President Joe Biden will announce that the United States will provide $2.9 billion in humanitarian funding with the aim of alleviating a global food crisis.
Biden is set to elaborate on the various investments during his Wednesday morning address before the United Nations General Assembly. The president and top administration officials have consistently pointed to the war in Ukraine, climate change, and complications sparked by the coronavirus pandemic as the major stressors on the global food supply.
SULLIVAN: BIDEN TO ANNOUNCE ‘ROBUST’ NEW FOOD SECURITY COMMITMENTS AT UNGA
The bulk of the U.S. commitments is happening at USAID, where $2 billion will be allocated to “help save lives in countries facing food security crises, including through food and nutrition assistance, healthcare, safe drinking water, protection for the most vulnerable, and other vital relief.”
Biden also plans to announce $140 million in new development funding for the U.S. government’s Feed the Future program in sub-Saharan Africa, $220 million to set up eight “school feeding projects” in Africa and East Asia through the McGovern-Dole International Food for Education and Child Nutrition Program, $178 million for the Department of Agriculture’s Food For Progress program aimed at facilitating “climate-smart agriculture” and trade in Central America, and a $245 million Accelerated Growth Corridors project in Malawi.
National security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters Tuesday that Biden will additionally call on countries for the elimination of “export bans and of hoarding so that there is a better supply of food to the world market and overall prices come down.”
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“Because the impacts of climate change on the agricultural land of many countries in many parts of the world is significant and severe, and through some combination of technology and adaptation, we believe we can help protect that land so that we can continue to get the level of food production necessary to reduce global food insecurity,” Sullivan added. “He’ll speak to all of those things, both with leaders in New York and he will have a robust section of his speech devoted to global food security as well.”
You can watch the rest of Biden’s speech here.
