Dan Glickman, The Chicago Council of Global Affairs’ Global Agricultural Development Initiative cochair and former US Secretary of Agriculture, recently traveled with the global poverty-fighting organization CARE on a Learning Tour to Guatemala and Honduras. There, he learned about effective US investments in food and nutrition security and saw firsthand the role that smallholder farmers and communities play in promoting local solutions.

Guatemala and Honduras both face high rates of malnutrition and hunger. Guatemala has the highest malnutrition rate in the Western hemisphere and the fourth highest rate worldwide, while an estimated 60 percent of Hondurans suffer from hunger and malnutrition.

In a new video from CARE, Secretary Glickman describes the innovative food security and agricultural development initiatives he observed in these Central American countries, from mothers’ groups in rural Guatemala who discuss their children’s nutrition and talks with Guatemala’s food and supermarket industry leaders about purchasing from local farmers, to meetings with high-level government leaders in Honduras and visits to smallholder Honduran papaya farms.



“I have spent much of my life working on agricultural issues,” Secretary Glickman notes. “Food production is very complicated. But at its heart is agricultural policy. We need policies that ensure that people can grow and buy enough nutritious food for themselves and for their families.” He goes on to observe that, “when you see these programs firsthand, you see lasting solutions to poverty that are found among the people and communities living in poverty. And if you empower one life, one woman, you really do empower the entire community.”

In addition to his leadership at The Chicago Council and at the USDA, Secretary Glickman is vice president of The Aspen Institute and executive director of The Aspen Institute Congressional Program, senior fellow at the Bipartisan Policy Center where he cochairs The Democracy Project, and a former Congressman from Kansas.

Read the findings from CARE’s Learning Tour to Guatemala and Honduras for additional details, and visit CARE’s website to learn more about their efforts to combat world hunger and ensure global food security.