[WEBCAST] Global to Local: The Impact of COVID-19 on Food Security

According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted the world's food systems and disrupted regional agricultural trade and supply chains. The FAO has warned that food shortages are a real risk in the coming months, posing a threat to millions of people living in regions already vulnerable to food insecurity, malnutrition, and natural disasters, including climate-related disasters. A recent analysis by the World Food Program found that 130 million additional people — on top of the 135 million already experiencing acute malnutrition — will face hunger in 2020 as a result of the pandemic, many of them in Asian countries such as India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh.

The threats are closer to home as well, as students in the U.S. face meal shortages with schools closed and workers who have been laid off struggle to make ends meet. A recent Brookings Institution survey found that, among mothers with young children, nearly one-fifth say their children are not getting enough to eat, a rate three times as high as in 2008 during the worst of the Great Recession. In Texas, more than 22 percent of children are food-insecure, according to advocacy group Children at Risk — a problem only exacerbated by COVID-19. Demand for food assistance is rising at an extraordinary rate, just as the nation's food banks are being struck by shortages of both donated food and volunteer workers and as a recent administration rule change has pushed nearly 700,000 people from the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).

Join Asia Society for a discussion on how to address the growing crisis of food insecurity during the pandemic, including how food supply chains have had to adapt and the role of both global and local partnerships.

Schedule

Thursday, June 11, 2020
7:30 p.m. CT — Moderated Discussion
8 p.m. CT — Audience Q&A (Questions welcome via YouTube Live and Facebook Live)

About the Speaker

Caitlin Welsh is the director of the Global Food Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), where she provides insights and policy solutions to global food security challenges. She brings over a decade of U.S. government experience to this role. She served most recently in the National Security Council and National Economic Council as director of global economic engagement, where she coordinated U.S. policy in the G7 and G20 across multiple summits. Prior to the White House, Ms. Welsh spent over seven years in the Department of State’s Office of Global Food Security, including as acting director, offering guidance to the secretary of state on global food security and its relationship to urbanization, climate change, and conflict. As a presidential management fellow, Ms. Welsh oversaw a portfolio of agriculture-related grants at the U.S. African Development Foundation. Ms. Welsh also lived and worked in Morocco’s breadbasket region as a Peace Corps volunteer, witnessing the complex causes and effects of food insecurity and working to improve lives through education.Ms. Welsh received her B.A. from the University of Virginia and M.P.A. from Columbia University’s School of International Public Affairs. She hails from Erie, Pennsylvania, and speaks Arabic and French. 

Moderator information will be announced.

Asia Society hosts today's leading voices, providing commentary on events in news, society, and culture. Opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect Asia Society views.

Asia Society Texas Center Business & Policy Programs, Endowed by

Huffington Foundation

Business and Policy programs at Asia Society Texas Center are presented by Bank of America, Muffet Blake, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, United Airlines, and Wells Fargo. Major support comes from Nancy C. Allen, Chinhui Juhn and Eddie Allen, Nancy Pollok Guinee, and Mary Lawrence Porter, as well as The Brown Foundation, Inc. and Houston Endowment. Additional funding is provided by the Friends of Asia Society Texas Center, a dedicated group of individuals and organizations committed to bringing the best in public programming.

Business & Policy Presenting Sponsors

About Asia Society at Home

Though Asia Society is temporarily closed, we are dedicated to continuing our mission of building cross-cultural understanding and uplifting human connectivity. Using digital tools, we bring you content for all ages and conversations that matter, in order to spark curiosity about Asia and to foster empathy.

About Asia Society Texas Center

With 13 locations throughout the world, Asia Society is the leading educational organization promoting mutual understanding and strengthening partnerships among the peoples, leaders, and institutions of Asia and West. Asia Society Texas Center executes the global mission with a local focus, enriching and engaging the vast diversity of Houston through innovative, relevant programs in arts and culture, business and policy, education, and community outreach.