How To Fight Hunger

Poverty is a principal cause of hunger - it prevents people from having access to food and the tools they need to grow it. Natural disasters, conflict, lack of infrastructure, and poor farming practices also contribute to the growing problem of hunger as the world population increases. But simple, smart investments in agriculture have saved lives in the past, and today we have the science, innovation, and technology to create sustainable solutions that will feed the future.

Almost 1 billion people suffer from chronic hunger.

The global population will grow over 30% by 2050. Food production will need to grow by 70% to meet with demand.

What Hunger Means

• Children suffering from severe malnutrition are 9x more likely to die
• Hunger costs developing countrys approximately $450 billion per year in lost GDP
• Hunger increases a country's risk of democratic failure, protests, rioting, violence and civil conflict.

Breakthroughs in the fight against hunger

Tilapia: The Genetically Improved Farmed Tilapia strain developed by the WorldFish Center helped over 300,000 people in the Philippines alone.

Cassava: A program to develop high-yield, vitamin enriched varieties of cassava helped to cut undernourishment in Ghana by half over a 20-year period.

Wheat: Adoption of short-stature wheat beginning in the 1950s, along with other transformative Green Revolution technologies, are credited with saving an estimated one billion lives.

Rice: Between 1965 and 2007, semi-dwarf rice helped expand global rice production from 256 to over 630 million metric tons.

Corn: In Rwanda, a crop intensification initiative that made fertilizer and higher quality seeds available to farmers produced four times the annual corn output that was harvested in years past.

Investments to Fight Hunger

• Growth in agriculture is on average at least twice as effective in reducing poverty as growth in other areas.
• A vaccine to prevent cattle disease in Africa would increase milk production by 240 million liters annually
• Investments that provide women equal access to land, water, seeds, training, and funding in agriculture would increase farm yields by 20-30%.