The pandemic sent global hunger soaring, but now the war in Ukraine is making the problem far worse. Since Russia and Ukraine together supply 30% of global wheat exports, a big chunk of the world is losing access to food.
Now one of the nation’s biggest foundations is trying to deal with some of these challenges with a $105 million plan to improve food access, make nutritious and healthy food more widely available, and advance production of food in ways that does not harm the planet.
Rajiv Shah, president of the Rockefeller Foundation, said the commitment is the biggest nutrition effort in Rockefeller’s history. Over the next three years, the Good Food Strategy aims to ensure that 40 million people around the world have better access to healthy and sustainable food.
“Because of climate change, food prices were already the highest in a decade, even before Russia’s barbaric invasion of Ukraine further decimated global food supplies. Now the world is on the precipice of a global humanitarian crisis,” Shah said in a statement.
The foundation and other experts say the way the world produces and consumes food is failing people and the planet. So it came up with a new strategy it hopes will shift the focus from increasing the quantity of food to improving its quality.
Rockefeller aims not just to increase access to affordable and healthy food but also to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions in the food system and expand opportunities for small food-production businesses to thrive.
The foundation has some innovative approaches to accomplishing those goals. For instance, it plans to:
— Encourage doctors to prescribe fruits and vegetables instead of drugs when appropriate since they can be both healthier and cheaper. Ten health insurance companies are working with Rockefeller to test the idea.
— Pay for healthy foods at schools, hospitals, prisons, and other state government facilities.
— Help farmers switch their production practices to approaches that reduce carbon…
Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at ABC News: US…