For legitimate leadership in addressing the increasingly severe global food crisis, the United States needs to appoint a food security expert to the position of ambassador to the United Nations Rome-based agencies with the technical expertise and diplomacy skills necessary to foster better international cooperation.
The international community is contending with an increasingly severe food crisis, with some 349 million people in the world facing acute food insecurity today, over triple the level in 2018. This crisis is the result of the compounding impacts of the war in Ukraine and the lingering effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, layered on top of the ongoing challenges of climate change and regional conflicts.
The U.S. has three ambassadors in Rome: for Italy, the Vatican, and the U.N. Rome-based agencies. This last ambassador role represents U.S. interests to the Food and Agriculture Organization, the World Food Programme, the International Fund for Agricultural Development, and the Committee on World Food Security. It is arguably the most technical and consequential in an era of high global food insecurity. This post, which was vacated in early April by Cindy McCain when she became executive director of WFP, is critical for shaping international cooperation around food and agricultural issues.
About the author
William Moseley
William Moseley is DeWitt Wallace professor of geography and director of the program for food, agriculture, and society at Macalester College in Saint Paul, Minnesota. He also sits on the steering committee of the U.N. high-level panel of experts for food security and nutrition.
