This piece originally appeared on Agri-Pulse.
By David Beasley, Executive Director, World Food Programme
Editor's Note: Agri-Pulse and the Chicago Council on Global Affairs are teaming up to host a monthly column to explore how the US agriculture and food sector can maintain its competitive edge and advance food security in an increasingly integrated and dynamic world.
Twenty million people in Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan and Yemen are now in danger of starvation. In these countries, there are about 1.5 million severely malnourished children even closer to death. It is as if every child under the age of 5 in Florida and North Carolina was teetering on the brink of death from hunger.
As with any of us who are parents, their mothers and fathers and even their older siblings will do whatever they can to help the family survive. It is important to remember that poverty and hunger create conditions that weaken nations and regions and provide a fertile ground for extremist ideologies to flourish.
Humanitarian assistance – especially the food aid distributed by the UN World Food Programme – is one way to combat extremists. This is my message to President Trump and his friends and allies. Proposed massive cuts to food assistance would do long-term harm to our national security interests.