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This is the United Nations: U.N. agencies working together to combat hunger
March 6, 2008
By Zainab Abdul-Rahim
The final lecture in the United Nations Association’s Council of Organizations’ seminar series took place on March 6. The featured speakers were Daniel Gustafson, the director of the Liaison Office for North America for the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO); Michael Usnick, the director of the U.S. relations office for the World Food Program (WFP); and Rick Leach, the Senior Advisor for Public Policy at Friends of the World Food Program (FWFP), who also served as moderator.
Gustafson said what the FAO does is “of equal value to all countries.” With headquarters in Rome, the FAO works at the country level and in regional offices located in 78 countries in areas such as food safety, fishery, and forestry.
Issues such as bio-fuel, climate change, genetic diversity, and food security are now being tackled, Gustafson said. In the question and answer session which followed, he defined food security as having secure access to food throughout the year.
Usnick spoke about the history of WFP, which was created in 1963. Unlike the FAO, WFP is not a specialized agency, and is instead funded by independent organizations.
WFP has become the world’s largest agency, with offices in 80 countries. The organization’s pride rests in the fact that it gets food to the people who need it the most, he said. It originally started out as a development program; however, today 85 percent of operations are focused on emergency relief.
WFP’s job is safety when meeting short-term needs is necessary, Usnick said, but added that the solution lies with agricultural production. He said that those at WFP “take on a holistic approach.”
Leach addressed how the organizations help prevent famine, and said that Americans should be proud because 40 percent WFP’s budget comes from the United States.
The floor was then opened to questions.
Gustafson, in response to a question, said that the main reason for hunger is poverty because the two “are intimately linked.” He expounded on this by saying that unsafe drinking water and lack of immunizations also explain hunger. The way to reduce poverty is to increase agriculture, he asserted. In response to another question, Usnick echoed this argument, saying that “there has to be a renewed focus on agriculture and development.”
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