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Food Insecurity

Insight into Food Insecurity Futures

 

Tegegnework Gettu - Under-Secretary-General for General Assembly and Conference Management

"It is a harsh paradox that in a world of food surpluses, hunger and malnutrition remain pervasive on a continent with ample agricultural endowments."

"Africa has the knowledge, the technology, and the means to end hunger and food insecurity."
 

Helen Clark - UNDP Administrator

“Impressive GDP growth rates in Africa have not translated into the elimination of hunger and malnutrition. Inclusive growth and people-centred approaches to food security are needed."

"Building a food-secure future for all Africans will only be achieved if efforts span the entire development agenda."
 

Kofi Annan - Ghanaian diplomat, seventh secretary-general of the United Nations, 2001 Nobel Peace Prize

“The future of nine billion plus people depends on us putting in place the right policies and systems to deliver food security in an environmentally sustainable manner within a few decades."

"For almost one in seven people on our planet will today not have enough to eat. Addressing this failure, urgent as it is, will be made much harder by climate change."
 

Johannes Wedenig - the United Nations Children's Fund representative in Burundi.

“Chronic malnutrition isn't just a health issue, it's a development issue."

"If you have two out of three children at age three chronically mal- nourished, all other investments will be affected."
 

Sebastian Levine - Economic policy adviser with UNDP’s Regional Bureau for Africa

“Food security is a really good example of how inter-locked the three strands of sustainable development—economic, social, and environmental—really are."

"In sub-Saharan Africa, having more than a quarter of the population go hungry and almost 55 million children stunted in their physical growth represents a profound threat to the sustainable development of the region."

"Many African countries are now among the fastest growing economies in the world. But it’s a paradox because we haven’t seen this growth translate into the type of food security that we need."
 

Lester R. Brown - President of the Earth Policy Institute

“As food prices climb, the worldwide competition for control of land and water resources is intensifying."

"Access to food is replacing access to oil as an overriding concern of governments. Food is the new oil, land is the new gold."
 

Prof Lee Lynd - from Dartmouth College and the Mascoma Corporation.

“The first step towards reaching ‘win–win’ outcomes with respect to bioenergy, food security and poverty reduction is to recognise that such outcomes are possible."

"We need a global energy crop model to find out if it is physically possible to gracefully reconcile large-scale bioenergy production with feeding humanity, meeting needs from managed lands, and preserving wildlife habitat and environmental quality, and we need to answer whether large-scale bioenergy product is needed in order to have a reasonable expectation of achieving a sustainable world."
 

Derek Byerlee - Rural Policy and Strategy Adviser, 2003-present, Lead Economist, 1994-2003, World Bank

"After four decades in sub-Saharan Africa I feel optimistic about Africa’s food systems and future. I see exciting opportunities in terms of market growth, private interest, and improved policies."

"There is overwhelming and convincing evidence that agricultural growth is important for poverty reduction and food security. Look at the Green Revolution in Asia and the institutional reforms in China in the early 1980s."
 

Paul Collier - CBE is Professor of Economics and Public Policy at the Blavatnik School of Government, and Director for the Centre for the Study of African Economies at The University of Oxford and Fellow of St Antony's College.

“Smallholder agriculture has been a persistent productivity disaster for Africa. Despite a huge land area to population ratio and higher proportion of its labor force engaged in food production, Africa is still not able to feed itself. The smallholder business model of the last 50 years is fundamentally flawed…maybe it is time for a Plan B."
 

Major General John Hartley - Institute Director and CEO at Future Directions International

"At this stage we're going to have a significant global food shortage by 2050, with potentially catastrophic consequences."
 

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