Obama Signs Global Food Security Act to Fight Hunger

Earlier this week, in an effort to accelerate efforts to eliminate hunger, malnutrition and poverty across the globe, President Obama signed the Global Food Security Act of 2016, a bipartisan bill focused on worldwide food security.

At the White House Summit on Global Development, Obama promoted the act as a stepping stone to the financial and agricultural development of countries who currently suffer from food insecurity. The Global Food Security act would put $7 billion in U.S. dollars towards initiatives that promote agriculture, nutrition of women and children and small food producers.

"No society can flourish, children can't flourish if they're going hungry. We can't ask a child to feed her mind when she can barely feed her stomach," Obama said in his summit remarks. According to USA Today, this isn't the first time Obama has taken action to promote global food security. In 2009, Obama created the Feed for the Future initiative to work with other nations to tackle the issue of rising world food prices.

In 2015 alone, Feed the Future helped 9 million farmers and rural families improve their agricultural productivity—and boosted their collective income by $800 million— and in areas where this program is active, poverty has been reduced by up to 26 percent. "The most critical part of Feed the Future is its ability to listen to countries and respond to the need of those countries," Agnes Kalibata, president of the Alliance for Green Revolution in Africa, said during Wednesday's conference.

"If you care about human dignity... if you care about addressing inequality and creating trade and prosperity that works for all and not just some, then you're going to have to pay attention to development. You're going to have to make an investment," President Obama remarked. And the Global Food Security Act, he hopes, will be an investment that impacts the lives of the impoverished and hungry around the world for the better.