The Chicago Council on Global Affairs and The Rockefeller Foundation recently released the report Defining the Path to Zero Hunger in an Equitable World. Its authors highlight new solutions that can catalyze disruptive thinking to achieve a hunger-free future.

The report addresses some of the greatest challenges at the nexus of food security, climate, and humanitarian spaces. Focusing on three major obstacles — siloed approaches, myopic priorities, and top-down decision-making—it provides recommendations to confront these hurdles and ultimately forge a vision of hope for a better future.

Intricate silos have long prevented stakeholders and institutions from sharing information, processes, and communication, the report states. Roger Thurow, Senior Fellow at the Chicago Council and a co-author, explains that these silos continually defy the experiences of the intended beneficiaries of development work. “Everything happens all at once,” he says.

“When you’re speaking with smallholder farmers, you see their lives are in no way siloed,” Thurow tells Food Tank. “They’re dealing with the climate issues, the soil issues, the water issues, all of the environmental issues, the crop diseases, the human diseases, their own issues of poverty.”

Catherine Bertini, Chicago Council Distinguished Fellow and The Rockefeller Foundation’s Managing Director for Global Nutrition Security, believes collaboration between agriculture and health sectors can serve as a first step in breaking down these silos.

“There’s never enough dialogue and interaction between the two. What we eat is absolutely essential to our wellbeing,” Bertini, a co-author of the report, tells Food Tank.

The authors call for the integration of development, humanitarian, and climate spaces with community. They also hope to see a change in aid infrastructure to dismantle competitive silos and encourage cooperation.

Bertini and Thurow believe that silos between humanitarian and development spaces amplify the focus on myopic priorities. In response, the report calls for a world in which resources gradually shift from crisis response to long-term resilience.

Read the full article about zero hunger by Liza Greene at Food Tank.