For the approximately 820 million people coping with chronic hunger, it’s not about missing a single meal; it’s about days and months and years of being undernourished. For children, continued undernourishment can lead to stunted growth and cognitive impairment, diminished educational attainment and a lifetime of lower income, continuing a cycle of hunger and poverty. Our food security programs help families increase production, diversify incomes, save for the future and ensure that their children are well-nourished, so that they thrive and reach their full potential. They also help to improve long-term food security and increase resilience to shocks and stresses with context-specific, integrated approaches. In all programs, Save the Children is always sensitive to the roles of women, men, boys and girls in promoting food security as well as the need to safeguard natural resources for current and future generations. Through a mix of interventions tailored to the specific contexts of communities facing poverty and food insecurity, we are able to make a sustainable difference for families in need.

More than half of the people living without enough food are smallholder farming families. Income from agriculture, livestock, and fishing can be irregular due to price fluctuations, climate change, and seasonality. Save the Children aims to address these challenges by helping to enhance productivity through improved practices and technologies; reducing the susceptibility of farming to shocks through climate-smart and environmentally sustainable approaches; improving business practices to make farming more profitable; facilitating links between producers, intermediaries, markets and last mile service providers; and, directly supporting firms and social enterprises to develop models and products appropriate for smallholder producers. While direct support such as providing seeds or training to farmers is an important short-term measure, we transition from these activities to more systemic interventions through approaches that strengthen markets and institutions as soon as possible.

Read the full article about global food security at Save The Children.