Ending Hunger in America, 2014 Hunger Report Full Report | Page 170

gies and improved seeds and livestock varieties, build farmers’ knowledge and skills, and
encourage them to form networks for sharing information. Donors should support effective
local, national, and regional agriculture efforts. For example, the Comprehensive Africa
Agriculture Development Program (CAADP) is working to create the right technical and
regulatory environment for agriculture and to strengthen agricultural innovation systems.
In developing countries, significant volumes of grain are lost after harvest. The annual
cost of grain losses to African countries is estimated at $4 billion, an amount that could
provide food every day of the year for at least 48 million people.28 This is far more than the
continent receives in food aid—in fact, $4 billion is equal to two-thirds of all the food aid
provided to sub-Saharan Africa from 1998 to 2008 (an estimated $6.1 billion). Building infrastructure to support the food supply chain will help reduce grain losses as well as improve
food quality and safety, generate more income, and contribute to food and nutritional security.29 International finance institutions and the private sector should join donor countries
in assisting recipient countries in strengthening their capacity to prevent post-harvest losses.

Women’s Economic Empowerment

Laura Elizabeth Pohl for Bread for the World

Tohomina Akter, 18,
washes herself at the
neighborhood well
in Char Baria village,
Barisal, Bangladesh.

160? Chapter 5

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More than 50 percent of the reduction in hunger from 1970 to 1995 is attributed to
improvements in women’s status in society. It is true that the lives of girls and women have
changed dramatically over the past
50 years. While the pace of change
has been astonishing in some areas,
progress toward gender equality
has been limited in others. Hunger
and poverty remain stubbornly
“feminized”—globally, 70 percent
of people living in absolute poverty
are female.31 In too many households and communities, women
and girls are often the last to eat.
In 2011, a severe drought struck
the Eastern region of Guatemala,
leading the U.S. government to
send food aid. Without the food
aid, many children there might
have died from malnutrition,
and this is what almost happened
anyway to a five-year-old girl
named Gilma. Gilma has four siblings, all of them boys, and that means she and her mother
eat last and often there is nothing left for them. Her greatest disadvantage is not that she
is a poor child in a region where food is often scarce, but that she is a poor girl there. By
November 2011, Gilma was suffering from a condition known as severe acute malnutrition.
Her legs were swollen and ulcerated, as happens when children suffer such severe malnutrition. Gilma was fortunate in that her village was receiving food aid. Save the Children, the
NGO administering the food aid program, contacted health officials when Gilma slipped

Bread for the World Institute