With close to 300 million people in need of urgent humanitarian assistance around the world, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and other top leaders joined the USGLC stage – moderated by Secretary Dan Glickman – to tackle the growing threats to global food security and celebrate 70 years of President Eisenhower’s Food for Peace legacy.

• Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack on America’s role in the world: “When the U.S. is on the field, the world’s a safer and better place. When the U.S. makes the decision to take itself off the field… that vacuum… creates chaotic circumstances.”
• Representative Steny Hoyer (D-MD) on global hunger: “The tradeoff is between a stable world — a fed world, if you will… and if [people are] not fed, it will cost us much more money.”
• Former World Food Program chief David Beasley on the global stakes: “In the short term, we’ve got to end wars and conflict, so we don’t have mass migration and destabilization and hunger… If you’re not going to do it [support global food programs] out of the goodness of your heart, you better do it based on your financial interests and your national security interests.”
• Deere and Company’s Cory Reed: “Global agriculture has produced more than 50% more food in the last two decades alone than it did just 20 years ago.”
• USAID’s Dina Esposito on global humanitarian crises: “Thanks to the generosity of the American people in the US Congress, we have kept tens of millions of people off the knife’s edge with our emergency food assistance.”