Background

In October 2008, The Chicago Council on Global Affairs, with support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, convened a bipartisan group of foreign policy and development leaders to develop a set of science-based recommendations that confronted the challenge of global poverty through improved agricultural productivity and incomes of those on small farms in Africa and South Asia, where the majority of the global poor reside. Released in February 2009, the group’s report, Renewing American Leadership in the Fight Against Global Hunger and Poverty: The Chicago Initiative on Global Agricultural Development, provided the incoming U.S. administration and 111th Congress with an objective assessment of the risks posed by rural poverty and food insecurity in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia and a series of recommendations for how these risks could be significantly alleviated through a refocusing of U.S. foreign assistance on agricultural development.

The findings and recommendations put forth in the final report were formulated by the Global Agricultural Development Leaders Group, with support from the Global Agricultural Development Experts Committee.


Back to About Us