Today marks the start of Feed the Future Week, a week-long event that highlights the progress and potential for the world to end global hunger. The U.S. Government’s Feed the Future initiative also announced the launch of its 2019 Annual Report with data on its global results.

This year’s report includes data on the initiative’s global impact in empowering women in the international food and agriculture sector, which is key to ending global hunger. Women make up nearly half the agricultural labor force in developing countries and, while they own just one-third of small and medium-sized businesses in emerging markets, that number is growing. When women are economically empowered, their success leads to more-inclusive growth, better nutrition and health, and less hunger – all of which build resilience and self-reliance.

Feed the Future, a $1 billion dollar initiative in FY 2018, has helped millions of women overcome barriers to reaching their full economic potential, such as limited credit and land rights. In areas where Feed the Future worked over three years, 2.6 million more women gained access to credit, 3.3 million more women had reasonable workloads, and 3.7 million more women had greater input into productive decisions like what to plant. In the past year alone, Feed the Future helped nearly three million women producers use new technologies and modern farming methods, and provided professional training to over 420,000 women on nutrition. Since 2010, when Feed the Future began, 8.2 million more women are living free from hunger.

The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) is one of the U.S. Government Agencies that contributes to Feed the Future. As the U.S. Government’s initiative to combat global hunger, poverty and malnutrition, Feed the Future draws on the resources and expertise of various U.S. Federal Departments and Agencies, private companies, U.S. universities and non-governmental organizations to solve some of the most intractable challenges of global hunger. By investing in long-term food security, Feed the Future also helps U.S. businesses compete and expand into new markets, while building a more stable, secure world.

Feed the Future’s work to empower women in the food and agriculture sector supports the goal of the Women’s Global Development and Prosperity (W-GDP) initiative, the first whole-of-Government effort to advance global women's economic empowerment, to reach 50 million women in the developing world by 2025.

Visit www.feedthefuture.gov to learn more.