The Feed the Future Initiative's Research Strategy.

The President’s Global Hunger and Food Security Initiative, titled “Feed the Future (FTF)”, has the overarching goal of sustainably reducing global poverty and hunger.  Providing sufficient and nutritious food to the world’s growing population while conserving the environment and responding to a more variable climate will require unprecedented increases in agricultural production and productivity in the next 40 years. The research strategy supporting the FTF Initiative focuses on three central themes: 1) expanding the productivity frontier; 2) transforming key agricultural systems; and 3) enhancing food safety and nutrition. Gender, climate change, and environmental sustainability are issues to be addressed across the three research themes. Efforts to advance the productivity frontier include investments in crop improvement, animal-sourced food production, and technology adoption. Research to sustainably intensify farming systems with an emphasis on climate resiliency will focus on four key production regions where hunger and poverty are prevalent: 1) Indogangetic Plains; 2) East and Southern Africa mixed-maize region; 3) West Africa Sudano-Sahelian zone; and 4) the Ethiopian Highlands. Research investments to enhance food safety and nutrition will focus on increasing grain legume productivity, improving nutritional levels in key food crops, reducing mycotoxin contamination in the food chain, and reducing post-harvest losses. The research agenda relies on robust partnerships formed across U.S. agencies and with partner country universities, the private sector, CGIAR centers, national agricultural research institutes, and NGOs.