5 Sustainable Food Trends to Watch in 2010: #5 Obama's Development Agenda

by Katherine Gustafson · 2009-12-30 06:00:00 UTC
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The final piece of my five-part series on the top sustainable food trends to watch in 2010 is Obama's development agenda, which focuses around global food security.

Food security has become a major topic on the international scene, in part because President Obama wants it to be. He is concerned with figuring out how to make sure all the people in the world can get access to the food they need to survive.

After last year's food riots highlighted the terror of a food-insecure future, the topic is considered of vital interest by nations around the world and has been enthroned at the center of Obama's development policy.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton expressed the new development agenda best at the closing plenary session of this year's Clinton Global Initiative:

The Obama Administration has developed an unprecedented initiative aimed at advancing food security worldwide. The scope and scale of this initiative represents an elevation of development as a key element of our foreign policy. And our approach represents a rethinking of development policies and priorities.

Obama's focus on food security is reinforced by his recent appointment of the former head of the Gates Foundation's agricultural division, Rajiv Shah, as USAID administrator.

We'll want to watch how this unfolds as Shah takes office and the development agenda continues apace. Will Shah, as some fear, facilitate the interests of big business in bringing GMOs and other dubious technologies to the developing world? Or will the agenda bring a new growth of well-being to countries across the globe? Let's watch and see.

Photo courtesy of UN Photo/Fardin Waez

Katherine Gustafson is a freelance writer and editor with a background in international nonprofit organizations.
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