World Food Program USA Applauds New USDA Funding to Address Global Hunger Crisis

On October 24 in Des Moines, Iowa at the World Food Prize’s annual Borlaug Dialogue event, United States Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack announced that the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) will provide an additional $1 billion to help address critical global hunger needs. The funds will be drawn from the Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC) and used to purchase U.S.-grown commodities for humanitarian food aid programs.

The announcement comes after a bipartisan group of senators led by Senator Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) and Senator John Boozman (R-AR) issued a letter in September urging USDA to respond to worsening global hunger emergencies by tapping into this important funding source. This CCC funding will provide a critical injection of resources into global humanitarian food responses while simultaneously supporting American farmers.

The world is facing a historic hunger crisis, just as governments around the world have drastically reduced their funding to humanitarian organizations like the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP). This year, the U.N. World Food Programme faces a funding shortfall of over 60%, which has forced nearly half of the organization’s country operations to cut or reduce rations for vulnerable families. Currently, 345 million people around the world are facing crisis levels of hunger, 200 million more than pre-pandemic levels.

This latest USDA funding announcement adds another chapter in the United States’ long legacy of leading the global response to hunger emergencies. World Food Program USA is grateful to USDA and Congressional champions for this ambitious act, one that will provide a lifeline to millions of people facing hunger and provide greater stability to a suffering world.