On this occasion of World Food Day 2024, we confront a stark reality: an estimated 733 million people will go to bed hungry.
Briefing on the reality of our present world, Ambassador Greenfield express concerns of a perfect storm of conflict, climate change and the inability to get resources to those who need it most, which has forced people to make impossible decisions: to choose between feeding themselves and feeding their children, staying in the communities they love or seeking out food security elsewhere, if leaving is a choice at all.
These families live across the world: in conflict zones like Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan, and Burma, and climate-vulnerable states, including across the Sahel. And they live here in America, where one in five children is food insecure.
For them, we must continue the tireless work of ending hunger, ensuring food security, improving nutrition, and promoting sustainable agriculture.
The above pressing needs, under the leadership of the Biden-Harris Administration, has made the United States, invested more than $20 billion to fight hunger. And why we have pushed food insecurity to the top of the United Nations’ agenda, most significantly by making it a focus of all three of my presidencies of the UN Security Council – because this global challenge requires a global response, said ambassador Greenfield.
The human well-being concerned Ambassador further reiterated continued efforts on work with allies, partners, NGOs, and the private sector to develop innovative solutions, build resilience to climate shocks, and promote sustainable and inclusive agriculture.
We’ve helped partner countries develop climate-smart food systems, spearheaded the UN resolution to declare 2026, the International Year of the Woman Farmer, and supported programs to advance regenerative agriculture, she added.
Sharing her personal experience, she narrated how she was equipped by her family, growing-up, on prioritising feeding people as the ultimate form of giving – and that the highest calling is to ensure no one goes to bed hungry.
While applauding the collective progress made so-far through demonstrated action, she appealed for more to be done, and with urgency, citing that in a world of abundant of food, no one should go or live hungry.
