As the Trump-Vance Administration pushes an America First agenda, the new Food Security Leadership Council (FSLC) is working to create a blueprint to guide U.S. leadership on global food security.
The Council is headed by its President, Cary Fowler, the former Special Envoy for Global Food Security at the U.S. Department of State, and its Executive Director Anna Nelson, the former Deputy Special Envoy. They are supported by 25 Council members as well as a growing team of distinguished fellows.
“I don’t want this government to lose the partnerships that we’ve developed with other countries,” Fowler tells Food Tank. These relationships “would pay a lot of dividends for us in the future.”
The central focus for the Council is to create a set of actionable recommendations for future policy leaders, which Nelson describes as “more of a manual than a white paper.”
The goal, Nelson says, is to create long-term solutions—a challenge when the government often focuses on the short-term. She adds that this must be done in partnership with others, stating that “the U.S. can’t retreat from the global stage.”
Agricultural research and development, particularly when conducted alongside international institutions, is one focus for the Council.
Fowler and Nelson believe this is more important than ever in light of the current administration’s actions. The Trump-Vance Administration recently pulled funding for all but one of the Feed the Future Innovation labs—a network led by U.S. universities that worked to address some of the greatest challenges in agriculture and food security.
“What’s really made this country great, nationally and abroad, has been our commitment to research and technology,” Fowler tells Food Tank. “That’s something we walk away from with great peril.”
Fowler explains that this work with international organizations brings mutual benefits. “We shouldn’t be thinking that our investment with the Innovation Labs was just a big giveaway program to people in other countries.”
Fowler sees innovation in the sector as a 50-year pipeline, stating that “the kind of benefits you get from investing in research can last for half a century.”
Watch or listen to the full conversation with Cary Fowler and Anna Nelson on “Food Talk with Dani Nierenberg” to hear more about the significant financial returns that come from investment in agricultural development, what it will take to rebuild the trust that has been lost in the last nine months, and how the Council’s work can offer lessons to other nations.
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Photo courtesy of Sebastian Pena Lambarri, Unsplash
