The world needs a new multilateral architecture to meet the growing challenge of food insecurity if we expect to feed a population projected to reach 9 billion by 2050. To meet this demand, we cannot focus solely on food production (which the UN Food and Agriculture Organization estimates must increase by 70 percent to meet demand). In the face of climate change, disease, war, and increased urbanization, solving food insecurity demands a global and coordinated approach among the UN agencies tasked with plugging the gaps in the food-insecure world – the FAO, the International Fund for Agriculture Development (IFAD), and the World Food Programme (WFP). The challenges facing this tripartite group (known collectively as the ‘Rome-based agencies’) are many, but they can be overcome through collaboration, reform, and innovation. The status quo, however, is unacceptable: the lack of coordinated governance, common agendas, and financial accountability undermines our ability to anticipate and adapt to critical and cumulative risks. Given the complex, interdependent, and pressing nature of food security, we propose a thoughtful and coordinated merger of the three Rome-based agencies under a ‘hub’ that will articulate a clear framework for governance, resource allocation, and collaboration to meet the transnational and cross-sector challenges of feeding the world’s growing population.

In recent years, efforts to improve performance in these core areas have advanced considerably at the national level. Countries such as Ethiopia have made enormous gains in reducing food insecurity by implementing a ‘whole of government approach’ to tackle the problem by creating and empowering a small but powerful overseeing authority – the Ethiopian Agricultural Transformation Agency – capable of cutting through bureaucracy and red tape to tighten coordination between the essential ministries of finance, health, and agriculture. This model has delivered impressive outcomes – Ethiopia made remarkable progress in the DuPont Global Food Security Index since launching the agency – and it one is worth exploring at the global, multilateral level.

Despite the growing web of actors and the increasing interdependency between governments, NGOs, universities, and the private sector, there has been no corresponding overarching approach at the multilateral level. Moreover, the environment for decision making and risk has become even more dynamic and complex. As the Institute of Sustainable Development wrote, “The complexity and urgency of 21st century issues is an unforgiving place for uncoordinated efforts of such scale and importance.” The present institutional architecture cannot provide effective governance for such a rapidly changing environment.

The current architecture revolves around the Rome-based agencies which, while effective in their own right, remain only loosely coordinated and ill-equipped to advance comprehensive preventative action. More generally, they have not instilled confidence that food security issues can be managed on a global or regional scale. There must be a more holistic approach that recognizes the ‘big picture’ nature of food insecurity and drives toward deliverables through a synthesis of market-based, technology-driven, and grassroots empowerment strategies. The inability of the present nation-state system and multilateral architecture to deal with issues that transcend boundaries and borders has been on full display in 2014. From Ebola and cyber terrorism to aviation tragedies, we have seen the great need for coordination between governments, NGOs and the private sector, and exactly how little such coordination exists. In the near future, climate change, in particular, will only exacerbate the structural inadequacy of the global multilateral structure and the Rome-based agencies. It will become harder to achieve effective results if rising sea levels render coastal land unfit for agriculture, melting glaciers disrupt the accessibility of fresh water, and increasingly frequent droughts and natural disasters hinder access to resources and increase the likelihood of conflict. Evidence reveals that the redundancy of efforts between the three world food agencies has served as an obstacle to greater coordination on food security. In 2008, spikes in food prices fueled major protests in Haiti and Mozambique, presaging the role of similar price surges in triggering the Arab uprisings of 2011. In both cases, the international system failed to predict how food insecurity could drive political instability. Since 2008, there has been a surplus of responses but a deficit of collaboration. The UN Secretary General set up a high level task force of UN agencies. The G-20 set up its own global program. Bill Gates committed 1.4 billion dollars for investments in new technology. One of the most dynamic changes was the overhaul of the Committee on Food Security, an offshoot of the FAO which was taken over by over 80 grassroots producer organizations that drafted their own plan of action. The problem is that the multiplication of new organizations exacerbates the cross-hatching of decision-making, resource allocation and accountability. The Global Governance Institute reports that at least fifteen different international organizations have been given responsibility in some form or other for food security. Yet, with all these cooks in the kitchen, the Rome-based agencies underwent minimal change, missing an opportunity to restructure into an integrated UN agency with a clear mission and greater clout. There is a moral imperative for institutional reform. The increasingly complex demands of food and water security require innovation to overcome fragmentation and build consensus on international collaboration. Combining resources and infrastructure by merging the three RBAs under a ‘hub’ with strong interstate leadership could bridge the gap between market-based systems and civil society. This is not a proposal for a centralized governance – in fact, the concept of a hub implies a more intensive interaction between the agencies and various stakeholders in form of networked governance. This plan seeks to leverage the strengths of the agencies and their missions. Moreover, this food security hub would already have an existing collaboration partner in the rebooted Committee on Food Security. History reveals that integration on such a global scale is achievable. Brookings Institution President Strobe Talbott outlines how dreams of a European Union became reality because Jean Monnet started small with the right stakeholders in his essay, “Monnet’s Brandy and Europe’s Fate.” The FAO, after all, has nursed this idea since 1944, when there was serious discussion about the establishment of a World Food Board to stabilize food prices, set up reserves, and engage directly with trade and development organizations so their work would bolster food security. Talbott uses history to remind us of a broader truth – that we need not be hostage to the status quo and that forging institutions to match global challenges is not only necessary but, with the right vision and leadership, also achievable. Monnet believed that economic integration would temper the inclination to war and conflict that had afflicted Europe for centuries. He was right. But he also recognized the need for a new European architecture to drive agreeable solutions to common problems in a way that treaded lightly on national sovereignty. This model of ‘revisions’ to the Westphalian state system is easily unpacked and applied to food security. With effectiveness before form, a food security hub would engender the original powers and objectives of the World Food Board that were nearly cast sixty years ago: mitigate price volatility, drive institutional investment coordination, broaden risk response, scale technology application, and build partnership networks between the private sector and civil society. To implement this vision, it’s best to incorporate the lesson of Monnet and the European Commission. As Talbott illustrated, an idea of this nature must first be incubated and deemed as viable in circles populated by the critical stakeholders of food security — the Food Security Strategy Group at the Aspen Institute and the Commission on Food Security are just two that come to mind. If the idea can build momentum while it is revised and adapted by stakeholders, it will stand a better chance of gaining global traction and adoption not only by the multilateral institutions under discussion, but also by the key leaders and influencers from the private sector and civil society who are pivotal for implementation. While institutional reform is a tall order, it is a necessary one in the case of food security. One fact is certain: we cannot expect to feed 9 billion people by 2050 under the present, fragmented international architecture. The issue of coordination and governance must be addressed. Housed at the UN and empowered by the public and private sectors, an elevated hub for food security coordination would be poised to drive an integrated global strategy on food security by leveraging the strengths of the existing architecture. This may seem a bold suggestion, but all of the world’s multilateral institutions were at one point just ideas. The time has come to add new tools to the global toolbox to address food insecurity. The stakes are too high not to try.

Dr. Lloyd Axworthy formerly served as Canada’s Minister of Foreign Affairs and as President and Vice-Chancellor of The University of Winnipeg. He is a member of the Aspen Food Security Strategy Group.

When the children recovering from malaria in Kenya’s Kwale county hospital eat their lunch today, they will have fresh tomatoes and bell peppers. The vegetables will have come from local farms operated by the eight members of the women’s farmers group Tumaini Godzo. Just last month, the women won the county government tender to supply the hospital with fresh vegetables. Today, it is hard to say who is benefitting more — the young hospital patients or the women of Tumaini Godzo. Just a year ago, the women were subsistence farmers, earning little profit on their rows of maize. Today, the contract gives them access to a secure market and a steady income. They can feed their families, send their children to school and plan for future growth.

The tender was transformational — and the result of concrete actions taken by the women, the county government, and the social venture Oyeska Greens, a local agri-business which trains farming collectives on the Kenyan Coast. Oyeska Greens has helped 40 collectives learn how to farm high-value vegetable crops, keep business records, and use data to advance their farming.

The experience of Tumaini Godzo and Oyeska Greens highlights the crucial role of smallholder organization, training, and supportive policy in transforming Africa’s agricultural sector. This transformation is critical to meet the rising demand for high-value, high-quality food, particularly in Africa’s rapidly growing cities and towns. Currently, this demand is largely met through food imports — costing $40 billion annually — rather than from food grown and marketed in Africa. But that is changing as Africa’s farmers begin to think like businesses. One way to do that is by forming cooperatives. The majority of smallholder farmers own less than an acre of land, making it difficult to individually meet market demand. With cooperatives, farmers can: pool and reduce risk; get access to better financing; acquire and share farm machinery and other assets; compete with larger entities for contracts; negotiate better prices, and jointly market their produce.

Secondly, farmers must go beyond the initial step of forming local groups to both take charge of their growth and develop larger and more powerful networks. Farmers need to build strong, functional, democratic and transparent organizations that engender trust. By carefully recording their operations, from business transactions to organizational elections, farmers’ organizations can inspire confidence in both new members and potential investors. Achieving scale is also essential to achieving impact. Take the case of the 200-farmer strong pig farmers association in Uganda. Led by livestock farmer and veterinarian Emma Naluyima, the Commercial Farmer’s Trust has won numerous contracts, including one to supply 600-1000 kilograms of meat a month to a local meat-processing company. As a cooperative, the farmers were able to eliminate middlemen and get a better price for their product. Association members are earning double the previous price for their products. The Commercial Farmer’s Trust is also working on policies to support their budding industry, including lobbying the Government of Uganda for a compensation policy in the event that pig farmers lose their animals to African Swine Fever. Through increasing productivity, joining forces, and linking to larger markets, smallholder farmers can do more than help feed Africa. They can also help employ Africa, especially its youth. Every year, ten million young people enter the labor market. As African agriculture becomes more profitable and dynamic, it will attract more of these youth, and it will benefit in return from their skills, energy and creativity.

Success comes to farmers who are open-minded and willing to learn from others. One such farmer is Gifty Jemal Hussein, a smallholder in Gunchire, Ethiopia. After years of growing maize, banana and a few coffee plants, she was open to planting an improved variety of corn, using techniques demonstrated by a development program. Three months later, she tripled her corn harvests. Overjoyed, she took a quarter of her first harvest to her four adult children in the capital city.

To share her success, Gifty convinced the local government to lease one hectare of land to her women’s farming collective. She rented a tractor and guided the group in growing the new seed. Within a season, all 20 collective members were investing in a new and thriving farming venture.

But even the most well-organized and open-minded farmers cannot succeed on their own, especially given a decades-long legacy of neglect of African agriculture. Farmers need the support of government policies and invest

ments that facilitate access to land, finance, training, agricultural technologies and markets.

Governments can implement policies that allow smallholder farmers to harness every available opportunity. This includes incentives such as the county hospital tender won by Tumaini Godzo. Such opportunities can inspire innovation across African agriculture. Furthermore, governments should mandate that certain percentages of such programs be awarded to women and youth groups who stand to benefit most. Similarly, the government should publicize available tenders and related opportunities using all channels at their disposal.

Governments can create conducive environments to help farmers to thrive and rural communities to prosper. And by continuing to take charge of their own growth, forming cooperatives and utilizing all available resources, smallholder farmers can succeed, and re-write the history of African agriculture.Dr. Esther Ngumbi is currently a post-doctoral researcher at the Department of Entomology and Plant Pathology at Auburn University in Alabama. She is a member of the Aspen Food Security Strategy Group and an Aspen Institute New Voices Fellow.

A few years ago, Dan Piraro drew a thought-provoking cartoon showing a physician talking to his patient, Planet Earth. “You’ve got advanced stage humans,” he says. “The good news is that they’ve just about run their course and you should be on the mend soon.”

One has to have a dark sense of humor to laugh at this overburdened planet struggling to support humankind and then ceasing to provide the ecosystem services we need to survive. The cartoon implies that the planet will have a bright future once it is freed from human demands. This brings to mind the dreadful tradeoff that could arise in the debate over “saving the environment.”

Yet “saving the environment” generally means preserving the environmental services from which the human race currently benefits — and even takes for granted. These free environmental services are desired into perpetuity for the relatively rich majority of humanity, without lifestyle sacrifices. But without a sustainable system for managing demand and meeting that demand, we cannot depend on the continued provision of these environmental services.

Today, we see distinct groups of people pursuing three laudable goals in parallel: environmental conservation, global food security and poverty alleviation. These goals are interdependent, and yet at times at odds with each other. If achieving one goal might challenge the process for another, how do we balance our efforts and choose priorities? The conflicting goals sometimes lead to paralysis. Instead of preaching across topical boundaries, compromise and collaboration will be essential for breakthrough progress.

For example, environmentalists might argue that we must freeze the environmental footprint of agriculture, evacuate the remaining forests of the planet and take other drastic measures to stop the damage wrought by our unsustainable demands on nature. The planet will let the human race overdraw on its credit for environmental services for only for so long before food production is jeopardized. Depletion of fresh water reserves, overly aggressive deforestation, air pollution and other factors are planetary problems we must address even before we consider the added impact of climate change.

Food producers might respond that cultivation and irrigation of crops and feeding of livestock requires prodigious amounts of both land and water. Until around 1950, the world’s land mass and water supply was more than enough to meet the land and water needs of the planet’s three billion inhabitants. There was little thought about whether the world was overdrawing the planet’s ecosystem services. As we doubled to six billion people and are well on our way to nine billion, the planet developed the malestar pictured in Dan Piraro’s cartoon. Food producers have focused on efficiency and aggressive production to both meet growing demand and support their bottom lines.

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The North African food riots of 2008 demonstrated the danger of imbalance in food supply and demand. Yet the drive for food production is pushing the limits of our water and soil resources. Our focus on high yielding varieties of a few grain types (particularly wheat, corn, and rice) while neglecting other species now threatens biodiversity globally. How do we find the right balance between the call for increased production and the need to protect our natural resources?

Finally, poverty alleviation experts will highlight our moral duty to alleviate poverty as the foundation of our agenda for the next half century. They argue that eliminating poverty will unlock access to water, health and opportunity, and that these are all human rights. If it is possible to lift billions out of poverty, how will we accommodate the increased demand and improved diets that would surely come as a result of increased prosperity without pushing global ecosystems beyond their limits?

To develop better approaches than what we have done in the past, collaboration—not competition for loudest voice—will give us the balanced approach we need to begin to answer these questions. Understanding the different actors who can step forward in concert on these intertwined issues should be our focus.

First, as governments underwrite research and set the stage for intellectual advances, they have in their power the opportunity to set the stage for huge leaps in innovation, technology and knowledge. Unfortunately, some governments will at times choose the less innovative, but sometimes more popular path. Those focused on success will need to develop policies based on science and global supply and demand considerations, in addition to domestic political interests.

Next, the private sector, with its tight focus on the bottom line, competes based on narrowly defined missions and the available skills that they have in house — regardless of the desires of leadership or employees wishing to do good for society. Competition makes markets work, yet corporations can easily lose sight of the role of sustainability in future success when focused on the immediate future.

Finally, NGOs can have the space to think more broadly than bottom lines, but are removed from the realities of the marketplace. While NGOs frequently limit their input to identifying problems, their follow-through could stimulate true policy

change if they were to go beyond drumming up popular support to “push” the government and the private sector to follow their own roadmap.

Individuals in government, the private sector and the NGO community can all feel that they are true to their missions, yet each of the three often has a limited understanding of and engagement with the work of the other two. Government needs to understand the science that exists and the global marketplace that is crying out for new solutions. The private sector can learn from the NGOs to see how accommodating environmental issues can work with a corporate mission. Finally, rather than just stating their case, the NGOs need to be willing to work side by side with the private sector to make change rather than just talk about change.

Many believe that we are working for a balanced society that will benefit all. In the end, however, we push the agendas of our organizations, whether that’s a corporation, an NGO or a government entity. We believe in what we are doing because of our own backgrounds and the contexts in which we work. We are influenced by the logic and thoughts of our colleagues who believe in the same philosophy. We support what we understand best and too often criticize the work of others without truly understanding their roles.

Maybe the planet can support our current lifestyle for nine billion people. If so, it will only be because of innovation and scientific advancement, and because we recognize that the world’s population is interdependent. Instead of a singular focus on national self-sufficiency and self-interest, we must find the common ground for the truly integrated solutions that different sectors and different geographies bring to the table.

This in part is the mission of the Aspen Institute’s Food Security Strategy Group, and one that the entire food security community should take up as its banner. Only by truly hearing the voices and perspectives of others will we disprove the fatalistic prediction of Dan Piraro’s comic. Hopefully the human race has not “just about run their course,” but still has many great benefits to offer our planet and our many generations of descendants.

Carl Hausmann is Global Policy Advisor at Bunge Limited, a global agribusiness and food company, and a member of the Aspen Food Security Strategy Group.

The Pentagon calls it a threat multiplier. Among some academics, it’s a stressor. In 2011, millions of Egyptians and Syrians knew it simply as hunger.

By any name, climate change is contributing not just to melting ice caps and rising sea levels, but also to drought, food shortages and, ultimately, to global instability. Indeed, climate change sparked deadly food riots in 23 countries around the world between 2007 and 2012. Ultimately it even triggered what has become known as the Arab Spring when Russia, fearing its own food riots, cut off wheat exports.

As illustrated by these and other experiences around the world, humanity’s future hinges in large part on our ability to feed a growing and increasingly urban population amid variable and extreme weather conditions. Producers, consumers, governments and businesses all have an important role to play — and a responsibility to take action, right now.

Food production affects climate change, and climate change affects food production. Converting forests, grasslands, wetlands and other natural habitats to grow crops, farm fish and raise livestock releases carbon into the atmosphere. The land that remains does a significantly poorer job reabsorbing all that carbon. And as we have seen in China and Syria, not to mention California and the Midwest, climate change is driving weather events that make producing food significantly more difficult and expensive. Droughts are particularly problematic because 70 percent of the world’s fresh water consumed by humans is currently used to produce food.

All told, 7.3 billion people today use up 150% of what the Earth’s natural resources can supply. Our consumption is outpacing the planet’s renewable productivity by about 50 percent. By 2050, the world’s population will exceed 9 billion and the demand for food will roughly double. To meet that demand, we must double net food availability by 2050. And we need to understand that climate change will make this task that much more difficult.

There is no silver bullet. We need to work simultaneously on increasing productivity and efficiency while reducing waste and consumption. For each calorie we produce, we must use less land, water and energy, discharge less fertilizer, pesticide and greenhouse gas, and squander less of what we grow. Indeed, to that last point, we waste one in three calories globally or about 1.3 billion tons of food each year. That’s four times the amount needed to feed the 800 million people who are malnourished or about half of all the additional food that we will need to feed everyone by 2050.

Climate change means crop change. Producers will not be able to grow the same crops their ancestors did, year in and year out. In the next three to five years, producers will focus on increasing the efficiency of what they are producing today. However, in the medium term, just six to 10 years, they will find that climate-induced stress will increase the impact of disease and pests and they will either need to find new planting materials or switch crops altogether. This is easier said than done — particularly for people who are already invested in perennials, such as tree crops, which require significant time to reach peak productivity.

In some instances, climate shifts will make areas more productive and therefore better suited for new crops. For producers who can afford to buy new land or hire consultants to help them figure out their next move, this is an inconvenience, but not the end of the world. For poorer, smaller producers who are already farming small and often marginal pieces of land, this could be an insurmountable problem. We have already seen that climate change is increasing stress and disease for a number of crops including coffee in Central America, cocoa in West Africa and citrus in the U.S. and Brazil.

To help producers adapt, we need to keep all possible options on the table. What is acceptable will likely vary from one producer to another, one country to another or one consumer to another.

When it comes to genetics, the question is not “if” but “which.” Climate change and climate smart agriculture in response to it will warrant the use of genetics and marker-assisted breeding to increase productivity, improve drought tolerance and increase disease resistance. (Marker-assisted breeding lets farmers analyze DNA to identify favorable traits and use that information to guide planting and husbandry.)

But the impacts don’t stop there. When terrestrial producers increase acreage onto more marginal areas and increase their use of fertilizer, pesticides and irrigated water, runoff increases as well. And these materials flow into rivers, lakes, bays and oceans, causing stress in marine ecosystems including increasing coral bleaching at lower water temperatures. Rising temperatures and ocean acidification further threaten marine life, disrupting economies and communities that rely on seafood for commerce and food security.

Climate change affects more than just yields; it affects the health of the land itself. It took soil moisture levels up to three years to recover from the 2012 drought in the Midwest. When there are two years of drought in a row it can take five to 10 years to recover. In the meantime, when the soil is dryer, the organic matter and nitrogen can become volatile resulting in increased greenhouse gas emissions. It also means that producers have to work harder to rebuild their soils. In California, now in its fourth year of drought, there is simply not enough water to keep perennials like almonds and grapevines alive (much less productive) in many areas. While this is now considered a severe drought, it is not known how common this will be in the future and whether it will affect other areas around the world like California that produce a disproportional amount of the food we all depend on.

In a world where food production is increasingly affected by weather variability, trade will become an important fixture of any successful food security strategy. Increased and shifting global consumption levels will complicate these efforts. Since 2000, international food trade has more than doubled from six to 12 to 15 percent of food produced. Just eight countries dominate this trade, exporting about 65 percent of the world’s cereal grains and 85 percent of oil seeds. While they have demonstrated that they can produce the surplus needed to fill global food gaps, they are still vulnerable to climate change. In 2012, four of the eight countries experienced drought, and global food reserves reached an all-time low.

Some 100 companies touch 25 percent of global trade for 15 key commodities. Working with them and other stakeholders, World Wildlife Fund has helped define standards and metrics for more sustainable practices that measurably improve the production of crops such as oil palm, sugar, soy, and wild-caught and farmed seafood. Other efforts like the Global Roundtable for Sustainable Beefare underway to boost more sustainable production of other commodities.

WWF has developed risk assessment tools to work with companies on their supply chains as well as with financial institutions to assess risks in their supply chains and finance decisions based on environmental and social data for commodities as diverse as Brazilian soy and Vietnamese coffee. These tools will help companies anticipate risk and support or encourage climate-smart agriculture. But it is the producers on the ground that need options. They are the first line of defense.

Household names like Unilever, McDonald’s and Coca-Cola, among many others, have made time-bound commitments to buy products from suppliers that produce based on credible standards. However, even these companies have limited power to change behavior across the global food industry as most food is still produced and consumed locally. These companies can move the top performers that are already exporting products, but the bottom performers are accountable for more than their share of the problems. For any commodity, about one quarter of producers are responsible for about half of the environmental impacts but only 10 percent of production.

To reduce the key environmental impacts of food production while producing more food and addressing the impacts of climate change, we need to shift our focus from recognizing the top producers to moving the ones on the bottom. The lessons learned from the better producers can guide producers on the low-performing end of the spectrum. And governments will have to play a role here to define what is acceptable and to encourage continuous improvement through extension and linked to finance

Globalization is real. Human behavior in one corner of the planet affects biodiversity in another. The cumulative effects of our consumption of natural resources — food, water, land, energy — are yielding increasingly negative results. From drought-ridden California to war-torn Syria and Ukraine, we can see the interplay and impact of food insecurity, climate change and the global grab of resources on the evening news.

Indeed, we can see that our climate isn’t the only thing that is changing; social and political forces including income distribution, consumption and urbanization are shifting quickly as well. This rate of change means that there is never going to be a blueprint that can tell producers exactly what to think. Rather, the issue is how to think. Whatever is a better practice today will become the norm tomorrow and what we need to fix the day after.

Producers, consumers, financial institutions, the scientific community and the world’s most powerful food companies all share a responsibility to tackle these challenges now before acute problems become chronic and more difficult to address. All food stakeholders must answer the $100 billion question: how can they leverage growing demand for sustainably produced goods — worth about $100 billion each year — to generate investment into more sustainable production systems? But producers will bear the brunt of these efforts. The question is what can the rest of us along the value chain do to anticipate the changes needed, rather than lurch from crisis to crisis by country or commodity? We need a more agile global food production system that can keep pace with or, ideally, anticipate and stay ahead of climate change and its chaotic byproducts. From this point on, the cost of inaction will only grow.

Jason Clay is Senior Vice President, Food & Markets, at the World Wildlife Fund and a member of the Aspen Food Security Strategy Group.

Imagine a vibrant market in a village in Sub-Saharan Africa, filled with vendors selling lush tomatoes, hearty ears of corn, ripe mangos, and a myriad of other fruits, vegetables, and grains. Where did all that food come from? Where did the farmers get the financing to buy the seeds and fertilizer they needed? What research institutions developed the seed varieties that thrived in local agro-ecological conditions? How did farmers learn the agriculture techniques to produce high-quality crops? And how did farmers get those high-quality crops from their farms to the market?

Agriculture is a tremendously complicated industry. Doing it right requires researchers, successful distributors of farm inputs, banks, providers of agricultural and business skills training, processors, and traders. Some of these players are in the private sector, while others are generally in the public sector. Some, like banks or providers of agriculture skills training, can have a foot in both of those worlds.

A successful agriculture industry in any country requires the many players in the value chain to work together in collaborations that are both formal and informal. Partnerships occur daily between private-sector players, public-sector players, and public and private players. Though perhaps the most challenging formal partnerships to craft, public-private partnerships are essential to the long-term growth of a country’s agriculture sector, as well as long-term environmental stewardship.

We know firsthand the importance of successful public-private partnerships in the agriculture sector. We represent two very different organizations—The Coca-Cola Company, the world’s largest beverage company, and One Acre Fund, a nonprofit agriculture organization that serves 280,000 farmers in East Africa. The Coca-Cola Company sources various agricultural ingredients from all around the world to produce its beverages, and One Acre Fund supports smallholder farmers who grow staple food crops for local and regional markets. We work with different types of crops and in different parts of the value chain, but we have discovered that what we both need from the public sector to be successful is quite similar.

People often talk as if the private sector, nonprofits, and farmer organizations in Africa are at odds, with extremely different motivations, ways of working, and goals. In reality, we are more similar than different. We are all seeking innovative ways to build a strong agriculture sector in which smallholder farmers are profitable businesspeople and responsible environmental stewards. And we all recognize that the public sector has the responsibility to set certain conditions that foster an environment where innovation and growth can occur.

In our experience, there are five things the public sector can do to foster agriculture innovation and growth across the value chain:

Create a level playing field. It’s important for all market players to compete under the same rules, particularly to attract private sector (domestic and foreign) investment. The government can change laws and regulations to make sure that the private sector is not forced to compete with state-subsidized enterprises, and it can use open procurement processes when it purchases seed and fertilizer.Develop transparent rules and regulations. When innovators are unsure if their product or service can be legally sold, they will choose not to operate in that country. When governments create clear, transparent rules and regulations that govern things like seed licensing, fertilizer blend approval, and the approval process for selling a new agriculture technology, innovators will flourish. When multiple, inconsistent, or conflicting standards exists, private companies have a tough time navigating the market. Organizations like One Acre Fund can’t offer farmers promising new seed varieties if the regulatory process for the variety is opaque. Farmers, suppliers, and companies like Coca-Cola are all affected when markets have conflicting ingredient bans, labeling standards, and categorization of products.Fund “public goods” that catalyze innovation and sustainable growth. Governments can invest in specific things that catalyze agriculture innovation. Most importantly, governments can invest in national research systems that develop new seed varieties, methods for adapting to changing climate, and agriculture techniques to preserve or improve soil health. They can also create incentives and opportunities for the private sector to generate new agriculture research, either on its own or in collaboration with public research institutions. The private sector relies on this research to bring new products and services to market.Clearly articulate national priorities for agricultural development to help guide domestic and foreign investment. A national investment framework and a mechanism for the private sector to engage with the national government are important tools to guide investments to the highest impact areas of the agriculture sector, aligning resources and opportunities.Develop institutional structures that allow non-government actors to engage in the policy process. When there are clear, formal structures in place for setting a policy agenda, consulting a wide variety of stakeholders, developing a draft policy, seeking feedback, and then approving the policy, all interested organizations can give input on agriculture policies. To be clear, we define non-government actors as anyone who is not the government: the private sector, nonprofits, farmer organizations, and individual farmers.

To make these ideas more concrete, we’d like to share some specific examples from each of our organizations. At The Coca-Cola Company and One Acre Fund, we have learned a lot over the years about how to work with the public sector. Successful collaboration requires a clear alignment of objectives, shared risks, and a long-term perspective that allows for dynamic change and growth. Consistent and genuine communication is paramount. Without trust among the parties, a partnership can be tenuous.

One Acre Fund has worked in Rwanda since 2007 and now provides over 106,000 Rwandan smallholder farmers with agriculture inputs on credit. One Acre Fund has a long-standing collaboration with the government and has been fortunate to participate in some of the agriculture policy changes that have occurred over the last seven years. This participation has been possible because Rwanda has created a level playing field for the agriculture sector, and has a well-run institutional structure for non-government actors to engage in the policy process called the Agriculture Sector Working Group.

The Agriculture Sector Working Group is effective because the Ministry of Agriculture in Rwanda runs the group well. It is not just a theoretical entity. It actually meets once a month, and a wide range of stakeholders are active participants in those meetings. Once a year, the group agrees on a set of policy action items that will be tackled on a specific timetable. Smaller internal working groups are formed for specific policy actions, and those sub-groups develop a set of policy recommendations which are presented to the full working group for feedback and eventual approval. One Acre Fund has participated in the sub-groups on extension and soil fertility. We sit at a table with government representatives, private-sector entities, researchers, and nonprofit organizations, and everyone has the opportunity to contribute their views.

Work that Coca-Cola has done in East Africa, known as Project Nurture, shows the value of public-private partnerships and underscores the importance of government investment in “public goods” that catalyze innovation and support market growth. This partnership with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and TechnoServe reached more than 53,000 farmers over four years, 30% of whom were women.[1] Project Nurture achieved some promising results.[2]

Government support was critical to the structure and success of Project Nurture. Government representatives participated in the strategic direction and oversight of the project itself, and they helped align the project with national agricultural priorities on high-value horticultural crops and partnering strategies. They supported agricultural research institutions to produce and commercialize new varieties of passion fruit, capitalizing on years of public investment by the government and international donors. The project has also worked with the public sector to provide farmers with additional technical skills and business training to help support management of their own supply chains.

The many lessons learned from Project Nurture are now being applied to Coca-Cola’s Africa-wide agricultural initiative, Source Africa, which is enabling even closer alignment and coordination on policy and investment priorities with government. Coca-Cola sees great opportunity to help advance sustainable and commercially viable supply chains of key agricultural ingredients for Coca-Cola products in Africa. This supply potential is currently underdeveloped and underutilized, but by adopting the recommendations above, the public sector can help catalyze new investment and growth.

At the regional level, changes underway in Eastern and Southern Africa illustrate the importance of transparent rules and regulations for encouraging private-sector investment in agriculture. Several organizations, including the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), and the Alliance for Commodity Trade in Eastern and Southern Africa (ACTESA), are facilitating positive changes in the regulatory regimes of individual countries and regions. This work enables global initiatives seeking sustained and inclusive agricultural growth through better alignment between government and private sector interests like the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition and Grow Africa to be successful. Further, ACTESA has been working to develop seed sector policy that is harmonized across the region. Once implemented, this policy will create a larger market for new seed products, giving seed companies an incentive to roll out new products. For example, a Zambian seed company will be able to sell seed in Zambia, but also in Malawi and Mozambique.

These examples are heartening. Governments have made a lot of progress in creating a better environment for agriculture innovation and investment. 2014 marked the African Year of Agriculture and Food Security, in which African governments recommitted to allocating a significant percentage of their budgets to agriculture. Like never before, the momentum and energy exists to bring about substantial positive impacts to farmers and communities throughout the continent.

However, a lot of work remains to be done. The good news is that many of our recommendations can be implemented relatively quickly and with relatively modest amounts of money. We suggest that governments focus first on creating a level playing field for all actors and developing transparent rules and regulations to govern the sector. Those two actions would go a long way toward creating an agriculture sector in which private-sector companies like Coca-Cola, nonprofits like One Acre Fund, farmers’ organizations, and individual smallholder farmers can all innovate and thrive.

[1] Net farmer revenue increased by over 100% resulting in participating farmers’ annual fruit incomes more than doubling. Participating women farmers saw their average incomes increase by 140%. [2] More than 36,000 metric tons of fresh fruit have been harvested and sold.

Jen Ragland is ‎Director of International Government Relations and Public Affairs at the Coca-Cola Company and Stephanie Hanson is SVP of Policy and Partnerships at One Acre Fund. Both are members of the Aspen Food Security Strategy Group.

The world is facing a food security challenge of unprecedented scale in the twenty-first century. The numbers are familiar, and they are stark: according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), food production must increase by at least 60 percent in the next 35 years to feed Earth’s growing and hungry population. And food production must meet that rising demand while contending with other crises like climate change, migration, conflict, and disease, which will all affect our ability to grow more food.

More importantly, food production must meet that demand sustainably and equitably, with respect for the environment and the smallholder farmers that make up the backbone of global agriculture. This is no easy task.

Like many of the greatest challenges facing world leaders today, achieving food security — defined as when all people at all times have access to sufficient, safe, nutritious food to stay healthy and active — over the long term requires tight coordination and progress across all sectors. Governments, NGOs, international organizations, and corporations all have a role to play. But who will lead? And where can we focus our resources to make the greatest impact?

Reflecting on our long and shared experience tackling these issues in government, informed by the storied history of farming in our home states and across America, and fueled by the powerful data and evidence on global agriculture markets and innovation, we believe the private sector can provide the greatest improvements in food security. Governments, NGOs, and international organizations must thus not only cultivate values-based leadership in the business community but also empower those leaders in both business and politics who recognize the private sector’s unique potential to meet one of the most pressing challenges of this century.

According to the FAO, global trade in agriculture exceeds $1 trillion each year, or more than 200 times the annual operating budget of the World Food Programme, the world’s largest food aid organization. To put that in perspective, a 1 percent per year gain in the efficiency of global agriculture markets would alone free up enough money to cover all global food aid costs many times over.

The private sector, then, is poised to be the engine for driving sustainability in agriculture and natural resource use over the next 30 years. How? By reinvesting capital in sustainable supply chains, developing nutrient-rich and high-yield crops, creating innovative financial products that increase smallholder farmer access to financing, and developing country-level cooperatives.

To take just one example, efficiency gains in crop development hold enormous potential. As data-driven philanthropists Bill and Melinda Gates outlined in the 2015 annual foundation letter, “American farmers get five times as much maize from their land as African farmers do.” Investment to enhance the efficiency and resilience of Africa’s agriculture sector is a no-brainer — a down payment on the future food security of a continent that, despite its incredible resource potential, continues to spend $50 billion each year to import food.

The history of cooperatives and the agriculture industry offer another example, and one where the history of the U.S. can point the way for the future. Both the U.S. and developing countries show us how investment in disaggregated agricultural markets not only pays dividends to shareholders but also increases sustainability over the long term. The growth of cooperatives was one of the most significant factors in U.S. agriculture’s rapid rise over the past century, combined with government investment in infrastructure like roads and rail, and investment in market-pricing frameworks like the commodities trade.

Cooperatives help farmers get access to the financing they need for growth. The private sector has a significant role to play in bringing small farmers together. Because of cooperatives, today’s agribusinesses can increase crop yields while bolstering food quality and the stability of international trade. The Minnesota-based dairy company Land O’Lakes, for example, has been organizing and strengthening cooperatives in developing countries and increasing farmers’ access to improved seed and animals while also providing education in effective production and economic management.

Harnessing market forces will be necessary to double world food production by 2050. But we must do more than master markets to achieve growth the way it should be done. That will require a dedication to socially and environmentally sustainable investment principles. And it will require corporate leadership that puts a high value on the nutritional quality of food, a sustainable food supply, sensibly using water, and working to ensure climate security.

Using the power of its supply chains to affect change, the Coca-Cola Company is setting a notable example through its sustainable sourcing strategies, empowerment of women and smallholder farmers, and protections of local land rights. By the end of the decade, the company will have spent $17 billion in Africa developing new manufacturing lines, installing cooling and distribution equipment, and implementing safe water initiatives like sustainable sourcing, and supporting women’s economic empowerment and community well-being.

The quality and not just quantity of food — its nutritional value — is inextricably linked to global food security. On a planet where one in nine people is undernourished and more than 1.4 billion people are overweight or obese, the private sector must prioritize “sustainable calories” and recognize that the return on investment in nutritious food will deliver greater value over time. DuPont’s Nutrition and Health division collaborates with the public and private sectors to develop science-based food ingredient and food protection solutions that improve the health profile, quality, and safety of food. The Global Food Security Index, a unique and progressive collaboration between DuPont and theEconomist Intelligence Unit, is an important step in bringing nutrition food security planning to the forefront. The index measures food security across 109 countries based on 28 indicators including diet diversification, protein quality, nutrition standards, food waste and obesity. Each of these indicators is critical to addressing the global challenge of malnutrition.

Climate change is also an inextricable part of food security, and here the reinsurance industry has been taking the lead in addressing risks from extreme weather such as floods and droughts. Swiss Re has created new insurance products that protect companies’ weather-related earnings and prevent losses from weather and commodity price shocks. The company has also developed new types of crop-shortfall insurance, weather-based index coverage, and structure price hedges for businesses concerned about low production caused by unpredictable weather.

With all of this potential, what models of private leadership should be promoted as setting the gold standard? How should corporations engage with governments and NGOs working on food security issues? In the future, categorizing this type of work under the umbrella term “public-private partnerships” will be insufficient as a guide for change. We believe that clearer conceptions for what enlightened private sector approaches look like must be discussed and established.

Food security conversations today need to build from an understanding of initiatives like the ones now happening on the ground. There is broad agreement on the need for sustainable intensification of agriculture in order to increase both yields and nutritional quality of crops; and to consolidate and empower smallholder farmers, particularly women farmers, to increase their economic power and improve their access to the global food trade. How this will happen — and what kinds of private sector investments will be needed to make it happen — is the great puzzle of our day. Our job is to help fit together the puzzle pieces of private sector leadership to ensure the globe’s long-term food security.

Former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle is the co-chair of the Aspen Food Security Strategy Group with former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, former Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman, and the philanthropist Tony Elumelu.

It is peculiar to live in a world where hunger is an endemic problem for half the planet while diet books are best-sellers in the other half. This point is often lost in the broader bundle of jargon that now defines the conversation on food security in the twenty-first century, but it should not be.

A food security expert today will tell you that in order to feed the world’s population, projected to reach over 9 billion people by 2050, we must adopt a sophisticated strategy of “streamlining market efficiencies,” “scaling best practices,” and “leveraging disruptive technologies” to put food in the mouths of the poor and the hungry. True. But there is more to this story.

In reality, food insecurity predates public-private partnerships and market-driven solutions by several millennia, and the essence of the issue remains unchanged. Even in the twenty-first century, chronic hunger and malnutrition are propagated by two forces: inequality and injustice.

This means that food security is as much a moral and political issue as it is one defined by markets and international agreements. Accordingly, we have an obligation to make the case for plugging the gaps in the global food system — not only because of how it will benefit economic growth and political stability but also because it is the right thing to do.

It is therefore time for a clear-eyed moral framework for reaching food security. This means building support among core participants — governments, the private sector, NGOs, and international institutions — for the principle that feeding the world’s growing population is an end in itself and not merely a means to other ends.

Generating returns on investment, exploring new markets, and protecting the world’s resources are important benefits that will come from working toward food security. But they are small part of a greater moral good that should remain the fundamental principle of food security. What does this principle look like in practice?

Government is first and foremost a social contract that outlines responsibilities for order and well-being between those who rule and those who are ruled. I therefore believe that governments have a responsibility to feed those who cannot feed themselves. But we must better understand what tools governments can use to achieve that objective.

First, property is everywhere in this discussion, and governments have the power to define the legal architecture of property rights. Food is about agriculture; agriculture is about land and water; and land and water are about property — who owns it, who has access to it, and who cultivates it. As the economist Hernando De Soto has pointed out brilliantly, if we can do a better job of making property rights accessible to all, we can also help the poor to use those rights to obtain credit, make investments, and increase their agricultural output. Property rights give poor people a stronger voice and a greater stake in their economies. We cannot expect to increase the agricultural output of the world’s arable land if the smallholder farmers responsible for its cultivation are not invested in its future.

Second, as the providers of social services, governments are in a unique position to structure how issues such as nutrition, agriculture, and infrastructure intersect with welfare and social services. One of the resounding lessons from the work of the Food Security Strategy Group at the Aspen Institute is that an integrated approach for reducing food insecurity has a greater impact than separate strategies for each sector. Ethiopia has demonstrated the wisdom of such an integrated strategy in its Agricultural Transformation Agency (ATA), a forward-thinking agency designed to reduce food insecurity by mandating collaboration between key government ministries and finance, agriculture, health, relief, and social services. The success of this model is evident in the fact that since the strategy’s implementation, Ethiopia has made greater gains toward food security (as measured by the Economist Intelligence Unit’s Global Food Security Index which is sponsored by DuPont) than any other country.

Third, governments have the power and responsibility to create clear regulatory environments to accelerate technologies that support the safe and sustainable increase of agricultural production. One important opportunity will come later this year, when the UN sets out its post-2015 development goals. Part of the discussion about the proper role of the UN in food security should include whether we consider access to food a human right. Importantly, this could help reframe the debate on hot-button moral issues such as agricultural subsidies and genetically modified (GM) seed.

The Green Revolution and its modern-day counterparts have saved countless lives. Yet there are countries with starving populations that for a variety of reasons have decided they will not use any crops that have been exposed to GMOs or are themselves genetically modified. Consensus in the scientific community supports the position that GM crops increase yields and do not pose a threat to human health. While this position could shift, until that happens we have a moral imperative to use these agricultural innovations to decrease hunger and increase profits for farmers in the developing world. Only governments have the authority to drive evidence-based policy reforms that decrease hunger, enhance nutrition, and support innovation.

From the legal architecture of land and water rights to the provision of social services and the power to shape and accelerate high-impact technologies, governments possess considerable tools to deploy in the global effort to fight food insecurity. Moreover, as the guardians of social order and justice, governments have a compelling moral responsibility to lead the way toward a more food-secure future.

But government can’t do this alone. Governments are not omnipotent, nor do they possess infinite resources. The two sectors best positioned to complement the tools and capabilities of governments are the private sector and what we may consider the ‘spiritual’ sector or global religions.

Businesses, of course, have the greatest stake in achieving a food-secure future. And it is here where the moral underpinning of food security becomes particularly important. Businesses, including large multinational agriculture companies, stand to gain a great deal in the markets that now exemplify the most endemic and vexing challenges of food insecurity. Yet the path to profitability in those regions is not always confluent with the long-term sustainability and welfare of the most vulnerable communities.

Businesses have a responsibility to share the burden: to do well by doing good. In the agriculture sector, this means making a commitment to developing resources and human capital at a community level so that smallholder farmers, who are mostly women, share the profits of the global rise in agriculture yields by having fair access to water, land, and fertilizers.

Even with the public, private, and non-profit sectors fully engaged, it’s in our interests to recognize that another set of voices can mobilize grassroots action on an issue such as food security in a way no other organizations can. These are the voices of religious authority — from the Pope to imams, and everyone in between — who have the power to spur broad-based action on agriculture and nutrition to help the poor and malnourished.

Notably, Pope Francis and his deputy, Cardinal Peter Turkson, have been outspoken on this issue, with Pope Francis going so far as to call it a “God-given right of everyone to have access to adequate food.” Moreover, they have mobilized the Church’s development arm, Caritas Internationalis, in a global campaign to end hunger by 2025 by leveraging, for the first time, the worldwide footprint of Caritas Internationalis and its affiliated organizations to present a unified call for systemic change in the global food system.

The Pope’s voice and action on this issue, as evidenced by his strong endorsement of the Rome Declaration on Nutrition and Framework for Action, exemplifies how religious leaders can use their gravitas and authority to galvanize support for public sector-led initiatives.

Meeting the complex challenge of achieving food security by mid-century mandates new thinking and action. Yes, it requires “dynamic partnerships,” “models for scalable impact,” and “disruptive technologies,” along with a host of other ingredients that would be dizzying to list. But the real challenge is to use the core competencies of each sector to pursue of a common goal. Businesses make money — they must find it in their interests to grow in a way that leaves the poor and malnourished better off in the areas in which they work. Governments make laws and uphold order — they must see protecting the poor and malnourished as fundamental to social and political stability over the long term. Religions and other NGOs — such as those focused on empowering women — can share compelling narratives and motivate people to give back, cut back, and reduce food waste. In a world where one-third of all edible food never makes it to the mouths of the hungry, we all have an individual moral responsibility to do our part.

The imperative to support those in need is the idea — the larger framework — that unites each of these sectors in achieving food security. We should embrace this sense of shared purpose.

Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright is the co-chair of the Aspen Food Security Strategy Group with former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, former Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman, and the philanthropist Tony Elumelu.

Tonight, one in eight of the world's people – 842 million men, women and children – will go to bed hungry. In the developing world, one child in four is stunted, physically and mentally, because they do not have enough to eat.

The good news is that it doesn’t need to be this way. There are many proven strategies to fight hunger. But one strategy has not received enough attention: ensuring that all women have access to family planning and other reproductive health services.

What’s the connection between family planning and hunger? Poverty. The fact is, there is more than enough food for everyone on the planet. Most people go hungry because they are simply too poor to buy enough to eat. But, when women are able to plan and space their childbearing, they are better able to care for themselves — to protect their health, to get an education, and to earn a decent living. As a result, they and their families are less likely to be poor.

Family planning fights poverty at the national level, as well. It leads to lower birthrates, which saves money that nations can invest in health care, infrastructure, and job creation. Indeed, every dollar invested in family planning and reproductive health services can save up to $31 on spending for education, food, health, housing, and sanitation. This is the “demographic dividend” that powered the rise of the Asian Tiger economies over the last few decades.

By fighting poverty, family planning can help end the scourge of hunger today. It can also help meet the larger challenge of feeding humanity in the future.

The Food and Agriculture Organization says that food production must increase 70% by 2050 to meet rising demand. But that will not be easy in a world reeling from the impacts of climate change. The World Bank warns that we are now on track for 4°C of warming, which will bring extreme heat waves, searing drought and rising sea levels — all of which could have devastating impacts on agriculture.

By slowing population growth, family planning can lower the hurdles that agriculture must leap. Slower growth will also reduce pressure on the natural systems that support life. A host of environmental problems — including climate change, water scarcity, and biodiversity loss—will be far easier to address if world population peaks at 9 billion, rather than climbing to 11 billion or more.

Family planning is crucial to food security and sustainability, now and in the future. Incredibly, there are still 222 million women in the developing world who wish to plan their families, but lack meaningful access to these services.

This week, global leaders are assembling at the annual meetings of the World Bank Group and the International Monetary Fund to discuss the intertwined challenges of food security, development and climate change. I urge them to remember that family planning and reproductive health services are vital to women’s rights — and can help us meet the challenges of the 21st century.