Food Security

Food insecurity is no longer merely a humanitarian concern — it is a vector of geopolitical instability, a tool of statecraft, and an accelerating dimension of the global security crisis. CFR’s Food Security program is a sustained, multi-year initiative that repositions food security at the center of global security debates, bridges the longstanding divide between development and security communities, and generates rigorous policy-relevant analysis for governments, multilateral institutions, and the private sector.

The initiative rests on four interconnected pillars:

1. The nexus of food security, climate change, and human mobility as drivers of geopolitical transformation
2. The weaponization of food and agricultural systems as instruments of malign statecraft
3. The development of a multidimensional, twenty-first-century conception of security adequate to complex, cascading crises
4. Contributions toward a new multilateralism more solidly anchored in the Global South without abandoning the normative foundations established after World War II.

Flash Point Papers

Rapid-response papers on emerging food security crises tracking the moments when hunger becomes a policy emergency.

The CFR Food Security Program examines how disruptions to global food systems drive political instability, conflict, and humanitarian crises.

Operating under the Wachenheim Center for Peace and Security, the program produces rapid-response analysis, convenes senior policymakers and practitioners, and builds the frameworks needed to treat food insecurity as a national security challenge — not a development afterthought.