Food Security in Focus
Meet the winners of USAID’s Office of Food for Peace 2019 Photo Contest! Be sure to visit us on Twitter to see more of the amazing submissions by our partners.
World Food Day is an opportunity to promote awareness and action around hunger and malnutrition, and to ensure food security efforts have a lasting impact. While the challenge is great, so too is our commitment. Together with partners, USAID provides life-saving food assistance and helps empower communities to break the cycle of hunger and poverty. Read on to see the winners of this year’s photo contest.
Stabilizing Dunes to Stabilize Lives in Madagascar
In southern Madagascar sand dunes cover large areas along the coast and can be devastating when moved inland by strong ocean winds. They can cover villages and farms, creating a hardship for communities near the coast as they lose their homes and ability to grow food. As part of a food security activity with Catholic Relief Services, USAID works with communities to plant sisal (a type of agave) and cactus to stabilize the dunes and protect land used for farming. Households receive food assistance in exchange for a family member helping in the dune stabilization work, which preserves land for future harvests that can feed their families.
Cultivating Markets in Bangladesh
In the flood-prone Char and Haor regions of Bangladesh, farmers take a collective approach to combating food insecurity. USAID, through a CARE food assistance activity, fosters agricultural collectives for farmers to share knowledge and their experience cultivating high-demand crops such as chili. Working together, they are able to produce higher quality products and command a fair market price.
Targeting Nutrition in Somalia
A Somali woman receives her maize meal ration at a maternal health center in Galkayo, Somalia. In August, USAID support helped the World Food Program to reach 544,000 vulnerable mothers and children under five with nutrition assistance. Approximately 4.2 million people — more than one third of the total population in Somalia — are currently in urgent need of humanitarian assistance as a result of the combined effects of drought, poor harvests, ongoing conflict, and high levels of malnutrition.
Better Living through Resilience
A perpetual cycle of erratic rainfall, extended dry seasons, and crop-pest infestation threatens food security for communities in southern Malawi. USAID, through Project Concern International, works with smallholder farmers like Dailes Kachingwe to plant drought tolerant crops such as pigeon peas. An extended growing season means higher yields for farmers and better access to nutritious foods for their communities.
Planting New Roots in South Sudan
A woman tends to bush okra seedlings on the farm of a vegetable producer group in Jonglei State, South Sudan. USAID, through Catholic Relief Services, provides support to drought, flood, and conflict-affected communities as families once displaced return home to plant new roots. The program supports vegetable producer groups by providing access to seeds, tools and agricultural extension services, and teaching them how to use irrigation and proper planting techniques to increase their dry season yields. This approach has helped to change the mindset of communities, reducing their expectation of, and dependence on, relief assistance by promoting community and household self-reliance.
About USAID’s Office of Food for Peace
USAID’s Office of Food for Peace saves lives and tackles chronic hunger and poverty through U.S. food assistance. We have reached more than 4 billion people with food assistance since 1954. Follow us on Twitter @USAIDFFP.
