UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero cochaired a two-day meeting in Madrid, Spain, entitled “Food Security For All,” in late January 2009. Over 40 government ministers and heads of international organizations came together to work on an action plan to coordinate and respond effectively to both immediate effects and longer-term causes of food insecurity across the globe. Josette Sheeran, World Food Program executive director, highlighted the impact of the current economic crisis on the hungry, stating, “as the financial crisis hits the hungry even harder, we must sustain these unprecedented efforts to meet the urgent food and nutritional needs of the most vulnerable people, while promoting smallholder farmers and agriculture.” While the focus of the meeting was to determine the means to aid smallholder farmers, some criticized the fact that hardly any of these farmers attended the meeting. At the conclusion of the summit, Spain pledged to provide 200 million euros per year over the next five years for the “fight against hunger.”

In the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur, representatives from Indonesia, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Iran, Turkey, Egypt, Nigeria and Malaysia held another two-day meeting in late February 2009 to discuss ways to prevent the global economic downturn from halting the steady supply of affordable food in their countries. The goal of the meeting was to help resource-poor farmers increase production by making high-quality seeds, fertilizer and animal feed more readily available. Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi stated that food security was “not only a prerequisite for social and economic development but also a necessary condition for domestic stability.” Officials from Iran and Bangladesh proposed creating food banks or emergency funds to help stabilize food prices and supply, which would also cover countries developing in the wake of natural disasters.

Kenya finds itself in the midst of a national food crisis, faced with a projected mid-year maize deficit of 190,000 tons. Describing the situation as a “natural disaster,” President Mwai Kibaki called on international donors for aid. The government stated the food aid would be distributed to those 10 million people, mainly in east and southeast Kenya, who would otherwise be unable to meet their “minimum food requirements.” A report from the Famine Early Warning Systems Network published in early 2009 found that “households are foregoing medical, education, transport and other important nonfood needs” in order to be able to eat. In late January 2009, a dozen of Kenya's senior agriculture officials were fired due to their poor response to the developing crisis.

And also in late January, the UN's World Food Program reported that Zimbabwe faced serious threats from hunger as 6.9 million people—over half of the country's population—did not have access to sufficient amounts of food.