L’AQUILA, Italy — President Barack Obama has enlisted the leading powers to contribute $15 billion to help millions of the world’s poorest farmers grow enough food to feed themselves, U.S. officials said Wednesday.
If the assistance is delivered and is in fact mostly new money, it will constitute the largest international effort in decades to combat hunger by investing in the fundamentals of an agricultural economy, including seed, fertilizer, grain storage and research into plant varieties.
With the ranks of the hungry expected to exceed a billion people this year, the effort has great urgency for the bulk of the poor living in rural areas.
And it also signals a major change in the United States’ approach to hunger, which has relied far more on shipping American-grown food to the starving than on helping them grow their own.
This aid package effectively recognizes the growing consensus among philanthropists, economists and African governments that efforts to reduce poverty on the continent are probably doomed without far greater investment in agriculture. While aid to educate the poor and keep them healthy is critical, so is helping millions of farmers grow more food and earn some income.
The $15 billion, to be spent over three years, would come from the U.S. and the other Group of Eight members.
