Publications
The below publications are authored by or affiliated with The Chicago Council on Global Affairs.
2011 Progress Report on U.S. Leadership in Global Agricultural Development
The 2011 Progress Report on U.S. Leadership in Global Agricultural Development documents the degree to which the Administration and Congress have made progress in achieving the changes in U.S. government policy that were recommended in The Chicago Council's 2009 report Renewing American Leadership in the Fight Against Global Hunger and Poverty. It is the first of several annual reports intended to monitor the pursuit of long-term national goals, whose results will be seen in the future stability and prosperity of today's food-security hot spots. The Progress Report shows that the U.S. is indeed exerting stronger leadership in global agricultural development, with positive changes since 2008 in the directions recommended by The Chicago Council. Improvements consist mainly of building partnerships and making organizational changes to improve the efficiency of new investments. U.S. government institutions have been significantly reoriented and restructured to deliver more effective agricultural development programming.
Download the full report:
Full Report (PDF)
Leveraging Private Sector Investment in Developing Country Agrifood Systems
The for-profit sector is now a critical player in the shift from subsistence agricultural economies, where poverty and uncertainty perpetuate hunger, toward well-functioning commercial systems, where farmers can afford needed inputs and reach cash markets. Private-sector engagement is also essential for “scaling up” government-financed development projects, and for sustaining these projects after government funding is reduced or withdrawn. This policy paper consists of four sections. The first reiterates the benefits of sound private-sector investment in sustainable food security; it also explains the paper’s primary focus on investments from transnational corporations (TNCs) and describes how TNCs approach decisions on investment allocations. The second section highlights examples of TNC investments that have simultaneously benefited smallholders in developing countries while creating profits - or the potential for profits - for the investors. The third section explores how the US government engages with TNCs and incentivizes investments. The final section concludes with recommendations for TNCs, governments, and other players, with a view towards increasing TNC investments that both strengthen agricultural devel-opment and offer profits to TNCs.
Download the full report:
Full Report (PDF)
Renewing American Leadership in the Fight Against Hunger and Poverty: The Chicago Initiative on Global Agricultural Development
On February 25, 2009, a group of bipartisan foreign policy and development leaders convened by The Chicago Council on Global Affairs called for a renewed U.S. commitment to alleviating global poverty through agricultural development in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, the two regions with more than 700 million of the world's poorest people, most of them small farmers.The group's report, Renewing American Leadership in the Fight Against Hunger and Poverty: The Chicago Initiative on Global Agricultural Development, includes five recommendations and more than 20 specific suggestions for how the United States, through increased agricultural development assistance and partnerships at home and abroad, could help achieve the Millennium Development Goals and restore the United States as a force for positive change in the world.
Download the full report and executive summary:
Full Report (PDF)
Executive Summary (PDF)
ENOUGH: Why the World's Poorest Starve in an Age of Plenty
"How, in a world of plenty, can people be left to starve? We think 'It's just the way of the world.' But if it is the way of the world, we must overthrow the world. Enough is enough." – Bono
For more than forty years, humankind has had the knowledge, tools, and resources to end chronic hunger worldwide. Yet at the start of the twenty-first century, 25,000 people a day – and nearly six million children a year -- die of hunger, malnutrition, and related diseases. Malnutrition kills more Africans than AIDS and malaria combined. Launched in June 2009, Roger Thurow and Scott Kilman, award-winning writers on Africa, development, and agriculture, explain through vivid human stories how the agricultural revolutions that transformed Asia and South America stopped short in Africa.
Enough Website
Modernizing America's Farm and Food Policy: Vision for a New Direction
On September 27, 2006, The Chicago Council on Global Affairs released "Modernizing America's Farm and Food Policy: Vision for a New Direction," a report of task force findings and recommendations calling on Congress to end trade-distorting subsidies, redefine the farm safety net, transform the food stamp program, and reinvest in U.S. agriculture's future. Task Force members concluded that now, more than ever, agriculture policy must be determined by the need to invest in the future of U.S. agriculture and the real needs of rural America, the national economy, public health, and the environment.
Download the full report and executive summary:
Full Report (PDF)
Executive Summary (PDF)