Food Security and Conflict Integration: Leveraging Food Systems Towards a More Peaceful World

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Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and today’s global food crisis reminds us that conflict and food systems are inextricably linked.  Conflict drives crises, undermines sources of resilience, and erodes development progress. We know the better we understand the connections between conflict and food systems, the better we can build resilience and meet our food goals while also contributing to a more peaceful world.

USAID recently released a new toolkit, “Feed the Future  and Conflict Integration: A Toolkit for Action. This toolkit is a groundbreaking effort to ensure all investments under the United States Government’s Global Food Security Strategy integrate conflict. Fragility, conflict, and violence can easily undermine progress under Feed the Future, but there are steps we can take to mitigate these dynamics and capitalize on opportunities for peace throughout our programming.

Learn more about this new toolkit and hear inspiring partner perspectives on how to integrate conflict and identify opportunities for peace amidst conflict and violence.  This event includes a brief overview of the new toolkit, a series of partner presentations on how they have leveraged food systems towards peace, a lively moderated panel featuring USAID and partner speakers, and ample time for open Q&A.

Meet the Host

Jessica Anderson leads the Center for Resilience's work on conflict integration and humanitarian-development-peace coherence. She has fifteen years of aid experience and was previously a Democracy Fellow in conflict, fragility and peacebuilding at USAID. Prior to joining USAID, she founded a startup supporting post-conflict peacebuilding efforts and consulted for aid organizations. She also researched peace operations as a fellow at the Stimson Center and coordinated events on the future of humanitarian aid at The George Washington University, where she earned her PhD in political science.

Meet the Speakers

Elisabeth Farmer is a development professional with 20 years of experience in livelihoods, food security, resilience, and agricultural development programming. She has lived in Ethiopia for over 11 years, working for CARE, the World Bank, and ACDI/VOCA. In her current role as Chief of Party for the Feed the Future Ethiopia – Livelihoods for Resilience Activity (L4R) with CARE, she leads a consortium of local and international organizations building the resilience of rural Ethiopian households through financial inclusion, women’s empowerment, nutrition, youth livelihoods, and market systems development. Over the past two years, she has spearheaded nexus programming in conflict-affected northern Ethiopia through the layering of Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance (BHA) emergency agricultural input programming on top of L4R’s longer-term development interventions. In her previous role as Livelihoods Specialist for the World Bank, she supported the design and roll-out of the livelihoods component of the Government of Ethiopia’s Productive Safety Net Program. Ms. Farmer holds a Master of Public Policy from the George Washington University.

Olga Petryniak is an inclusive, impact-oriented senior leader and resilience specialist with 16 years of experience designing, delivering and growing high-value, high-impact programming at the intersect of food and water security, market systems development, climate change adaptation, and natural resource and conflict management. As Mercy Corps' Senior Director, East Africa Resilience Portfolio, she oversees strategy, program delivery, learning and thought leadership with respect to food security, market systems development and climate change adaptation programming in the region. Ms. Petryniak previously served as Mercy Corps’ Senior Director for Global Resilience, providing strategic direction and technical leadership to a $500+ million global resilience program portfolio across three continents, and was responsible for influence, partnerships, and fundraising. Prior to her global role, Ms. Petryniak served as Chief of Party, Deputy Chief of Party and Resilience Director, delivering over $150 million in programming funded by bilateral and private donors in Africa, the Americas and Asia. Ms. Petryniak has been recognized for advancing organizational and program strategy, strengthening donor, government and private sector partnerships to achieve shared results, championing improved systems for monitoring, evaluation, and learning, and nurturing diverse, high-performing teams.

Dr. Daniel Abrahams is the Senior Climate Security Advisor in the United States Agency for International Development’s (USAID’s) Bureau for Conflict Prevention and Stabilization. Daniel provides technical guidance for programmatic interventions that address the joint challenges of climate and environmental shocks, conflict, and human security. He also supports USAID’s policy efforts in interagency processes and in international fora on climate security. Prior to joining USAID, he held academic appointments at Colby College and Lehigh University and taught courses on topics including international environmental policy, climate change adaptation, and human geography. His research on climate and environmental security has been published in multiple peer-reviewed journals including World Development, Climate & Development, and Conflict, Security & Development as well as non-academic outlets such as The New Security Beat.  Daniel holds a Master’s in Public Policy from Johns Hopkins University and Ph.D. in Geography from the University of South Carolina.