Do you ever wonder what COBA professors do when they aren’t teaching class? You may not know it, but many of our professors commit their time to conducting research of all different types. Dr. Monty Lynn recently co-authored a research article titled, “Better Together: Improving Food Security and Nutrition by Linking Market and Food Systems”. The article is a literature review of market and food systems informing on the latest impacts of COVID-19 towards global food security.
Dr. Lynn says, “The article is the fruit of a collaborative effort with technical advisors at World Vision and CARE, supplemented by faculty members at ACU and the Catholic University of America. To share the findings, the article authors will host a webinar in June to describe our work, mostly with a global CARE and World Vision audience. In the article, we combine two popular approaches in global food security which attempt to strengthen markets and nutrition, and we describe CARE and World Vision food security programming that illustrates the model. In the webinar, we will describe the latest information from CARE and World Vision on how the coronavirus pandemic and COVID-19 are impacting global food security.” Dr. Lynn notes that “It is a welcome and special opportunity to join a research team with two of the largest development organizations in the United States and to collaborate with my colleague, Dan Norell, a Senior Technical Advisor in Economic Development at World Vision in Washington, D.C.”
The article and webinar will explore the following:
- The Inclusive Market and Food Systems Model
- The importance of bringing the market to vulnerable households
- How empowering women multiplies nutritional outcomes
- How access does not necessarily equal consumption
- The impact of COVID-19 on programming and adaptive management for livelihood programs
Photo by Jeremy Enlow
International development is a topic that Dr. Lynn stays current with for his research and an International Development class that he occasionally teaches at ACU. His recent research shows that “Major gains have been made in global food security, reducing global hunger. Gains began eroding in 2015, however, and global food insecurity began rising again. Nearly one billion people are food insecure today and 140 million of those became food insecure because of the impact of the coronavirus pandemic and mitigation efforts that have disrupted food production and supply chains.”
This blog post is just a glimpse of the information that is covered in the research article. We encourage you to read the full article HERE and join the webinar on May 19th at 12:30 pm EST, Washington, D.C. time zone HERE.