This was not just a learning session, but a call to action. I encourage you to watch the entire 85-minute video and to think about what you yourself can do, personally and within your networks, to create a more equitable future, addressing food insecurity in a really profound and important way.

This virtual discussion was our third partnership with the CARE organization, and I am grateful to CARE USA President and CEO Michelle Nunn, Paige Moody and the entire CARE team for their support and enormous contributions to the important content and information shared, and to the Rockefeller Foundation and Sundaa Bridgett-Jones for co-hosting this forum and her continued support for the Connected Women Leaders (CWL) initiative.

Ndidi Nwnueli, a globally respected leader in the sector of food security and innovations, took the lead on the curation of this forum which features some of the foremost experts in the world and includes practitioners, thought leaders and policy makers.

Solving hunger globally, Ndidi points out, “involves lots of external drivers — from climate change to globalization and trade organization, population growth, politics and leadership. When we think about the chain, it starts all the way from inputs to the fork. When we think about the environments that shape it, it's about the availability and the affordability of food, as well as individual factors, such as habits and economic issues and consumer behavior and diets.”

“When we zero in on COVID-19 and the food ecosystem, what shocks us is that it's not just the health pandemic that we all share as humanity, but it's also a food pandemic.” — Ndidi Nwnueli

Food Security and the COVID Pandemic

Many of you already know that of the many challenges the world faces, one of the most pressing is the fact that we have 690 million people right now who are chronically hungry or under nourished. And that number is anticipated to grow. It had already been growing in a reversal of progress we had been making before the COVID pandemic and now, the pandemic is threatening and significantly exacerbating these issues. We also know that women are impacted by hunger and poverty more than men. In nearly two-thirds of countries, women are more likely than men to report food insecurity.

Dr. Agnes Kalibata, UN Special Envoy for 2021 Food Systems Summit and president of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), explains that the “impact of COVID-19 on women is huge.”

“The stigma of seeing your child become malnourished, the stigma of not being able to feed your child is felt the most by women. But also, dealing with the disease burden is felt most by women. As we move forward to secure some of the things we care about around nutrition, around food, around maternal health and child health, we really need to look at how these challenges put the biggest burden on women. …

We have an opportunity as women leaders to raise our voice we've been given and to whom a lot has been given a lot is expected. That is what I want to leave with you, the odds that these women are working against. We need to raise our voices and make sure that they are being heard.”

This is an issue that is universal and affects us all. As Sundaa Bridgett-Jones, director of communications, policy and advocacy at The Rockefeller Foundation, notes, “We are beyond the Northern and Southern construct.” “When I looked at the headlines,” Ndidi recalls. “I was shocked to see that this same fear was being manifested in other parts of the world. Even earlier this week, the UK reported that 2,500 children were hospitalized with malnutrition — double the number from the year before — Asia is banning food exports, and Europe have continues to have panic buying. The number of people who are malnourished is doubling in many parts of the world. And this has become a huge challenge because of school feeding programs being closed when schools are shut down and job losses. So it's a widespread problem.”

In the United States, Devon Klatell, managing director of the Food Initiative at The Rockefeller Foundation, tells us that “in April, the US Census found that nearly a third of households with children were unable to buy the amount of quality or food that they wanted. Mothers with children, particularly young children, disproportionately suffer from nutrition insecurity in the United States.” (see chart, right)

“What isn't shown on this chart, but is equally galling is that the rate of nutrition insecurity is much, much higher among Black, indigenous and Hispanic populations in the US, up to two and two to three times higher than in white populations. In the US, it's not that we lack the supply of food or food production, it's that we need a more integrated nutrition security system to reach the populations that are unable to access or unable to afford healthy and nutritious food for their families.”

“I think at this moment in the US there's a very active dialogue around the vulnerability of women who are trying to balance childcare and taking care of their families with unemployment rates that are skyrocketing and professional pressures. We need to make the nutrition security system here easier to navigate and one that can deliver nutrition with dignity. One that delivers a client and family experience that is easy, that is data- and technology-enabled. …The COVID crisis did not create these problems in the US and ending the pandemic will not solve these problems, but we think that this is a unique moment in time where we have both the urgency and the opportunity to address a lot of these systematic deficiencies that disproportionately affect women and particularly female-led households in the US.”

Maureen Miruka, director of gender, youth and livelihoods at CARE based in Kenya, says that, “We [at CARE] first conducted a rapid gender analysis over three months ago. We have since updated that with new data and one of the things that we really are continuing to do is to put gender equality at the center of our response. The new data is showing us that food, income and gender-based violence are a top priority of not only women, but also men. …These issues are very interrelated because we know that a lot of rural incomes are from the agriculture sector and that household decision-making and income allocation issues often lead to gender-based violence.”

Building Back Better

Ndidi Nwnuelo: “Pat taught me something a year ago. She said we are dangerous women, which means we have nothing to lose. And my call to action is first that we have to use our voices to be food ecosystem champions. Wherever we can shape policy to ensure that women's issues are addressed in the food ecosystem, we should be bold and courageous to call out inequity. On a second note, we need to ensure that we advocate for shorter value chains. I'm pushing for policy landscape that sources at least 30% locally and tracks it, because when you show that women constitute at least 60% of that local sourcing ecosystem and if we hold our countries accountable and publish this on a regular basis, I think we'll have something to celebrate as we come out of this. COVID-19 building back better.”

Gillian Pais, partner at McKinsey & Company: “In every crisis, there's an opportunity. And I think as many, many governments and development partners focus on stimulus response to COVID-19, we should figure out how we can leverage that energy and that money to target some of the issues that have been discussed today, in terms of improving the lives of women in the context of the food system.”

Vicki Wilde, senior program officer at The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation: “This pandemic is not only biological. It is social, it exploits the preexisting conditions of racism, the preexisting condition of sexism, poverty, and hunger in the same way that it exploits the preexisting conditions in our bodies. This crisis is threatening livelihoods, especially women's and to fully recover from this pandemic leaders must respond to the ways that it's affecting men and women differently. If they don't, they risk deepening this crisis and rebuilding the world with all the same social cracks and economic fault lines as the one before. If however, policy makers use this emergency as a chance to do things differently, countries can build back better, more prepared and more equal.”

”We have a call to action just released in Foreign Affairs magazine. Melinda Gates is releasing her paper about the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on women and girls. And with this paper, Melinda aims to continue the dialogue begun by our partners, including many of you here across the gender equality community to create a drumbeat, a drumbeat in the media and online to engage leaders, decision makers, and global influencers to take action in four areas.

First, we have to make sure that our health systems deliver for women and girls. This will save lives now and build stronger, more resilient health systems for the future. Second, we have to design more inclusive economic policies that empower women and create resilience in many places. And for many women that means starting with the agriculture sector. Third, we have to gather better data, collect, gather, report more and better data about the impact of the pandemic on women and girls. Good data is fundamental to effective policy and budget responses. And finally, we must prioritize women's leadership for an effective, inclusive response: governments, private sector, all of our agencies must prioritize women voices women's voices at all later at all levels of decision-making.”

Christine Daughtry, VP sustainable agriculture and responsible sourcing, Pepsico: “On behalf of PepsiCo, we would say partnership and collaboration in order to make a change, we must be willing to stretch our thinking and then partner to co-create solutions. Embracing the partnership will demonstrate the business case for scaling women's economic empowerment throughout the entire food system.”

Devin Klatell: “I think this is really the moment to build a bigger, broader coalition around food systems. For too long, at least in the US food systems, advocacy has sort of been left to a small group of organizations, when really food touches everything: It touches health. It touches education. It's a racial justice issue. It's an environmental issue. Anyone who's preparing food, as the chefs spoke to today, has a role to play. Anyone who's buying food for institutions and public programs has a role to play. And I really think asking all the leaders from all of those sectors to join us allies in building a better food system is an imperative at this this moment.”

Maureen Miruka: “On allyship: I’m seeing colleagues in the chat saying we also have men following this conversation. I really want to call us out to engage men and boys for women's empowerment, especially during this crisis, so that we are able to address all the issues that are coming up. Conversations around incomes, around household decision-making, and specifically gender based violence, to apply all the great tools that we have developed at CARE. These are the gender dialogues that are going to get men to work with us as allies in this movement during the COVID-19 crisis.”

Chef Teresa Coracao, owner of O Navigador, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: “I would tell chefs, Get away from your cell phones and social media because small holder farmers, fishermen, and extractivists are waiting for you. And this is my call to action.”

Chef Asha Gomez, Entrepreneur and CARE chef advocate: “While the economic consequences of this crisis will be temporary, global hunger and malnutrition will carry the legacy of this pandemic forever. But if the world acts, now we can save lives and avoid the devastating generational consequences of a double crisis of malnutrition and COVID-19. And I encourage all organizations to really start connecting farmers and chefs. It will make a huge impact.”

Dr. Agnes Kalibata: For women-owned businesses, what do they need? They need digital tools that will allow them to connect without the ability to move. They need operational costs. They need online marketing services. They need an opportunity to venture into new markets, as well, while it's being redefined (and digital services will help with that). We have an opportunity to engage and really provide the leadership support to them the best way we can.

Michelle Nunn: “This is elemental. This is universal. We all need to break bread each day. And we can see that this food insecurity is hitting in the most acute ways around the entire world. And I think what I heard some of you say that what you work for too is anger — the indignation at the clarity of the inequities that are before us are so powerful at this moment. And my hope is that we could combine all of that along with the extraordinary hope and inspiration and energy, and frankly, the women leadership that was so eloquent today. I feel like somehow if we could combine all of that into a great big stew, we could feed the world. I think that what we all recognize is that there is the capacity for us to do that. It is a matter of will and leadership and conviction. And so, I leave this conversation more hopeful, but also with a greater sense of urgency around sharing this message. …

How can we carry that forward? How can we influence policy and how can we be more powerful together? Because this broad network of leadership I think is representative of ecosystems around the world that are fighting for justice and we can do that more powerfully together.”

I would echo Michelle in saying that the purpose of these forums is not just the shared learning and raising and elevating awareness of the issues that affect and impact all of us, but it is also to encourage each of us to mobilize and activate all of the networks and communities that are represented. So I hope you will do that and as Michelle says, we will ”go forward more powerfully together.”

Grateful,

_ Pat

We are taking a break from virtual forums for the month of August, but will be returning in September with a forum on Racial Equity, moderated by Dr. Kimberle Crenshaw, with additional forums being planned on violence against women and girls — the increase of domestic and cultural abuse of women, as well as a forum with the women leading a reset on the global economy.