photo by Jake Lyell, courtesy of Heifer International.

Along with this, we need to take advantage of new plant technologies, and spread as rapidly as possible best practices, which can double or triple yields. We also need more and better public-private partnerships to advance agriculture to help meet global needs in food security. They can open access to finance and technology and link smallholders to markets. By combining strengths, partners can all make better progress than by working on their own.

By using the greatest asset in agricultural development—the smallholder farmer—along with the best seeds, the best plants, judicious use of a range of fertilizers and wise husbandry, we can increase yields by factors of three or four. Also, rethinking subsidies for biofuel could free up vast acreage for human food production, which we know we need.

Overcoming these challenges will require new thinking, new collaborations, new openness … understanding that all successful agricultural public-private partnerships should lead to win-win situations that benefit farmers. Recent studies suggest that improvements in national incomes tied to agricultural growth have been underestimated. In truth, few countries have achieved increased prosperity without equivalent growth in agriculture.

So, what does that mean? It means that successful poverty elimination utilizes market-driven development and depends strongly on deeply embedded social engagement.

But let’s be clear on one thing—something we learned at Heifer International a long time ago: Economic growth and community development cannot be separated. They must go hand in hand.

Come back to the Heifer Blog tomorrow to learn more about how economic and community development must be done together.

Heifer CEO Speaks at World Food Prize 2012

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This week I am honored to be a part of the World Food Prize 2012 Borlaug Dialogue in Des Moines, Iowa, to represent the work of Heifer International and to help give voice to the millions of smallholder farmers who struggle daily against enormous odds to feed themselves and their families.

The World Food Prize is an incredible event, founded by Dr. Norman E. Borlaug in 1986, that honors outstanding individuals from all over the world who have made substantial contributions in the fight against hunger.

World Food Prize 2010

World Food Prize 2010 co-recipients, Jo Luck and David Beckmann. Photo courtesy of Heifer International.

It was only two years ago that Heifer’s then-president, Jo Luck, and Bread for the World President David Beckmann accepted the World Food Prize. It was a milestone—the first time the prize recognized the critical achievements that non-governmental organizations, such as Heifer International and Bread for the World, are making empowering everyday people everywhere to help end hunger.

I am humbled to be standing in their shadow and honored to be carrying on Jo Luck’s legacy. Since that October day in 2010, Heifer has helped another four million families move beyond subsistence to resilience, bringing our total to more than 18 million families assisted.

World Food Prize

Photo courtesy of Heifer International.

We cannot end hunger and poverty on our own. The direction that Heifer is embarking on will move us closer to achieving our mission of ending hunger and poverty and caring for the Earth. We are building on our past success to help more families than ever before by increasing our scale of impact. And our persistent efforts have not gone unnoticed. We have caught the attention of many large and impactful organizations such as the International Fund for Agricultural Development, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, World Bank and United States Agency for International Development. I met with these organizations when I traveled to India, Nepal and Cambodia. They have seen the socioeconomic advancements in our project communities, generated by our work, and  they are interested in integrating with our efforts to empower families.

World Food Prize

Photo courtesy of Heifer International.

Speaking at the World Food Prize, surrounded by the luminaries of the development world, means that Heifer is being recognized as a key player. These next few years will be exciting and full of promise. But don’t just be an observer, get involved. Everyone has a role to play in ending hunger and poverty and your involvement in your own community can help the families all over the world with whom we work.

Interview with World Food Prize Laureates

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The Des Moines Register posted an article and interview today with World Food Prize laureates David Beckmann, president of Bread for the World, and Jo Luck, Heifer International’s president. The World Food Prize Symposium is being held this week in Des Moines, Iowa, with the official presentation coming tonight.
From Philip Brasher’s interview in the Register:
Q: But doesn’t humanitarian aid often foster dependency?
Luck: It does, if they don’t help people become self-reliant. Don’t just hand it out and deliver it and leave. That is not sustainable. That’s why I believe so much in the work we do and others with this kind of approach working beyond the disaster assistance or emergency assistance. Give them a few resources, give them a few animals and some training and you can’t hold them back. They may not all be a millionaire, but they’re going to be successful. They’re going to be proud and making decisions and they’re going to be influencing the government.
Beckmann: The U.S. government’s world hunger initiative is focused on countries that have good policies in place and are investing their own money in agriculture.
Luck: So it’s more sustainable.
Beckmann: Where you have dubious results is where local people aren’t doing what they should be doing. In poor countries that have their act together and are using their own money, well, there are lots of opportunities.

World Food Prize Receives International Attention

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Imagine my surprise this morning when I made my daily visit to Poverty Matters, the development blog of the British newspaper The Guardian, and there at the top of the page was a photo of Heifer International President Jo Luck.
Carlos Seré, director general of the International Livestock Research Institute, wrote a post about the importance of smallholder farmers, calling them “the backbone of global food production.” Seré goes on to call out Heifer International and Jo Luck by name, as co-winner of this year’s World Food Prize:
“As food riots continue in Mozambique and food crises persist in Niger and elsewhere, leaders in global agriculture, food and development are gathering in Des Moines, Iowa this week to highlight the significant role the world’s smallholder farmers could play in alleviating poverty and hunger. …
“The award of the World Food Prize this week to Heifer International, a livestock oriented non-governmental organisation, should help promote smallholder livestock production, in particular, as a vital pathway out of poverty and hunger.
“Farm animals kept on the world’s small farms serve as the building blocks of prosperity. With global human population rising (it is expected to increase by 2 to 3 billion people over the next four decades, after which it should begin to decline), livestock are becoming agriculture’s most economically important sub sector, with demand in developing countries for milk, meat and eggs projected to double over the next 20 years alone.”

World Food Prize Symposium

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The World Food Prize Symposium began today in Des Moines, Iowa, and Heifer International President Jo Luck is there. Jo Luck is a recipient of this year’s World Food Prize and gets a mention from, among other places, Poverty News Blog:
The Prize is given to people who help to increase food production in developing countries. This year, the prize will be given to Heifer International president Jo Luck and Bread for the World president David Beckmann.

Stay tuned for more news from the symposium.

Straight Talk on Hunger

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David Lambert, principal of Lambert Associates of Washington, D.C., and a consultant to United Nations agencies, universities and the private sector on global food security, food safety and agricultural biotechnology, pulled no punches in a recent talk at the Clinton School of Public Service on ending world hunger.

Lambert said “The main root cause of hunger is governance, any way you cut it. If you don’t believe it look at Zimbabwe, North Korea, Somalia and see how despotic regimes can disempower their people with stunning implications for health and food security.”
He did not shy from topics such as the daunting equation of soaring world population and declining food production; food shortages as a national security issue; climate change; agricultural research and the bioengineering of food; women’s empowerment and sex trafficking; post-harvest loss and the role of the private sector in ending hunger.
Lambert also had high praise for Heifer International President Jo Luck, who stood at the end of the noon lecture and asked permission to quote Lambert as she accepts the World Food Prize Oct. 14 in Des Moines, Iowa.
At one point Lambert nodded to Jo Luck and said: “There’s an old joke the punchline of which is: ‘Never talk about floods if Noah is in the audience,’ and I don’t know why I’m answering this question instead of Jo Luck.’ “
“This is the United States equivalent of the Nobel Peace Prize. It goes to the person in the world who has done the most to end global hunger,” Lambert said. “Let me just say that there are thousands of NGOs doing good work in health and hunger and child nutrition and all the rest. … The World Food Prize Committee, that Norman Borlaug started, when they sit down to pick, they’re looking at 195 countries and hundreds of NGOs, and the fact they have chosen Jo Luck and David Beckmann (Bread for the World), is a very wonderful and significant thing.”
Click here to read World Ark‘s article on Jo Luck’s World Food Prize award.