Devex Dish: What Devex is following in food systems throughout 2025

Happy New Year, Dish readers! Hope you had a restful holiday season filled with some of your favorite foods.

We’re gearing up for the year ahead, which promises to be a big one for food systems transformation. Shoutout to Oliver Camp of the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition for compiling a list of 75 food-related events taking place throughout 2025.

As for us here at Devex, my colleague Ayenat Mersie has put together our own list of nine key global development moments and trends we’re watching in the food systems space. Among them are the road to the United Nations COP30 climate conference in Belém, Brazil; Donald Trump’s return to the U.S. presidency and what that means for U.S. foreign food aid; a big push for nutrition funding at the Nutrition for Growth Summit in Paris, France; and the African Union’s introduction of a new 10-year plan for agriculture on the continent.

We’re also closely watching how conflict and humanitarian crises are stretching foreign aid budgets — leading to devastating hunger and famine for millions of people in places including Sudan, South Sudan, Gaza, Haiti, and Mali. The World Food Programme faces a massive budget shortfall, forcing the organization to reduce the assistance it provides across the globe.

Meanwhile, the global institutions that monitor severe hunger and famine — namely, the USAID-funded Famine Early Warning Systems Network, or FEWS NET, and the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, or IPC — have recently come under fire, FEWS Net both for its report warning of imminent famine in northern Gaza and for the fact that it withdrew said report under U.S. pressure, and IPC for its report showing the spread of famine in Sudan, which prompted the Sudanese government to withdraw its participation in the system. These events show the difficulty of assessing hunger levels in highly politicized crises and underscore the importance of monitoring to ensure aid delivery to vulnerable people.

As always, we’d love to hear from you. Did we miss anything in our list? What are the food systems stories you’d like to see us cover in 2025? Let us know by emailing dish@devex.com.

Read: 2025 in food systems — 9 key things to watch 

A mouthful

This year the African Union will set in motion a new 10-year agenda to build strong and resilient agrifood systems across the continent, push climate-resilient agriculture, and improve people’s livelihoods. Starting tomorrow, African leaders will gather in Kampala, Uganda, for the Extraordinary Summit to adopt the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme, or CAADP, strategy and action plan for 2026-2035. They’ll also adopt the Kampala Declaration to succeed the 2014 Malabo Declaration for accelerated agricultural growth.

Through these frameworks, governments “play a pivotal role in enabling climate adaptation for smallholder farmers, who are the backbone of Africa’s food systems,” Kalibata writes in an opinion piece for Devex’s “Predictions for Global Development” series for the year ahead.

“By implementing policies that prioritize climate-resilient agriculture, states can support farmers in adopting sustainable practices and accessing critical resources,” she adds.

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Read on for the full list of predictions from global development professionals.  

Read: 2025, a year for Africa’s pivot to sustainable agriculture 

Reading the tea leaves

Want even more insight to prepare for a busy year? Today at 11 a.m. ET (5 p.m. CET), Devex’s President and Editor-in-Chief Raj Kumar is sitting down with our Pro members in an exclusive “ask me anything” session that will explore key global development stories to watch in 2025.

Every year, Raj moderates hundreds of global development events and spends his days speaking to executives, social entrepreneurs, philanthropists, NGO chiefs, and policy and political leaders across the global development space, giving him a unique perspective on what to prepare for.

Save your spot now.

This event is one of the special offerings of a Devex Pro membership. Not yet gone Pro? Start your 15-day free trial today to access all our expert analyses, insider insights, funding data, exclusive events and career resources, and more.

All eyes on the US farm bill

The United States’ farm bill has been extended yet again — giving nine more months of life to legislation that’s supposed to be reauthorized every five years. The decision came after months of congressional debate, along with two competing proposals from the Republican-led House and Democratic-led Senate agricultural committees. But as Capitol Hill scrambled to avoid a government shutdown late last year, Congress decided to leave the farm bill untouched until Sept. 30, 2025. Now, the country’s international food assistance program — including its flagship Food for Peace initiative — will continue operating under legislation created before both the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine.

“We are in a fine place in terms of being able to operate. We have an extension until September 30, and there’s time for the new Congress to work on the bill,” Katharine Nasielski, the director of government relations at CARE, tells my colleague Elissa Miolene. “But policywise, there was so much work done in the last year, that we were just hoping it would have been tied up before the end of the Congress.”

Farm bill negotiations will now take place under total Republican rule, with the party set to control the White House, Senate, and House of Representatives by the end of the month. And as Washington reshuffles itself for Trump’s return, the proposal put forward by the Republican-led House might get the boost it needs to become law. Last year, USAID warned that this version of the bill could result in 2.3 million fewer people receiving food aid across the world, with many aid agencies stating that proposed earmarks could strip the flexibility they need to deliver food in emergency situations.

“Its provisions would effectively end our work to address the root causes of global hunger and malnutrition and seriously compromise humanitarian food aid programs,” wrote Catholic Relief Services, CARE, Mercy Corps, Save the Children, and World Vision in a statement last year. “At a time of rising hunger and malnutrition, this is unacceptable.”

Still, Nasielski said that food aid isn’t a totally partisan issue. For decades, such assistance has received support from both Republicans and Democrats — especially because of the stake American farmers have in its delivery. In 2023 alone, USAID purchased 1.1 million metric tons of food from farmers across the country, bringing sorghum, corn, beans, and other commodities to 45 million people throughout the globe.

“There are folks on both sides of the aisle who have different perspectives based on what kind of commodities are in their state,” Nasielski tells Elissa. “So I don’t know that we’re necessarily anticipating a copy-paste of the House bill. But I do think that those policy priorities have a much bigger chance.”

Background reading: US House advances farm bill that could strip food aid from 2.3 million 

Chew on this

Israeli forces on Sunday opened fire on a WFP convoy carrying eight staff members in Gaza. [WFP]

A new study links the rise of diabetes and heart disease with consumption of sugary drinks, with a disproportionate share of cases in Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa. [The New York Times]

Career advice from a nutrition adviser at USAID. [Devex]

Climate change threatens Kenya’s celebrated coffee and the farmers whose livelihoods depend on it. [BBC]

Elissa Miolene contributed to this edition of Devex Dish.