World Bank unit launches $6-B facility to bolster food security

International Finance Corp. (IFC) of the World Bank group has launched a $6-billion financing facility intended to help support food production and strengthen the private sector’s ability to respond to surging levels of food insecurity across the globe.

The facility will be used to support private sector companies along the food value chain by leveraging IFC’s sectoral expertise in agribusiness, manufacturing, infrastructure, and technology, as well as the financial sector and trade finance.

IFC said in a statement the war in Ukraine and an uneven global recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic have added to rising levels of hunger and malnourishment, which have already been worsened by climate change and increasingly severe weather events that are damaging harvests and reducing yields.

The new funding platform will supplement the World Bank’s commitment of $30 billion in response to the food crisis.

In their East Asia and the Pacific Economic Update report released last week, the World Bank said that to achieve the food-related goals of affordability, security, and sustainability, governments must begin by shifting focus from rice-centric food security to nutrition security.

World Bank EAP chief economist Aaditya Mattoo said rice-centric policies were most pronounced in Indonesia and the Philippines.

The report suggests that governments encourage diversified production of more nutritious foods like livestock products, fruits and vegetables, by reducing policy distortions that currently favor price production.

“This goal requires a move away from input-intensive to knowledge- intensive technologies and production practices, involving, for example, improved and resilient breeds/varieties and precision agriculture,” the report stated.