Catholic Relief Services, one of the nation's largest private international humanitarian agencies and a leader in providing U.S. food and agricultural assistance, applauds President Barack Obama's announcement that G-8 nations have committed $20 billion to help millions of the world's poor farmers to grow more food.

This commitment, including $3.5 billion to be pledged by the U.S., is a good start to funding a comprehensive food security plan along the lines of the Roadmap to End Global Hunger, a strategy proposed by Catholic Relief Services and a coalition of other humanitarian groups to Congress and the Administration. In addition to agriculture, investments are needed in nutrition, disaster risk reduction, social safety nets and improved, more flexible emergency response.

"President Obama's announcement is a welcome indication that our government understands what Catholic Relief Services has long known: poor farmers in the developing world need more help to produce and market enough quality food for their families and communities," said Bill O'Keefe, CRS' senior director for advocacy. "We have the audacity to believe that we can end global hunger if governments make these sorts of major commitments to join in the fight."

The need for bold action to fight hunger was underscored by the recent news that the global food and financial crises have pushed the number of people suffering from chronic hunger to more than 1 billion.

"While this effort is overdue, it is also timely. The food price crisis and our concern about the impact of global climate change on rain-fed agriculture in Africa make the effort all the more urgent," O'Keefe said. "The key to success for this effort is whether it targets the poorest farmers in the poorest countries. Most of these farmers are women, who sometimes get left out of these big government aid programs."

This initiative echoes the call of Pope Benedict XVI for a greater focus on agricultural development to end poverty in his encyclical "Charity in Truth," issued earlier this week.

"The problem of food insecurity needs to be addressed within a long-term perspective, eliminating the structural causes that give rise to it and promoting the agricultural development of poorer countries," Pope Benedict wrote. "This can be done by investing in rural infrastructures, irrigation systems, transport, organization of markets, and in the development and dissemination of agricultural technology that can make the best use of the human, natural and socio-economic resources that are more readily available at the local level, while guaranteeing their sustainability over the long term as well."

The G-8's agriculturally focused food security plan aligns with CRS' response to the food and financial crises that have caused so much hardship for poor and vulnerable people around the world. In April, CRS launched a five-year worldwide agricultural development strategy that adopts a holistic, market-oriented approach to help lift millions of people out of poverty. This agroenterprise strategy aims to help poor farmers increase their household incomes in a sustained way by increasing agricultural production and linking to markets so they can profitably sell their crops.

While this $15 billion commitment is good news, the next steps are crucial. These commitments by the G8 nations must be fulfilled in a timely manner.

"Obviously, delivering on this commitment is more important than making it: the U.S. and the other G8 countries need to get the funds in the pipeline," O'Keefe said. "Also, this commitment must complement and not displace existing U.S. investments in food security, including food aid in the growing number of emergencies around the world."

Catholic Relief Services is the official international humanitarian agency of the U.S. Catholic community. The agency alleviates suffering and provides assistance to people in need in more than 100 countries, without regard to race, religion or nationality. For more information, please visit www.crs.org.