Devex Dish: A moment to honor food security innovators

Greetings, Dish readers! The past week has been a whirlwind of celebration around the folks doing some of the world’s most transformative work to create more sustainable and equitable food systems — along with high-dollar prizes to continue that work. First up, this year’s World Food Prize Borlaug Dialogue in Des Moines, Iowa, brought together some 1,300 scientists, farmers, and agribusiness leaders from more than 75 countries. The theme of “Harnessing Change” seemed especially fitting in an era where climate shocks and conflicts are wreaking havoc on food security worldwide. This year’s World Food Prize winner was Heidi Kühn, who was honored at a ceremony last week. Kühn is the founder of the nonprofit Roots of Peace, which focuses on the direct link between conflict and hunger by restoring agriculture to war zones. Event organizers made the surprise announcement that the prize would be doubled to $500,000, starting with Kühn. Land mines aren’t just deadly for the people who step on them — they are also hugely destructive to the lands in which they’re planted. Take Ukraine: Historically known as the breadbasket of Europe, estimates show that as much as 30% of its land may now be riddled with mines and unexploded ordnance due to its war with Russia. “I think it was very shocking to the people in the audience. They've really never connected conflict to agricultural production and food security,” Kühn tells Devex. Roots of Peace also works in places from Vietnam to Afghanistan to Croatia. Last week, Kühn also announced the Demine, Replant, Rebuild Alliance, a new partnership with Roots of Peace, Mines Advisory Group, Tetra Tech, and the Rotary Club of Odesa, which aims to demine the war-torn vineyards of southern Ukraine and restore it as a thriving, productive wine region. With the help of a $160,000 Rotary Global Grant, the team has already started the process of clearing ordnance from the grape fields of Mykolaiv, near Odesa. The next step will be to rebuild bombed-out bottling facilities and replace the grape rootstock, returning it to a vineyard once again. Local vintners will also be flown out to California’s Napa Valley to get trained in best practices. “Wine has been a celebration of life for thousands of years,” Kühn says. “This is about as clear as you can get, to take this bloodshed and turn it into wine and to toast to peace.” Finally, in Des Moines, Kühn joined 11 past World Food Prize laureates in a letter asking the U.S. Congress and other governments to increase food aid and agricultural assistance even during — and especially during — times of war. ICYMI: Humanitarian restoring agriculture to war zones wins World Food Price A mouthful “Whether it’s in Gaza or whether it’s in Ukraine or anywhere else in the world, we are called to a responsibility and called to action to harness change and to provide assistance and help.” --— Thomas Vilsack, U.S. agriculture secretary Vilsack was the keynote speaker on day one in Des Moines last week, where he announced a new $1 billion in-kind commitment to address the global hunger crisis. The U.S. Department of Agriculture will purchase American commodities — of which there is a surplus — and work with the U.S. Agency for International Development to distribute them worldwide to countries facing food insecurity. Funds for the initiative will come from the Commodity Credit Corporation, or CCC. In the same speech Vilsack announced $1.3 billion to diversify and expand export opportunities for U.S. farmers. It all comes as Congress failed to pass the U.S. farm bill — which governs U.S. foreign food assistance programs, among many other things — by its five-year reauthorization deadline on Sept. 30. Key food aid provisions are now in limbo, though they’re operating in the meantime. Senate agriculture leaders recently requested that USDA use CCC to support American farmers amid funding constraints while the farm bill awaits passage. Background reading: $1 trillion US farm bill authorizing foreign food aid unlikely by deadline + Devex Pro members can read our piece on the effect of U.S. budget delays on an important early pledge for IFAD. If you aren’t a Pro member yet, start your 15-day free trial now to unlock the piece and all our exclusive reporting and analysis. One acre at a time Meanwhile in Los Angeles, the 2023 Conrad N. Hilton Humanitarian Prize was presented last week to the One Acre Fund, which works with smallholder farmers in Africa to increase profits by optimizing their yields. The $2.5 million in unrestricted funding is the world’s largest annual humanitarian award. A workers’ strike at the eponymous Beverly Hilton hotel meant that this year’s award was shifted to the Skirball Center, a museum and cultural space nestled in the Santa Monica mountains. Speaking to Devex at the event, Andrew Youn, One Acre Fund co-founder and executive director, said the organization’s current focus is testing and piloting climate-resilient farming solutions. In particular, One Acre is focusing on precision agriculture, which aligns planting with rain and soil moisture, as well as investing in tree-based crops, which provide wood and are more resilient to climate fluctuations like drought. The prize money will facilitate testing these strategies and ultimately scaling them. As of now, One Acre reaches around 1.6 million farm families across nine countries. The organization hopes to reach 10 million families by 2030. “I think it's a very important moment for our farmers and climate, and there's a lot of practical tools that we have to help farmers become more resilient to climate change,” he said. Hungry for data A net-zero future won’t happen unless the agricultural sector does its part to reduce its environmental footprint. After all, food systems are responsible for one-third of human-made greenhouse gas emissions. But it’s impossible to measure impact without data, writes Karen Smyth, program director for SEBI-Livestock, or the Centre for Supporting Evidence-Based Interventions in Livestock, in an opinion piece for Devex. “Right now, large gaps in essential data are leaving decision-makers shooting in the dark at where best to focus agricultural emission-reduction efforts — and with better data, the world has a stronger chance to navigate the complexities of a sustainable food system transition,” she writes. Opinion: To plan agricultural emissions reduction, start with better data Chew on this Desperate Gazans broke into a UNRWA warehouse in search of food and other basic supplies. [BBC] Flooding in Vietnam is wreaking havoc on crops, causing landslides and the inundation of thousands of homes. [VOA] Ukraine is set to implement mandatory registration of food export companies to curb tax avoidance in the export of its key agrarian goods. [Reuters]