Recently, actress Kimberly Williams-Paisley and her son Huck traveled with CARE to see poverty-fighting projects in Honduras. As Williams-Paisley posted on Instagram, “We got to see what happens when we invest in women and climate resilience, and tailor solutions at the local level. These people don’t want to leave their homes or their communities.”

We hear so much about people migrating and crossing the southern border into the United States, but so little about where they come from or why. People don’t want to leave their homelands to make the dangerous trek to the United States, unless they are facing desperation like hunger.

If we focused more on hunger and poverty-fighting solutions we could save many lives and reduce migration.

“We met Nelson and Myrna, whose improved agricultural practices have boosted production and income generation in a place where climate change has caused extensive drought seasons, providing a way out of poverty for people who would otherwise be forced to migrate,” Williams-Paisley and CARE posted on Instagram about their Honduras mission.

When thinking of the crisis of migration, there are many countries we need to pay attention to. It goes beyond the Dry Corridor nations of El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua. Migrants are also coming from Mexico, Venezuela, Cuba, Ecuador, Colombia and Haiti. These are countries that experience high levels of hunger and poverty. Haiti is suffering an escalating hunger crisis that the U.N. World Food Program says is caused chiefly by “increased violence, rising prices, and poor agriculture from low rainfall.”

Disasters such as drought can drastically increase migration, and that is something that will remain a risk as the threat of climate change continues. Political instability or violence in these countries are other factors. These are among the root causes of migration.

The Biden-Harris administration has wisely made it a part of its strategy to tackle these root causes. It takes time though for these changes to take effect. These are not overnight solutions. But they are on the right track building the foundation for any country: food and agriculture.

“Through USAID’s Feed the Future programs, an estimated 63,000 farmers in Guatemala and Honduras utilized innovative technologies intended to increase production and income on more than 75,000 acres of farmland,” according to a White House update on reducing the root causes of migration. “The U.S. government helped unlock more than $57 million in private sector agricultural finance. This helps create greater income security and resilience to environmental and economic shocks.”

These initiatives need stronger funding support from Congress to reach as many areas as possible.

Think of the results if we were to do more to help countries boost agricultural production and resilience, have steady sources of food and chances for good livelihoods. People would be far less likely to migrate from their home country if they have these opportunities.

Congress needs to boost funding for global food aid programs that would support efforts to reduce migration. Right now, Bread for the World is warning of cuts to food aid, including the Food for Peace program that funds hunger relief in many nations. Cutting its funding would be a huge mistake and travesty.

In Colombia, the U.N. World Food Program feeds victims of conflict, drought and also migrants from Venezuela. But the WFP and partners but need more funding for relief programs. The same is true for Haiti, where WFP is short on funding for the relief mission.

We need strong funding for global food aid programs so we can give our all to tackling hunger to reduce migration. We need to work with other nations to rally the necessary resources. There are many hunger emergencies globally right now because of wars and climate change. So we need a big increase in our fight against global hunger to help many nations.

Programs like Food for Peace, McGovern-Dole Food for Education, Feed the Future and others need more funding.

Global food aid makes a relatively tiny part of the budget. So it is not a major lift to increase funding. Far more funding is poured into nuclear weapons, for example, than programs that fight hunger overseas.

If we are serious about reducing migration, we can certainly step up the fight against hunger in countries at risk. Reducing hunger and poverty abroad will help reduce migration.

William Lambers is an author who partnered with the U.N. World Food Program on the book “Ending World Hunger.” His writings have been published by the Washington Post, NY Times, Newsweek, Cleveland Plain Dealer, History News Network and many other outlets.