SPEAKER PELOSI DISCUSSES GLOBAL FOOD SECURITY WITH ROADMAP COALITION

Led by Ambassador Tony Hall, Director of the Alliance to End Hunger, a coalition of leading NGOs and corporations recently met with Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) to discuss the anti-hunger community’s legislative priorities for global food security and agricultural development over the coming year.

Top on the coalition’s list was the President’s FY2011 funding requests for agricultural development, nutrition assistance and emergency humanitarian response. Speaker Pelosi was extremely supportive of the President’s FY2011 requests, and spoke to the moral, economic, and national security justifications for a comprehensive and coordinated strategy to address global hunger.

The delegation – representing a broad-based coalition of over 40 NGO, advocacy and private sector organizations that endorsed the Roadmap to End Global Hunger – also applauded the Administration’s recent announcement of its Feed the Future initiative. For more than fifty years the U.S. has led the world in responding to hunger emergencies. With the announcement of Feed the Future, this leadership now includes activities to address the full spectrum of hunger: urban and rural, chronic and acute.

Speaker Pelosi acknowledged the importance of Congressional support to ensure long-term sustained investments in the comprehensive strategy envisioned by the Roadmap to End Global Hunger and put into action by Feed the Future. With the goal of institutionalizing the Administration initiative, Ambassador Hall and the delegation encouraged Speaker Pelosi to pass the Global Food Security Act (H.R.3377 / S.387) which will:

• Require the creation of a comprehensive U.S. government strategy to address global hunger and annual reporting on the strategy’s progress.
• Require the appointment of a Special Coordinator for Global Food Security to coordinate inter-agency efforts to address global hunger.
• Increase the funding levels for agricultural development and agricultural research