Food Crisis Team Issues Paper

For 45 years ACDI/VOCA has worked to combat food insecurity and build smallholder farmer capacity in 145 countries. A former USAID administrator called ACDI/VOCA “the premier agricultural development NGO in the world."

Today's food crisis behooves us to “think boldly regarding how ACDI/VOCA might muster an enhanced response to the crisis.” This was the call to action given by ACDI/VOCA President Carl Leonard on May 5 when he formed a Global Food Crisis Team. Now the team has produced a policy paper which articulates our best thinking and positions us to respond.

ACDI/VOCA's roots are in agricultural cooperative development but today our approach is multipronged: Besides organizing producer groups, we are an innovator and effective manager of food aid-based interventions that have positive development effects. We foster community development, apply value chain approaches to develop agribusiness and other enterprises, develop robust and self-sustaining financial services and act to stabilize fragile states and drive the transition from relief to development.

The global food crisis compels a deliberate yet comprehensive approach to the problem of food insecurity. “There is no room for complacency," says Avram "Buzz" Guroff, senior managing director of ACDI/VOCA's Food Security and Specialty Crops portfolio. "While staple commodity prices have come down significantly and declining oil prices should eventually result in reduced fuel and fertilizer costs for developing country farmers, the adverse effects of the global food crisis persist—particularly in Africa. The donor community needs to stand by its recommitment to agricultural development. ACDI/VOCA intends to do its part to support that commitment.”

The paper explains how ACDI/VOCA is addressing the global food crisis in the near and long term. Click here to read the paper.