Eradicating global hunger is a key step towards establishing world security, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Friday, marking U.N. World Food Day. “Food security is about economic, environmental, and national security for our individual homelands and the entire world,” the top U.S. diplomat said in a statement. “Fighting hunger and poverty through sustainable agricultural development, making sure that enough food is available, and that people have the resources to purchase it is a key foreign policy objective of the Obama administration,” Clinton wrote. The United States has adopted a $3.5 billion plan to fight world hunger as part of a $20 billion pledge made by the world's richest countries at a Group of Eight (G8) meeting in Italy in July. “We understand that efforts to bolster food security will not be a short-term plan, and we are committed to working with our partners across sectors on this issue for the long haul,” Clinton said. The United Nations said earlier Friday there are now some 1.02 billion undernourished people in the world—one-sixth of the global population.
