Food security means having, at all times, both physical and economic access to sufficient food to meet dietary needs for a productive and healthy life. A family is food secure when its members do not live in hunger or fear of hunger. Food insecurity is often rooted in poverty and has long-term impacts on the ability of families, communities, and countries to develop and prosper. Prolonged undernourishment stunts growth slows cognitive development and increases susceptibility to illness.

Today, more than 800 million people across the globe go to bed hungry every night, most of them smallholder farmers who depend on agriculture to make a living and feed their families. Despite an explosion in the growth of urban slums over the last decade, nearly 75 percent of poor people in developing countries live in rural areas. Growth in the agriculture sector — from farm to fork — has been shown to be at least twice as effective in reducing poverty as growth in other sectors.

Investing in these smallholder farmers—many of whom are women—and the food systems that nourish them is more important than ever. Given scarcity of natural resources and other challenges, the world will need to be more efficient in how it meets this demand. To ensure that people have sufficient food, aligning short-term assistance with a long-term development strategy can help countries feed their own people by addressing acute need as well as the root causes of hunger, poverty and malnutrition.