This article was originally featured on the Reliefweb website and can be found here.
*Alleviating hunger means alleviating poverty, and The World Food Bank is creating an impact model that joins small-hold farmers with the education, tools, financing, and marketplace they need for success to make a real and permanent change *
Denver, Colorado – (July 14th, 2022): More than 800 million people worldwide are food insecure. It is taking precedence on the global stage, with Biden-Harris Administration recently announcing commitments to Advance Food Security in the Western Hemisphere. The World Food Bank is on the road to changing that globally with a goal of helping 51,000,000 people get out of poverty. This vital organization is disrupting worldwide poverty and hunger with a systemic approach. There is a gap in the global food system when resources are scarce. This can be alleviated through better integration of industry and political systems, especially systems that are market-driven, regenerative, and sustainable systems. The World Food Bank seeks to integrate major sectors within global agriculture systems and create a balanced and mutually-beneficial ecosystem that lifts smallholder farmers out of poverty and allows for the efficient distribution of food to those who need it.
“The World Food Back is a unique model to cure food insecurity. We are a for-profit company for one, and we’ve designed a system across multiple connected geographies, typically a country or countries, in order to create a suitably diversified system. We connect farmers with everything needed to build an integrated agricultural system,” says Richard Lackey, CEO and Chairman of the World Food Bank. “By teaching farmer’s best practices to share with others, and providing access to the tools, marketplace, and the financing – it all creates a sustainable business model for small-hold farmers to find success, relieving poverty, and leading to sustained food availability.”
A future of worldwide food security is possible with a plan. Here are World Food Bank programs to make that a reality:
- The World Food Bank™
The World Food Bank supports the building of sustainable food ecosystems. It integrates access to education, inputs, financing, and markets to create food product development in developing markets to increase local incomes and nutrition, and to secure a robust natural environment.
The World Food Bank is an asset-backed investment vehicle with two main components. One, it is a network of institutional quantities of dried commodities like corn, soy, wheat, sorghum, and rice, stored in air-tight containers for extended shelf-life and staged in strategic locations The commodities are purchased at guaranteed minimums to incentivize small farmers to use better inputs and crop management.. These commodities are then available where and when they are needed for sale in local markets when supply is limited. They also provide direct relief to victims of humanitarian crises when resources are scarce due to disaster or displacement.
- MEDIAE :
Food insecure geographical regions can provide more than enough food if farmers are better educated on good practices. To reach hundreds of millions, media is the key. Currently MEDIAE programs reach 12 million people each week. MEDIAE is an ecosystem approach to agriculture that includes TV and radio shows, special interest chat groups, online education and connections to inputs with interactive messaging, specialty groups for farmers and entrepreneurs, and connections to resources and markets. Extensive studies have shown that this media-based education directly impacts millions, lifting them sustainably out of poverty.
- Global Food Exchange
The US alone has 26 million-plus youth that don’t get sufficient nutrition. GFE upcycles crops and grocery store fruits and vegetables and adds fortification to create super-tasty energy and meal-replacement bars for kids at a fraction of market price. It also has a model for disaster preparedness that ensures millions can quickly be served food that is tasty and full of vitamins and minerals.
The World Food Bank “Envisions a world where there is no more hunger and where under-developed nations rise to the challenge of feeding the world’s growing population.”
Find out more about the World Food Bank Model at worldfoodbank.org/about/our-model/.
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About the World Food Bank
The World Food Bank is on a mission to revolutionize the agricultural markets in developing nations through an innovative investment platform that empowers stakeholders across sectors and creates efficiencies in food production and finance. Using extended shelf-life foods as our core asset, the World Food Bank leverages a standardized trading market and operates much like a bank. Our dried food products are held in reserve in a network of strategic locations around the globe. They are available for purchase when and where food is needed to normalize volatility in local food markets that are facing shortages due to market inefficiencies, environmental issues, or humanitarian crises.