President Biden seeks to end hunger in the US by 2030

US President Joe Biden on Wednesday set a goal of ending hunger and reducing diet-related disease in the United States by 2030, opening the first White House conference on hunger in 50 years. Experts were convened at the meeting to discuss how the world’s largest provider of food aid can better feed its own.

One in 10 American households is food insecure, according to figures from the US Department of Agriculture.

For their part, food advocates point out that that figure includes 9 million American children, a population that Biden highlighted in his speech to attendees.

“Just last week at the United Nations, I spoke about the commitments we are making to tackle food insecurity around the world,” he explained. “Because in every country in the world and in every state in this country, no matter what separates us, if a parent can’t feed his child, there’s nothing else that that parent cares about.”

“If you look at your son and you can’t feed him, what else matters?” added the president.

Hunger is a global phenomenon, and the US is not the most affected country. The latest Global Food Security Index places the US in 13th place among the safest nations in the world in terms of availability and access to food.

On Wednesday, Biden announced a series of measures from the federal government, and the availability of $8 billion for public and private sector commitments, including plans to increase free school meals and expand food-related government benefits. for children and families.

“I will say that it is a very ambitious goal to end hunger by 2030,” he told the VOA via Zoom Noreen Springstead, CEO of WhyHunger, a global organization based in New York. “There are a lot of things that the federal government can do. But it really has to be a joint effort of the federal government, state government, local government, corporations, philanthropy and all of civil society.

“So I am voicing the idea that they need to bring all of government to the table, this interagency task force is really looking at the intersections of hunger and health, hunger and education, hunger and housing.”

Challenges cross borders. Food insecurity increased during the pandemic and also after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“The pandemic and the war against Ukraine have shown us that global supply chains are very fragile, and that if we depend totally on them, we are putting ourselves in danger,” said Danielle Nierenberg, who runs a nonprofit called Food Tank.

“And what we need is more investment from governments and from the private sector and from regional and local supply chains so that there are more mills in certain areas or regions, that there are more canneries and canneries, and that there are more means for food to get from one place to another.

According to Springstead, making food cheaper itself is only part of the challenge.

“Economic justice must be one of the pillars, and raising the minimum wage to one that is truly decent” is vital, he said.

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