AgWired

General Mills CEO Kendall Powell says his company and his employees are very simply “hungry to help” people in Africa by increasing their food supply.

“We’re hungry to help the entrepreneur in Tanzania who is trying to package her products and access new markets,” Powell said during an address at the World Food Prize symposium on Thursday. “We’re hungry to help the food scientist in Zambia searching for solutions to retain food flavor and optimize nutrients. And we’re hungry to help the farmer in Malawi who, by selling her crop, will generate the money needed to support her family and pay for her children to go to school.”

Powell said General Mills is uniquely qualified to help Africa in a number of areas, such as food processing, but he believes all food companies will eventually be in Africa. “Africa’s economy grew 5.7% in the last decade and is expected to grow 5.5% this year,” he said. “The African continent is ripe with opportunity.” But, he says they are there today because they can help African processors, farmers and communities now.

Partners in Food Solutions (PFS) is a nonprofit organization that links the technical and business expertise of volunteer employees from General Mills, Cargill and Royal DSM to small and medium-sized mills and food processors in the developing world. Powell announced an expansion of that effort through a renewed public-private partnership with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

Listen to Powell’s comments here: General Mills CEO Kendall Powell

View the World Food Prize Photo Album here.

Less people in the world are going hungry but less is still too many.

The 2012 Global Hunger Index (GHI) released by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) at the World Food Prize symposium on Thursday shows that hunger on a global scale remains “serious” and 20 countries have levels of hunger that are “alarming” or “extremely alarming.”

The good news is that the 2012 world GHI is down 26 percent from the 1990 world GHI, from a score of 19.8 to 14.7.

Presenting the report during a breakfast on Thursday, IFPRI Deputy Director Claudia Ringler said they found that those countries facing high levels of hunger also face scarcity of natural resources, limited access to clean water and sanitation and modern forms of energy, and insecure land rights. “While the picture is somewhat grim in the report, the importance is to focus on the solutions and what we can do to reduce hunger and malnutrition levels, and there’s a lot we can do,” she said.

Listen to my interview with Claudia here: Claudia Ringler, IFPRI

View the World Food Prize Photo Album here.

The moderator and one of the participants on the opening panel at the World Food Prize symposium Borlaug Dialogues have authored books aimed at increasing awareness of world hunger and how we can feed a growing population.

Sir Gordon Conway’s book “One Billion Hungry – Can We Feed the World?” basically is the long version of his simple answer “Yes.”

“But there’s lots of ‘buts,'” Conway clarifies. “Very simply it says that the routes forward to food security are through appropriate innovation, markets that connect small holders, through people – particularly the half billion small holders in the world, and finally through political leadership.”

Sir Gordon notes that animal protein is important for healthy young people, “but the bigger question is to what extent can we produce enough grain to feed the massive growth in livestock production?”

Listen my interview with Sir Gordon here: Sir Gordon Conway interview

Roger Thurow is Senior Fellow with the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and former Wall Street Journal reporter who dedicated his life to raising awareness of world hunger after doing a series of stories on famine in Africa in 2003. “What I saw there basically changed my career, changed my life,” he said. “Instead of moving from story to story, place to place and country to country, this is the story I really need to cover. So, now I write books about it.”

Thurow has written several books on the topic of hunger, his latest being “The Last Hunger Season” which details a year in an African farm community. The Hunger Season refers to the time between when food from a previous harvest runs out and the next harvest begins. It is actually being made into a documentary and you can find out more about it on TheLastHungerSeason.com.

Roger made a great comment when I asked him about the role of GMO crops in places like Africa, noting that is important for those countries to be able to make up their own minds on the issue. “There’s a great African saying that ‘when elephants fight, the grass gets trampled’ … the elephants are the U.S. and Europe and the grass is Africa.”

Listen my interview with Roger here: Roger Thurow interview

View the World Food Prize Photo Album here.