Food Security is National Security: U.S. Leadership in Global Food and Water Security

With hunger affecting close to one in twelve people worldwide, America’s leadership in promoting global food security has led to a safer, stronger world. American farmers have played a key role, supplying an estimated 40% of all global food assistance. As U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins has said, “We feed the world. We lead the world.”

U.S. international food assistance is closely tied to U.S. national and economic security. In the previous appropriations cycle, Members of Congress voted on a broad, bipartisan basis to sustain international food assistance programs, and U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and Department of State leadership have repeatedly emphasized the strategic imperative of these programs in feeding the world’s hungry and expanding U.S. economic opportunities, which support farming communities at home.