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 “It is abundantly clear that sustained long-term investment in agriculture for development is crucial to rural livelihoods. It can have truly transformational impacts both in terms of the rural economy and in terms of poverty, hunger and malnutrition alleviation.” said a spokesman for the UK's All-Party Parliamentary Group on Agriculture and Food for Development

Parliamentarians of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Agriculture and Food for Development are calling on the UK Government, and specifically the Department for International Development, to invest in agriculture to combat the hunger that 925 million people around the world are undernourished face every day - in a Parliamentary Report, on “Home Grown Nutrition”.

Read more: Parliamentarians urge UK government to increase investment in agriculture to end global hunge

Twenty five farmer based groups in the Wa East District of Ghana's upper west region have agreed to sell their farm produce to caterers who operate under the Ghana School Feeding Programme (GSFP).

Madam Cecilia Hamza, the Upper West Regional Coordinator for Netherlands development organisation, SNV, who support the GSFP, noted that the programme was going to impact greatly on the economy, as 80% of local foodstuff would be acquired from the farmers by the caterers under the programme.

The farmer produce will include; beans, maize, rice and groundnuts to the caterers at the current market prices of these commodities, with an addition of 10% margin for credit sales.

Read more: Ghana School Feeding Programme to Buy Produce From Farmers in Upper West Region

School districts across the US are opting for locally-sourced ingredients more than ever before. The National Farm to School Network, a group that links schools with local farmers and is funded by government grants, has grown from just a handful of programmes when it first started in the late ‘90s. It now works with around 13,000 schools in all 50 states.

“Child nutrition and addressing the obesity epidemic is an incredibly important topic,” said Mary Stein, the group's Associate Director. “There’s an increasing consumer interest across the country about really reconnecting to where your food comes from".

Read more: Schools source locally in Wisconsin, US

Imagine if the meal you ate for lunch every day at school was made from ingredients grown only a few kilometres away. That’s the reality for Mebrat and Bizunesh, students at Harifa Chafa Primary School in Ethiopia.

Their nutritious WFP school meals – a porridge made of bean and maize flour, vegetable oil, and salt – don’t just give them the energy to succeed in the classroom: most of the food is grown by farmers in their community through WFP’s Purchase for Progress programme.

It comes down to the community helping the community. Since 2010, for example, WFP has contracted over 55,000 tons of maize and haricot beans through P4P to use in all of its programs in Ethiopia.

Read more: Communities Nourishing Communities: We Call It Progress