“Millions of people will die,” said Andy Harrington.

Governments are drastically slashing their international development assistance budgets to focus on domestic concerns and military spending.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs warns that global funding for humanitarian aid fell by a third in 2025.

“It’s really quite catastrophic,” said Harrington.

WHY IT MATTERS: Millions of people will die.

Harrington said he was standing outside a childhood malnutrition centre in South Sudan earlier this year where there was a lineup of children suffering from hunger.

“We’re not talking, ‘we missed a meal here;’ we’re talking seriously acute malnutrition with consequences for life,” he said.

As he was taking in that disturbing scene, he was informed that the centre would be shutting down in 24 hours with no prior notice.

It was one of 1,100 centres being shuttered in South Sudan alone, all casualties of budget cuts at the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

The Lancet, a medical journal published in the United Kingdom, estimates that 14 million people will die by 2030 because of the USAID belt-tightening.

But it is not just USAID. The UK, Germany, the European Union and many other governments around the world are also chopping their humanitarian aid budgets.

The Canadian government announced in its 2025 budget that it will be reducing foreign aid spending by $2.7 billion between 2026 and 2030.

Harrington has been told that most of the cuts will be to long-term development programs rather than emergency assistance.

In the meantime, global hunger is spreading at a pace not seen in decades.

“Gaza crossed into famine, following Sudan, where famine started in 2024 and grew in 2025,” he said.

“These are stark reminders of the human cost of inaction, and how quickly hunger can escalate when the world chooses to look away.”

The number of acutely food insecure people nearly tripled to 295 million people in 2024 from 105 million in 2016, according to the Global Report on Food Crises.

“We get lost in the numbers, but these are real human beings,” said Harrington.

“These are mothers and fathers with children that they’re watching starve.”

Harrington fully expects that the number of acutely food insecure people grew in 2025 and will only get worse in 2026 as more funding cuts take effect.

He believes it is not too late for Canada to reverse course and drop the looming cuts to its international aid budget.

“Before we make these cuts, we have to question ourselves as a country and say, ‘who do we want to be?’ ” he said.

“When others are stepping back, we need to be stepping forward and standing with the world.”

Future funding

Harrington understands that Canadians are facing a cost-of-living crisis at home, but he noted that the average inflation rate in the countries where the Canadian Foodgrains Bank works is 45 per cent.

That is a harrowing statistic for a family living on a few dollars per week.

He worries what impact the government cuts will have on his organization, which receives about 40 per cent of its funding from Ottawa and the remainder from private donations.

In the 2024-25 budget year, the organization provided $74.6 million of assistance to 1.18 million people overseas.

He doesn’t anticipate much of a funding reduction for the upcoming fiscal year, but he is concerned about future years as the proposed government cuts take effect.

Harrington said it is going to be hard for organizations such as his to fill the massive gaps that have been created in humanitarian aid programs because they are already overstretched.

He is grateful that private donors appear to be stepping up to help fill the void.

However, if governments don’t reverse course in a few short years, people around the world will be asking themselves, “what have we done?” when they turn on their televisions.

“The pictures are going to be horrific,” said Harrington.

He is confident those disturbing pictures will trigger a wave of public empathy and support.

However, it will be far more costly in terms of both money and human lives to address the horror at that stage rather than preventing it from happening today.

The Canadian Foodgrains Bank is a partnership of 15 churches and church agencies that works with local partners in 37 countries.

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“If we’re going to feed the world and in particular if Africa is going to be fed, we need every tool we can lay our hands on to make that happen and one component of that is to ensure that women fulfil their potential as farmers,” said Gordon Conway, chair of the Montpellier Panel.

“Women are constrained by the fact that they don’t have enough access to productive resources and they don’t have enough access to assets and if they did, they could increase yields on farms by 20 to 30 per cent, which would have a really big impact.”

If women upped their production by this amount, the agricultural output of developing countries would rise by between 2.5 and four per cent, which could slash the number of undernourished people by 12 to 17 per cent, according to the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization.

Women account for around 43 per cent of agricultural labourers in developing countries.

But poor access to land, water, fertilizers, seeds and technical knowledge is limiting their productivity, Conway said.

“In many ways it’s a cultural thing,” he said. “Men tend to have the rights to land in particular and the rights to other resources… the woman is doing the work but she hasn’t got real access to what she needs.

“Everywhere you go in Africa, particularly in rural villages, you can see that women are often regarded as second-class citizens.”

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The lending institution, which has traditionally focused on emerging European economies, announced in Novembera it planned to expand operations to the Middle East and North Africa.

“It (the new program) brings together the bank’s existing and potential new regions by aiming to match the huge potential for exports in the former area with the massive import needs of the latter,” the EBRD said in a statement.

The Private Sector for Food Security Initiative aims include enhancing co-ordination between international financial institutions and development banks to address both food as well as water security issues.

“The involvement of the private sector is crucial to stimulating the supply side of food security as food production is first and foremost a private-sector activity,” EBRD said.

“With its predominant focus on private enterprise, the EBRD is particularly well placed to promote the priorities of the private sector in its interaction with relevant authorities in key supply countries,” the statement added.

The EBRD said Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan could supply half the world’s grain needs if they realized their production potential.

The bank said the initiative would be important in the Middle East and North Africa which include countries such as Egypt, the world’s largest wheat importer.

In its traditional region of activity, the EBRD is the largest investor in the agribusiness sector, where it has a portfolio of financing of 2.9 billion euros and in which it provided funding of 850 million euros in 2010.

Investments are expected to exceed 900 million euros in 2011.

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The lending institution, which has traditionally focused on emerging European economies, announced in Novembera it planned to expand operations to the Middle East and North Africa.

“It (the new program) brings together the bank’s existing and potential new regions by aiming to match the huge potential for exports in the former area with the massive import needs of the latter,” the EBRD said in a statement.

The Private Sector for Food Security Initiative aims include enhancing co-ordination between international financial institutions and development banks to address both food as well as water security issues.

“The involvement of the private sector is crucial to stimulating the supply side of food security as food production is first and foremost a private-sector activity,” EBRD said.

“With its predominant focus on private enterprise, the EBRD is particularly well placed to promote the priorities of the private sector in its interaction with relevant authorities in key supply countries,” the statement added.

The EBRD said Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan could supply half the world’s grain needs if they realized their production potential.

The bank said the initiative would be important in the Middle East and North Africa which include countries such as Egypt, the world’s largest wheat importer.

In its traditional region of activity, the EBRD is the largest investor in the agribusiness sector, where it has a portfolio of financing of 2.9 billion euros and in which it provided funding of 850 million euros in 2010.

Investments are expected to exceed 900 million euros in 2011.

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In China, dairy cows revolve on carousels in synchronized milking, while in Kenya, small farmers are planting a new high-yielding sweet potato.

These projects, and scores more, are shaping a new century of agriculture. Whether it be cattle herders in sub-Saharan Africa or rice growers in rural Asia, farmers and ranchers need help to produce enough nutritious food to feed a population estimated to have hit seven billion on Oct. 31 and heading for nine billion by 2050.

With no increase in arable land, an already taxed supply of fresh water, and fears of climate change, figuring out how to feed that many people is a top priority.

But just as research, development and expansion of agricultural programs are most critical, the public dollars pledged to this effort remain a pittance of what is needed, and are in fact in danger of sharp decline, experts say.

We are talking about adding 2.6 billion people between now and 2050. That is two Chinas, said Robert Thompson, who serves on the International Food &Agricultural Trade Policy Council.

In the 1980s, about 25 per cent of U.S. foreign aid went to agriculture, but that fell to six per cent by 1990 and then to one per cent last year, Thompson said. World Bank lending to agriculture is also sharply down.

While charitable foundations, non-profit development groups and private-sector corporations are funnelling billions into agricultural programs, that s not enough, according to food and agricultural experts.

We estimate that already today there are one billion people in the world suffering from malnutrition, said Claude Fauquet of the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center, which is developing a beta carotene-enriched cassava for Africa.

This will not go down unless we invest more.

Feed the future

For decades, the world s focus has been more on food aid but it has recently shifted towards helping poor farmers to feed themselves. The goals include increasing food productivity, developing rural roads, building processing and storage plants, and broadening access to markets for people in poor countries, particularly the estimated 600 million people who live in poverty in rural areas of sub- Saharan Africa and South Asia and depend on agriculture for their livelihoods.

But keeping the pledge is getting harder as the global economy has faltered and cuts hit U.S. and European budgets.

The World Bank is also overseeing a fund dubbed the Global Agriculture and Food Security Program (GAFSP). The U.S. is the largest donor, but Canada, Spain, South Korea, Australia, Ireland, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation have also pledged funds that total $970 million. But more than $400 million of the pledged dollars have not come in.

Last year, the administration of Barack Obama launched a Feed the Future initiative that is targeting 19 countries for agricultural development assistance. It includes projects such as a $10-million-plus irrigation system for 8,000 farmers in Tanzania and providing Kenyan farmers with better seeds that have helped them triple their incomes from sweet potatoes.

The program is considered a bright spot in global agricultural development but its funding is in doubt.

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The report says South Asia and Africa were “battlegrounds for poverty reduction” as the world population rose to a peak in 2050. Prospects for quick advances in curbing hunger are better for India and Bangladesh than sub-Saharan Africa, it said.

Funded by groups including the World Bank and the European Commission, the report said agricultural research needed reforms “as radical as those that occurred during industrial and agricultural revolutions of the 19th and 20th centuries.”

Research needs to be increased, and a fragmented “seed-to-table” food production system needs to be overhauled to improve co-operation between small-scale farmers, governments, companies, scientists, civil society groups and others.

The report noted estimates that net investments of $83 billion a year, at 2009 prices, were needed in developing countries to meet UN projections of 2050 food demand. “That is an increase of almost 50 per cent over current levels,” it said.

A BILLION STILL HUNGRY

“There have been great advances in agricultural development in the past 50 years with remarkable increases in productivity,” said Jules Pretty, professor of Environment & Society at Essex University in England who was among the authors.

“But there are still a billion people hungry and a lot of the progress has been made at the expense of the environment,” he told Reuters of the study, which was to be presented at a March 28-31 meeting of 1,000 farm experts in Montpellier, France.

“Just around the corner are a number of serious threats which may already be playing out – climate change, an energy crunch, economic uncertainty in the current model and rapidly changing consumption patterns,” he said.

One risk is that poor nations may imitate the tastes of rich countries, where rates of obesity are rising. In developing nations including Peru, Ghana and Tunisia “there are now more overweight people than hungry people,” Pretty said.

“Diets in developing countries will shift from low-to high-value cereals, poultry, meat, fruit and vegetables,” the report said.

That “is also likely to be accompanied by hunger and poverty in the countries with the poorest populations, while obesity rates as high as those now seen in wealthy countries will occur in others,” it said.

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Crop shortages in India and the Philippines combined with increased speculation in commodity markets by investment funds have increased the risk that food prices could spike, as happened in 2008, Zoellick said.

“I’m not forecasting this. I’m just saying we have to anticipate this as a possible risk,” he told reporters on the sidelines of a food security event at Brookings Institution.

More than one billion people are now chronically hungry as food prices have been slow to fall from last year’s record highs, and as nations grapple with the global economic downturn, United Nations agencies have said.

The world’s richest nations pledged to give $20 billion over three years to help small farmers in developing countries grow more food, but diplomats and aid groups have estimated only $3 billion appears to be new spending.

The World Bank was asked by the Group of 20 nations in September to create a fund to help quickly disburse the pledges. “I’d like (the World Bank) to get more (of the $20 billion promised) but the key thing is that people keep their pledges,” Zoellick told reporters.

The World Bank fund will pool money from the United States, Canada and Spain, Zoellick said, and the European Commission will also add funds.

Climate change and the other factors that caused the run-up in food prices in 2008 remain risks, said Josette Sheeran, head of the UN’s World Food Program.

“I don’t think it was a one-off phenomenon,” Sheeran said. “I think what it was was more of a wake-up call that exposed fault lines in access to food from the village level up through the national, regional and global level.”

The UN’s World Food Program, which feeds about 100 million people in 72 countries with government donations, fell far short of its emergency needs last year, raising only $3.7 billion against requirements of $6.4 billion, Sheeran said.

The WFP appealed recently for $1 billion to feed 20 million people in east Africa over the next six months, and secured pledges of half that amount, including donations from the United States and Spain, she said.

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“We cannot go on the way we’re going and we need the food industry to say it first, when an industry doesn’t take these problems face on, it leads to disaster.”

– JEFFREY SACHS

Private agribusiness companies must lead the drive to sustainable agriculture if the world is going to succeed in winning the fight against hunger, food shortages and climate change, Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Earth Institute, said Oct. 15.

“Pepsi or Monsanto or the big graintrading companies – I want them to come to the forefront and to the lead of solving some of these problems,” Sachs said in an interview on the sidelines of the World Food Prize forum.

Earlier, Sachs challenged the executives and officials attending the annual event to think more creatively and critically about their role in the most pressing problems for the world community from global warming to famine to poverty.

“We face a challenge in which the food sector of the world, which is the single largest sector of the world economy, is really at the heart of multiple intersecting crises. We’re going to need a level of honesty, investment, directness and urgency to overcome this,” he told the conference.

“While there is discussion on each of these issues, I don’t think we’re on a trajectory of solution right now.”

Sachs, whose institute at Columbia University issues reports on the global outlook and whose books and columns are widely followed, said the food and fibre world agricultural system retains the power to transform global conditions.

“The food industry is absolutely at the centre – it is the leading cause of global anthropogenic change,” he said, adding: “It is the No. 1 sector of greenhouse gas emissions in the world.”

Sachs explained that assessment. He said about 18 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions come from clearing rainforests and other forests for pasture land and cropland. Roughly another 12 to 15 per cent reflect the carbon dioxide from fossil fuel use in food production, from methane released from rice production and livestock, and nitrous oxide from more than 100 million tonnes of fertilizer spread on fields every year.

“We cannot go on the way we’re going and we need the food industry to say it first,” Sachs said. “When an industry doesn’t take these problems face on, it leads to disaster.”

Sachs pointed to the crippled state of the U. S. auto industry as a prime example of a great industry that made the wrong choices for the wrong reasons. Short-sighted profit motives and lobbying power played too big a role, he said.

“This is a powerful lobby,” Sachs said of the world agriculture and agribusiness. “This industry could lobby its way just to GM’s success. You could be so powerful that you lobby your way to bankruptcy.”

He said recognition of the breadth and depth of the problems, and the unique role that governments can play can facilitate change in society.

Sachs said the food industry’s special place and impact on society placed special responsibility on its leaders.

“The sector is at the core of unsustainability right now. But it’s a sector that we depend on every hour of every day to stay alive. And that the planet now depends on to get these choices right. Let’s do this honestly, scientifically, equitably and globally,” he told the forum participants.

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In July, countries pledged $20 billion over several years to increase investment in agriculture in poor countr ies to bolster food security following record-high prices last year.

“We call on the World Bank to work with interested donors and organizations to develop a multilateral trust fund to scale up agricultural assistance to low-income countries,” G20 leaders said.

The G20 said the fund should allow money to be disbursed quickly and let countries decide for themselves how it should be spent.

Agricultural investment in poor countries has shrunk over the last decade as development agencies focused more on health issues, including malaria and HIV/AIDS.

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“What we’re now moving into is the phase where one has to look more broadly at the danger of developing country growth and there it depends on policies they take and the support we and others can give them.”

With world attention trained on resolving a financial crisis in western economies, World Bank president Robert Zoellick said the poverty-fighting institution is warning developing countries to prepare for tougher times.

In an interview with Reuters ahead of meetings of world finance ministers, Zoellick said business failures, bank emergencies and balance of payments crises are all possible in developing countries as the crisis spreads.

He said a growing financial squeeze, together with higher food and fuel prices, will only make it more difficult for governments in developing countries to protect the poor.

A new World Bank report prepared for the meetings warns that high food and fuel prices will increase the number of malnourished people around the world in 2008 by 44 million to over 960 million.

The World Bank chief said the bank had identified around 28 countries that could face fiscal difficulties. “What we’re now moving into is the phase where one has to look more broadly at the danger of developing country growth and there it depends on policies they take and the support we and others can give them.”

“Over the medium and long term, I remain optimistic about the possibilities of sub-Saharan Africa being a pole of growth, but it won’t happen automatically, it will require their actions and the right investments,” he added.

Zoellick said the World Bank was working with developing countries to make them aware of the services the bank could provide to help prepare contingency plans and support countries whose banking systems may come under strain.

High stakes

The financial crisis threatens to undo much, or in some cases all, of the progress made in many developing countries over the past several years to lift growth and reduce poverty and disease.

Between 1997 and 2007, 17 countries in sub-Saharan Africa grew on average six per cent, most of them non-oil producers. Another eight countries, all oil producers, grew on average eight per cent over the same 10 years.

Zoellick told a news conference earlier there was frustration, fear and anxiety at the difficulties economies may now encounter from a crisis that began in the U. S.

Better economic management, fewer conflicts, and prospects of high returns on investments have attracted more private sector interest into developing countries.

Among those investors have been China, Brazil, India and Gulf countries, spurring so-called south-south investment where one emerging economy invests in another.

Despite ripple effects from the financial crisis into emerging economies, Zoellick said he was confident China would continue to invest in natural resources in Africa, while Gulf states look to investments in agriculture.

Just as western central banks and China took unprecedented co-ordinated action to cut interest rates on Oct. 8 to restore calm to markets, he hoped they would do the same when it comes to helping the developing world deal with effects from the financial crisis, but also the “human crisis” of increasing malnourishment.

The same countries could help by contributing to a World Bank fund to assist developing countries struggling with higher food and fuel prices and that would provide fertilizer to small farmers and energy to the poor.

There would also be a need for developed countries to help the World Bank and International Monetary Fund support governments facing balance of payments needs and challenges to do with climate change and trade, he said.

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