§ 9301. Findings

Congress makes the following findings:

• (1) According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (referred to in this section as the “FAO”), 805,000,000 people worldwide suffer from chronic hunger. Hunger and malnutrition rob people of health and productive lives and stunt the mental and physical development of future generations.
• (2) According to the January 2014 “Worldwide Threat Assessment of the US Intelligence Community”—
  • (A) the “[l]ack of adequate food will be a destabilizing factor in countries important to US national security that do not have the financial or technical abilities to solve their internal food security problems”; and
  • (B) “[f]ood and nutrition insecurity in weakly governed countries might also provide opportunities for insurgent groups to capitalize on poor conditions, exploit international food aid, and discredit governments for their inability to address basic needs”.
• (3) A comprehensive approach to sustainable food and nutrition security should not only respond to emergency food shortages, but should also address malnutrition, resilience to food and nutrition insecurity, building the capacity of poor, rural populations to improve their agricultural productivity and incomes, removing institutional impediments to agricultural development, value chain access and efficiency, including processing and storage, enhancing agribusiness development, access to markets and activities that address the specific needs and barriers facing women and small-scale producers, education, and collaborative research.