Washington — During 2012, the United States bolstered its commitment to agriculture and economic growth around the world with new systems that monitor the effectiveness of assistance efforts, new agreements with public and private sector partners and more resources for agricultural research.
The United States also integrated its short-term humanitarian assistance with its longer-term development aid with the aim of building resilience in communities vulnerable to recurrent crises.
Progress began early in the year. In February, the U.S. Feed the Future program, the Washington-based International Food Policy Research Institute and the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative of Oxford University launched a Women's Empowerment in Agriculture Index.
The index is the first tool to measure how much women are included in agriculture production, control how family income is used and are leaders in their communities. It is used to evaluate how Feed the Future programs support women's role in reducing hunger and advancing prosperity.
President Obama established Feed the Future in 2009 following a pledge by leaders of the Group of Eight (G8) industrialized nations to invest more in country-driven efforts to form long-term solutions to chronic food insecurity and malnutrition.
February also saw the introduction of a system to record how U.S. agencies perform against key Feed the Future indicators, the first time multiple agencies have reported to a common food-security monitoring system. In October, Feed the Future released its evaluations of information captured from May 2009 through May 2012 and concluded: "By improving the way we do development, Feed the Future is already making a difference." The system helps planners make decisions about future programming and spending.
On the eve of the 2012 G8 Summit in May, President Obama announced that the group's leaders, African leaders and leaders of nearly 50 companies agreed to commit new resources to a New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition to lift 50 million people out of poverty by 2022 through inclusive and sustained agricultural growth. The private sector partners promised collectively to invest $3 billion in Africa's agriculture sector, while African leaders promised to adopt policies to improve investment opportunities and to drive their countries' food-security plans.
Original Article Here
No comments:
Post a Comment