World Food Summit Five Years Later : The Challenge of feeding and educating all

This paper was presented at the Workshop on "Food Security and the World Food Summit", organized by FAO during the Global Consortium of Higher Education and Research for Agriculture and Food Systems in the 21st Century (GCHERA,San Francisco, 14 July 2001). The paper addresses the major challenges to be faced and progress made thus far in feeding and educating all. Clearly, the challenges are daunting in a world in which more than 800 million people are undernourished and illiterate, an estimated 130 million children are out of school and about 160 million children are undernourished. This paper also focuses on the renewed consensus of the international community to address basic education as a crucial priority for poverty reduction, rural development and food security. Furthermore, the paper proposes a systemic action by which education can effectively serve the needs of rural livelihoods by fostering interdisciplinary approaches and new partnerships to forge stronger relationships between research and extension.

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