Williamson, who also serves as a U.S. Agency for International Development agroeconomic consultant, discussed both the root causes of global hunger and proposed ways to solve it. Cowan, meanwhile, stumped for the 1billionhungry project, a U.N. hunger awareness program that she directs.
Williamson whose interest in agricultural policies of poor countries began with his own experiences growing up in rural Mississippi said food security is an underpublicized concept and challenged audience members to think about the different ways in which food is threatened in poor communities across the world. Food security which Williamson defined as "access to sufficient, safe, nutritious food to maintain a healthy and active life" is based on the three pillars of food availability, monetary access to food and knowledge of nutrition and sanitation. If one of the three pillars is missing, hunger results, as demonstrated by the one billion people starving in the world, he said.
There is currently enough food in the world to ensure that nobody goes hungry, but ignorance, selfishness, a lack of infrastructure and skewed political interests result in low food security for the world's poor, Williamson said.
To illustrate the negative effects of globalization, Williamson recounted how developed countries withheld tractors and agricultural education from people residing in a fertile region of the Nile Basin in Sudan and Ethiopia because government officials from developing countries believed local farmers would damage Midwestern farming interests.
"This area, which has the potential to be the breadbasket of the world, is stagnating because it also has the potential to put Midwestern farmers out of business," he said.
Although the overall percentage of hungry people in the world has dropped over the past decade, the number of individuals who are starving has increased over the same time period, Williamson said. The population of Africa is expected to double to $2 billion by 2050, further exacerbating the strain on agricultural production, according to Williamson.
Collaborative Research Support Programs international cooperative groups that research crop yield improvement have worked with President Barack Obama's Feed the Future Initiative to improve agricultural output in Africa, according to Williamson. Based on his own experience evaluating a peanut CRSP in Burkina Faso and the vast amount of undeveloped fertile land that remains in Africa, Williamson said the continent has the potential to become "agriculture's next frontier."
Cowan's 1billionhungry project first began when the Director-General of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization asked her to refine an online petition calling for an end to world hunger, she said. Cowan's team transformed the simple petition into a worldwide movement, garnering attention from celebrities, mass media and social networks, while collecting three million signatures in its first six months.
While the project has earned over half a million signatures in Pakistan, it has garnered only 20,000 signatures in the United States, a trend that is partially due to the difficulty of spreading a message with a small budget in an "environment of low understanding," Cowan said. Cowan will host a discussion Thursday evening in the Haldeman Center to gather suggestions from students regarding how to best spread awareness about her project, she said.
"Unless the hearts and minds of a critical mass of people want to end hunger and national governments feel the weight of popular demand, it won't happen," Cowan said.
Cowan discussed the excitement of effecting social change, while lamenting the pervasiveness of worldwide starvation.
"There are a billion people now living lives of quiet misery," Cowan said. "I'm talking a billion people who are unable day to day to get their hands on enough food."
The joint lecture, "Capacity Building for Food Security: Africa's Agricultural Challenges for the 21st Century," took place in the Haldeman Center and was sponsored by the Dartmouth Coalition for Global Health.
