We provide children and families with the means to fight hunger and achieve food security. Food security means that families will know where their next meal is coming from — and that it will be nutritious and hearty enough to help them live an active, healthy life. Specifically, we help by:

• Increasing agricultural productivity through improved seed and farming practices
• Improving access to markets so farming families can sell their surplus food
• Teaching families and communities about dietary diversity and how to improve nutrition
• Managing resources in a sustainable way to prevent soil erosion, maintain soil fertility, use water more efficiently and protect the environment

There are a number of common misconceptions about food insecurity. Here are some of them:

• “People go hungry because there isn’t ENOUGH food in the world.” This is mostly false. There is enough food to eat for everyone but due to extreme poverty, many people cannot access sufficient nutritious food.
• A second misconception would be the “security” part of the term food security. This is about the ability of a family, child, woman, to have a consistent reliable source of nutritious food. Is their source of food secure from poverty, natural disaster, conflict?
• Famines occur when there is a sudden drought, flood, and war that prevents people from accessing food. However, the fact is that more people die or experience significant health problems because of chronic food insecurity. Chronic food insecurity means that people continually are at risk of 1) not having enough food to eat 2) not having sufficient nutritious food. Day to day, it’s a struggle for them to get enough food and the right kinds of food. Often the stories of chronic food insecurity are not in the news because it’s every-day life for the poorest families. We have found that, over time, these chronic food shortages are even more damaging to a child’s health than sudden onset of famine.

Food security is defined as when all people, at all times, have access to enough (quantity), nutritious (quality), safe, personally acceptable and culturally appropriate foods, produced in ways that are environmentally sound and socially just. 

Food is a basic human right. Food security is comprised of four key pillars (availability, access, utilization and stability). Agriculture primarily contributes towards the “food availability” pillar through production of diverse and nutritionally rich foods (crops and animals). However, it also contributes towards “access” when farmers sell surplus farm produce. Agriculture refers to the practice of farming to produce food through cultivation of crops or rearing and keeping of animals. Without nutritious food, children can’t develop into the active, brilliant kids we know they can be. Sadly, lack of food is the reality for far too many of the world’s children. Food crises affect the most vulnerable, as rising food prices, transportation costs and environmental factors make it difficult for families to meet their needs.