BRAC's Efforts in Relieving Food Insecurity

Last week The New York Times reported on concerns among the global scientific and development communities that the world is losing its battle against hunger. While an effort is underway to increase food production by 50% over the next two decades, many believe this goal is not feasible relative to projected population growth and the amount of fertile land available.

The number of hungry people around the world rose to 1.02 billion this year, or roughly one in seven people, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. Over half of the world's hungry live in Asia and the Pacific regions. Augmenting the problem are uncertainties as to what effect global warming will have on food production.

With its innovative and holistic approach toward poverty alleviation, BRAC is addressing this urgent problem by improving the harvests of poor farmers. BRAC targets mostly landless and marginal land owning households in Asia and Africa as prospects for programs in agriculture and livestock rearing. It strategically engages low-income women in agricultural activities that include poultry and livestock rearing, vegetable production, and livelihoods in the fishing, sericulture, crop farming, and social forestry.

BRAC provides training and technical assistance to its microfinance borrowers as well as improved inputs: chickens that lay 6 times as many eggs, cows that produce 3 times as much milk and rice seeds that have a 20% greater yield. BRAC has also created social enterprises that spans the value chain, from a bull station that provides semen for villagers to employ themselves by impregnating cows to a dairy that purchases milk from rural villages to process and sell on the market.

To date, over 2.1 million people in Bangladesh have participated in BRAC’s agriculture and livestock programs. These efforts have proven so effective that the government has adopted a similar livestock development model for widespread implementation.

In addition to expanding food production, these activities provide empowering opportunities for poor women while promoting organic agricultural farming, all of which contributes to the global imperative to fight hunger with an eye toward sustainability.

Click here to read The New York Times article.