Tom Headlines Indiana Hunger Summit
Published: Friday, March 28, 2025
Kip Tom, Leesburg farmer and former ambassador to the U.N. Agencies for Food and Agriculture in Rome, highlighted the inaugural Indiana Hunger Summit last Thursday at the Indiana State Fairgrounds in Indianapolis. He urged farmers, hunger relief agencies and government officials to work toward national food and agricultural security policies.
"I've always said this: food security is national security," Tom said. "If people are food insecure, they'll travel around their own country -usually they'll move about three times-seeking shelter or food, and when they don't find it, they go outside the border of their country. And when they do that, oftentimes they're caught up in human trafficking."
Tom said people can also get caught up in drugs and smuggling or even terrorist activity. However, all of this, he said, can be prevented.
"It's what we do here at home that makes such a big difference," he said.
As an ambassador, Tom was taught there are four elements to a nation's power: diplomacy, best information, military might and strong economics. To these he adds food security, stating that a national food and agriculture policy is key to ensuring food access.
"We need to establish a national policy where we are systematic in how we look at agriculture, in how we make sure we remain food secure and have a strong industry that produces an excess that can produce exports. So that leads me to this: We need to increase our production and efficiency, reduce the dependency on these foreign inputs, increase the global dependency on our products, and that's going to give us food power," he said.
"The No. 1 item on here is to make sure that we have a national agriculture policy. We need to be systematic and take a refreshed view of how we make sure that we are a food secure nation and remain the leader in the world."
One key to achieving this is addressing the lack of connection between consumers and farmers, Tom said.
"We have less connectivity between the consumer and the farmer. A lot of the time, consumers don't understand what we do and why we do it. At the same time, they say maybe we don't know enough about what the consumer needs today, too," he said.
Problems stemming from this include insufficient representation for farmers and land loss.
He said the solution is to get more youth involved in agricultural learning. He also called farmers to get more involved in food security in their communities, stating they can advocate for community members or dedicate an acre of their land to fruit and vegetables for local food pantries.
Another key issue Tom noted is agricultural trade and imports.
Fertilizer and pesticide production is largely imported into the U.S. Tom said this is pushing out national crop care production companies due to unfair trade policies. Further, he stated that many of these products come from adversarial countries such as Russia and Belarus.
"What can we do to bring some of this manufacturing back to the United States or to our allies to make sure we are a food secure nation?" Tom asked. "If you cut any of these elements off, our own food security is at risk because yields go down and if you have less of anything, prices go up."
Tom said it is imperative to return critical supply chains to the U.S.
"We import two-thirds of our fruits and vegetables," Tom said. "Imagine that."
Many of these imports, he said, are due to regulations. He called for the return of fresh produce markets to the U.S. and a resolution for farm labor, which is needed for fruit and vegetable farming.
He added that it is important to maintain agricultural trade across the globe, but that it should be more tempered so that the U.S. grows the majority of its own food products.
"U.S. strength is dependent on our relationships around the world," he said. "American food power is all about our national security."
If the U.S. can achieve higher agricultural literacy among consumers, better support farmers and bring the majority of agricultural products back to the U.S., Tom said this would set the country up to not only maintain food security, but to also be a major food power.
According to Tom, there are four influences on food security in the U.S.: navigable waterways, good climate and quality soils, a skilled population and two ocean borders.
But despite all this, even the U.S. became food insecure during The Great Depression. It wasn't until food was manufactured to be shelf stable that the food system began to evolve and sustain the growing nation. Following this, the U.S. grew financially. Finally, the Green Revolution, which dawned the days of fertilizer, seed genetics and more, boosted food production and security.
"Our system's really done well over time," Tom said.
This has allowed the U.S. to give generously across the world, he said.
He showed a map of the world that depicted where there was food insecurity throughout the continents. He spread out his hand and gestured toward Africa and drew his hand across an area with heavy food insecurity indicators to Bangladesh in Southwest Asia.
"We're feeding nearly one million people a day, three meals a day," he said as the audience took in the image. "Some of them have been there for four generations. Can you imagine? Would you have hope for yourself or your family or your community or your country if you're living in a place where there's no jobs, there's no schools, they're getting fed (by someone else) and you have no future at all?"
Tom said that "every society is only three meals away from chaos," and encouraged attendees to think about what they're lives would be like without three meals.
"Seventy percent of the places we delivered food aid to were in the midst of manmade conflict," Tom said. "Totally preventable, but still people are paying for the cost of their government's corruption."
He shared that during his time as an ambassador, he visited Yemen and witnessed as a family with a young daughter and two sons around 10 or 12 years old were approached by Houthi rebels while they were entering a facility to receive their food reserves. Tom said the rebels got into a conflict with the parents and took the two boys taken away from them "to probably be childhood soldiers."
These situations happen daily around the world, he said.
"This is why I say food security is national security. Let's make sure in the United States that we do our part in delivering that humanitarian aid (and) that we have the most resilient food system in the world here as well, in the United States of America," he said.
Return to Top of Page