[Senate Hearing 112-736]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 112-736
EVALUATING CURRENT U.S. GLOBAL FOOD SECURITY EFFORTS AND DETERMINING
FUTURE U.S. LEADERSHIP OPPORTUNITIES
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON INTERNATIONAL
DEVELOPMENT AND FOREIGN
ASSISTANCE, ECONOMIC AFFAIRS, AND
INTERNATIONAL ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED TWELFTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
NOVEMBER 28, 2012
__________
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COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS
JOHN F. KERRY, Massachusetts, Chairman
BARBARA BOXER, California RICHARD G. LUGAR, Indiana
ROBERT MENENDEZ, New Jersey BOB CORKER, Tennessee
BENJAMIN L. CARDIN, Maryland JAMES E. RISCH, Idaho
ROBERT P. CASEY, Jr., Pennsylvania MARCO RUBIO, Florida
JIM WEBB, Virginia JAMES M. INHOFE, Oklahoma
JEANNE SHAHEEN, New Hampshire JIM DeMINT, South Carolina
CHRISTOPHER A. COONS, Delaware JOHNNY ISAKSON, Georgia
RICHARD J. DURBIN, Illinois JOHN BARRASSO, Wyoming
TOM UDALL, New Mexico MIKE LEE, Utah
William C. Danvers, Staff Director
Kenneth A. Myers, Jr., Republican Staff Director
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SUBCOMMITTEE ON INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT
AND FOREIGN ASSISTANCE, ECONOMIC AFFAIRS,
AND INTERNATIONAL ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION
BENJAMIN L. CARDIN, Maryland Chairman
ROBERT MENENDEZ, New Jersey BOB CORKER, Tennessee
CHRISTOPHER A. COONS, Delaware MARCO RUBIO, Florida
RICHARD J. DURBIN, Illinois JAMES E. RISCH, Idaho
TOM UDALL, New Mexico JAMES M. INHOFE, Oklahoma
(ii)
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C O N T E N T S
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Page
Cardin, Hon. Benjamin L., U.S. Senator from Maryland, opening
statement...................................................... 1
Lugar, Hon. Richard G., U.S. Senator from Indiana, opening
statement...................................................... 3
McKenna, Tjada, Deputy Coordinator for Development for Feed the
Future, Bureau for Food Security, U.S. Agency for International
Development, Washington, DC.................................... 6
Prepared statement........................................... 8
Responses to questions submitted for the record by Senator
Benjamin L. Cardin......................................... 61
O'Brien, Paul, vice president for Policy and Campaigns, Oxfam
America, Washington, DC........................................ 33
Prepared statement........................................... 36
Shrier, Jonathan, Acting Special Representative for Global Food
Security, Deputy Coordinator for Diplomacy for Feed the Future,
U.S. Department of State, Washington, DC....................... 13
Prepared statement........................................... 14
Response to question submitted for the record by Senator
Benjamin L. Cardin......................................... 59
Veillette, Dr. Connie A., independent consultant, senior adviser,
Global Agricultural Development Initiative, Chicago Council on
Global Affairs, Fairfax Station, VA............................ 48
Prepared statement........................................... 50
Walsh, Conor, Tanzania Country Director, Catholic Relief
Services, Baltimore, MD........................................ 40
Prepared statement........................................... 43
Additional Material Submitted for the Record
Mercy Corps, prepared statement.................................. 58
(iii)
EVALUATING CURRENT U.S. GLOBAL FOOD SECURITY EFFORTS AND DETERMINING
FUTURE U.S. LEADERSHIP OPPORTUNITIES
----------
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 28, 2012
U.S. Senate, Subcommittee on International
Development and Foreign Assistance, Economic
Affairs and International Environmental
Protection, Committee on Foreign Relations,
Washington, DC.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10 a.m., in
room SD-419, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Benjamin L.
Cardin (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
Present: Senators Cardin, Casey, and Lugar.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. BENJAMIN L. CARDIN,
U.S. SENATOR FROM MARYLAND
Senator Cardin. Good morning. Let me welcome you all to the
Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on International
Development and Foreign Assistance, Economic Affairs and
International Environmental Protection. We have to work at
shortening the title of that subcommittee. [Laughter.]
Let me thank, first, Senator Kerry for allowing the
subcommittee to move forward on this very important hearing
dealing with global food security.
And I want to acknowledge the extraordinary work that has
been done by Senator Lugar, a longtime champion on this issue,
and we thank him very much for his leadership. He has been a
tireless champion for the hungry, the poor, and the most
vulnerable in the global community. His advocacy on this issue
and so many policies that seek to change the world for the
better will be sorely missed, and I want to again thank him for
the work that he has done globally on this issue and the role
that the United States has played.
His cochampion in the Senate has been Senator Casey, and I
think Senator Casey will be joining us a little bit later on
filing the Lugar-Casey Global Food Security Act. It was
initially filed in 2008 and again in 2011 to promote U.S.
leadership on this issue.
Last Thursday, most Americans sat down at our dinner tables
with our families and enjoyed a great Thanksgiving meal, but
that night, 870 million people around the world went to bed
hungry and undernourished. Now, quite frankly, that is an
improvement. A year ago, that number was 1 billion. So we have
made progress. But global hunger remains an enormous problem.
The Millennium Development goal of halving the prevalence of
undernourishment in the developing world by 2015 is within
reach.
In 2009, Secretary Clinton said we have the resources to
give every person in the world the tools they need to feed
themselves and their children. So the question is not whether
we can end hunger, it is whether we will end it.
Ending global hunger and poverty is a monumental task.
Addressing the challenges posed by global food insecurity
requires a multifaceted approach. It requires strengthening the
strategic coordination to align the efforts of the private
sector, civil society, aid recipient governments, and
multilateral institutions. It requires investments in cutting-
edge agricultural and sustainability technologies. It requires
policy changes by developing country governments to correct
land tenure and natural resource management, especially water
resources. And it requires a commitment to gender integration
and the development of programs to support women farmers.
The more I look at this issue, the more I start to
appreciate that this is solvable, but we have to deal with the
land reforms. We have to deal with gender issues. We have to
deal with water management. Those matters are critically
important in the developing world.
Through our Feed the Future initiatives and the G8's New
Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition, I believe we are
making great strides in global food security.
Feed the Future focuses on small farmers, particularly
women. It helps countries to develop their agricultural sectors
to generate opportunities for broad-based economic growth and
trade which in turn supports increased incomes and helps reduce
hunger.
G8's New Alliance is an effort to leverage private sector
support for agricultural development and food security and
includes commitments of $3 billion in private investments from
45 companies. But we must make sure that these investments are
not at the expense of small, local businesses addressing hunger
in their own community.
What we are trying to do much bigger than simply giving
food to the poor and hungry. We are trying to change the
economics by transforming how people farm and what people eat.
Ensuring that our world's most poor and hungry have access to
food is important, but as we see right here in America, access
to food does not guarantee proper nutrition. Studies show that
a child's entire life is shaped by whether or not they receive
proper nutrition during the first 1,000 days from pregnancy to
age 2. This has a profound impact on children's ability to
grow, to learn, and to contribute to their society. That is why
addressing undernutrition is key to both Feed the Future and
the President's Global Health Initiative.
But proper nutrition is not just important to individual
health. It is critical to the long-term health and success of a
nation. Poor nutrition results in a less healthy and less
productive workforce, hampering economic development and
growth, and ultimately perpetuates the cycle of hunger and
poverty for another generation.
So by investing in agriculture and nutrition, we are
investing in prosperity and not just other people's prosperity
but our own. In our globalized economy, if developing countries
do better, we do better. We also do better when we make smarter
decisions about how to spend our critical foreign assistance
dollars. After all, as USAID Administrator Shah has said, it is
8 to 10 times more expensive to feed people when they are in
crisis than to help farmers feed themselves and build better
resources.
As you are all aware, Mali, one of the Feed the Future
focus countries is in the midst of an internal political
conflict which has exacerbated a food crisis brought on by
severe drought in the region. The situation in Mali highlights
how the tragic convergence of conflict, climate, and economic
shocks can have dire consequences on human and food security.
In regions that are prone to these challenges, such as the
Horn of Africa, we must build resiliency and sustainability
into our development programs. One of the ways we can do this
is through Feed the Future. With world population expected to
exceed 9 billion by 2050, transforming how people farm and what
people eat is the only way, I believe, to ensure food security
for future generations. An end to global hunger and poverty
will not happen tomorrow, but if we continue to coordinate with
our global partners, harness the power of the private sector,
and use our development aid in the most effective and
transparent way, we have a much better chance of favorable
outcomes.
I look forward to hearing from the witnesses today about
the successes and challenges that we face in global food
security initiatives and the impact of private sector and NGO's
coordination in ending the plight on the world's poor and
hungry.
I will now yield to Senator Lugar for his opening comments
and once again congratulate him for his leadership on this
issue on behalf of the United States.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. RICHARD G. LUGAR,
U.S. SENATOR FROM INDIANA
Senator Lugar. Well, I join the chairman in welcoming our
distinguished witnesses and thank him for holding this hearing.
Our committee has given frequent attention to global food
security and I have had the pleasure to work with friends who
are committed to this issue, including Senator Casey, who
joined me in offering the Global Food Security Act in the last
Congress.
In past hearings, I have asserted that overcoming global
hunger by addressing shortcomings in worldwide agricultural
productivity and marketing should be one of the ``starting
points'' for U.S. foreign policy. This sometimes surprises
people given all the risks and dangers faced by our country in
many regions throughout the world. But I have not advanced this
concept casually.
Nothing is more elemental to human experience and
development than having access to adequate and reliable sources
of food. We live in a world where nearly a billion people
suffer from chronic food insecurity. Tens of thousands of
people die each day from causes related to malnutrition.
Experts advise us that chronic hunger leads to decreased child
survival, impaired cognitive and physical development, and
weaker immune system function, including resistance to HIV/
AIDS.
These grave humanitarian consequences are sufficient cause
for us to strengthen our efforts on global food security. But
we also know that few humanitarian problems, if any, have a
greater capacity to generate political instability and
conflict. Hungry people are desperate people and desperation
can sow the seeds of radicalism. Our diplomatic efforts to
maintain peace will be far more difficult wherever food
shortages contribute to extremism, conflict, or mass migration.
Our hopes for economic development in poor countries will
continually be frustrated if populations are unable to feed
themselves.
As a farmer and a member of the Agriculture Committee for
36 years, I have followed closely developments in agriculture
technology and productivity. My concern has been that despite
the past advancements of the Green Revolution, agriculture
productivity is not advancing fast enough to meet the needs of
a world that is expected to exceed 9 billion people by 2050.
Demand for food also will be intensified by increasing
affluence among the enormous populations of China, India, and
other emerging industrial powers. The problems of volatile
energy costs, water scarcity, climate change, and more
resilient pests threaten to severely limit food production in
many vulnerable regions.
The global response to this threat has been insufficient.
Worldwide funding for agricultural assistance declined sharply
after the 1980s and has not recovered despite some recent
progress. The trade policies of both developed and developing
countries too often have focused on protecting domestic farmers
rather than creating well-functioning international markets.
My view of the importance of global food security to the
United States is motivated not solely by problems we can solve,
but also by the economic and foreign policy opportunities
available to us. We produce more abundantly than any other
country and we are on the cutting edge of research and farming
techniques that could literally save hundreds of millions of
people in the coming decades. Our farmers, agricultural
businesses, NGOs, and research universities should be at the
center of global efforts to meet burgeoning food demand.
Following the President's pledge at the 2008 G8 summit of
$3.5 billion over 3 years toward global food security, the
administration established the Feed the Future Initiative.
Since its inception, the program has received nearly $1 billion
annually from the Congress, and we anticipate continued budget
requests at this level. Today we have an opportunity for an
update on this Initiative, as well as a chance to think more
comprehensively about a larger U.S. role in global food
security.
I will be interested to learn from our witnesses the degree
to which Feed the Future is demonstrating tangible results in
reducing hunger. Is it effectively supporting smallholder
farmers, especially women, by encouraging access to land, new
technology, and agriculture extension services? Additionally,
what market development and access opportunities are now
available to these farmers, and what support are they receiving
from their own governments which have partnered with the United
States through Country Investment Plans? Is the initiative
successfully engaging our own farmers and our agriculture
research institutions to achieve greater productivity and
higher yields in countries struggling with food insecurity?
I also look forward to the recommendations of our
distinguished second panel on improving Feed the Future and on
addressing any shortcomings. More broadly, how should the
United States structure its future global food security efforts
to maximize agricultural productivity and support the efforts
of U.S. institutions?
I look forward to our discussion.
Senator Cardin. Thank you, Senator Lugar. There is no
question that this committee and this Congress places a strong
priority on international global areas with food security. Feed
the Future is a relatively new initiative that has strong
support here in Congress, as you pointed out, by the amount
that has been appropriated every year.
One of the most important responsibilities of this
committee is oversight. We strongly support the initiative, but
we want to make sure the moneys are being used most
appropriately, leveraged in the best way, and I hope today's
hearing will allow us to focus on ways that we can improve the
U.S. involvement on global food security.
With that, let me call on our first panel. I am pleased to
have with us Tjada McKenna, the Deputy Coordinator for
Development for Feed the Future at USAID's Bureau for Food
Security.
Ms. McKenna coordinates implementation of Feed the Future
across the U.S. Government, oversees its execution, and reports
on results, and leads engagement with the external community to
ensure that food security remains high on the development
agenda.
Ms. McKenna joined USAID from the Bill and Melinda Gates
Foundation where she served as the senior program adviser in
the Agricultural Development Program. In this role, she
developed grants and strategies to effectively link smallholder
farmers in Africa and South Asia to markets.
Ms. McKenna earned a B.A. from Harvard College in
government and an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School.
We are also joined by Jonathan Shrier, Acting Special
Representative for Global Food Security and Deputy Coordinator
for Diplomacy for Feed the Future at the Department of State.
Mr. Shrier leads diplomatic efforts to advance the U.S.
Government's global hunger and food security initiative with
particular focus on major donor and strategic partner
countries, as well as multilateral institutions such as G8 and
G20.
Mr. Shrier previously served on the Secretary of State's
policy planning staff of the National Security Council and the
National Economic Council and at the U.S. States Department of
Energy where he helped to design and establish the Energy and
Climate Partnership of the Americas. As a Career Foreign
Service officer, Mr. Shrier handled international development
investment issues, in addition to energy, environment, and
agricultural policy initiatives.
Mr. Shrier holds a degree from the National Defense
University, University of London, London School of Economics,
and Dartmouth.
We will start with Ms. McKenna.
STATEMENT OF TJADA McKENNA, DEPUTY COORDINATOR FOR DEVELOPMENT
FOR FEED THE FUTURE, BUREAU FOR FOOD SECURITY, U.S. AGENCY FOR
INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT, WASHINGTON, DC
Ms. McKenna. Thank you. Good morning, Chairman Cardin,
Senator Lugar, and members of the subcommittee. Thank you for
inviting me to speak with you today. It is an honor to meet
with you about the U.S. Government's leadership to reduce
global hunger, poverty, and undernutrition through the Feed the
Future Initiative.
As the initiative's Deputy Coordinator for Development, I
will be focusing on Feed the Future's development efforts,
while my counterpart at the State Department, Jonathan Shrier,
will address diplomacy efforts.
Recently we issued the first-ever Feed the Future progress
report in which we were able to highlight advances to date in
our efforts. We are proud to report that in our short life we
have directly helped more than 6.6 million households to
improve agricultural productivity, and we have reached nearly 2
million food producers with improved practices to support
higher crop yields and increased incomes.
In addition, Feed the Future supported efforts have reached
nearly 9 million children with nutrition interventions. But
there is so much more to do, as you both have stated.
The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization recently
released a report estimating that there are now almost 870
million hungry people in the world, 98 percent of them living
in developing countries. While these numbers have adjusted down
from recent estimates, it is still 870 million too many people.
With the growing population and ever fewer resources, the time
to continue to act is now.
This is exactly what President Obama intended when he asked
global leaders to join him in confronting global hunger and
poverty at the 2009 G8 summit in L'Aquila, Italy. There
President Obama pledged $3.5 billion over 3 years to address
this challenge, building upon efforts of the previous
administration to secure funding for an increased focus on
global agriculture particularly in Africa. This set the
foundation for what eventually came to be called Feed the
Future.
The U.S. Government's pledge in L'Aquila leveraged more
than $18 billion in additional support from other donors,
signaling a vastly increased global commitment to significantly
reduce the number of people living in extreme poverty and
suffering from hunger and undernutrition. These commitments
could not have come at a more important time. For more than 2
decades, funding for agriculture had been on the decline,
leaving the world ill-prepared for the challenges of growing
food insecurity. In 2007 and 2008, soaring food prices set the
world on edge, but they also convinced global leaders that it
was finally time to do things differently.
Feed the Future expands the United States impact as a
political and moral force in the fight against global hunger
and poverty. With a focus on smallholder farmers, particularly
women, we support countries in developing their agriculture
sectors as a catalyst to generate opportunities for broad-based
economic growth which can support increased incomes and help
reduce hunger.
Agricultural growth is the key to reducing poverty in the
developing world. Seventy-five percent of the world's poor live
in rural areas in developing countries where most people's
livelihoods rely on agriculture. Recent studies from the World
Bank established that growth in agriculture is on average at
least twice as effective in reducing poverty as growth in other
sectors.
Feed the Future complements our joint commitment to
providing food aid and other humanitarian assistance during
times of crisis by promoting a lasting solution to hunger
through a long-term commitment to agricultural growth. Feed the
Future also integrates nutrition interventions to ensure that
our investments lead to both improved agriculture and better
health and support conflict mitigation and good governance
efforts that are required to achieve the goals of reducing
poverty and undernutrition.
When Feed the Future began, the President asked that we do
things differently to get better results for every taxpayer
dollar invested in this effort. We have taken that directive to
heart and are proud of the many ways we are working toward that
goal.
First, we are improving collaboration within the U.S.
Government, with partner countries, with other donor countries,
and with stakeholders in civil society and the private sector.
It is worth noting that this is the first time we have
effectively connected all U.S. Government efforts targeted at
global hunger and food security. In fiscal year 2011, 5 of our
10 interagency partners reported into the Feed the Future
monitoring system, enabling us to create a governmentwide
picture of the results of our combined efforts that are
reflected in our progress report.
Second, we are focusing on women and smallholder farmers as
part of the solution and continuing to work toward equitable
land rights in the areas in which we work.
Third, we are working hand in glove with our global health
colleagues to better integrate our agriculture and nutrition
efforts.
Fourth, we are focusing on research as a key to
transforming rural agriculture economies centered on an
approach that encourages sustainable and equitable management
of land, water, fisheries, and other resources and takes into
account the anticipated effects of climate change.
And fifth and most importantly, we are measuring results
and are holding ourselves accountable through rigorous
monitoring and evaluation.
Collectively, these efforts are meant to build upon the
long-term resilience of communities so that they are able to
adapt to and recover from the shocks and stresses and move
forward with enhanced livelihoods. While we cannot prevent
future shocks such as drought from occurring, we can help make
them less devastating while ensuring the continuation of long-
term growth.
Feed the Future faces several challenges: ensuring
productive interagency and donor collaboration; more effective
integration of agriculture and nutrition; and the threats posed
by global climate change, to name some examples. Each of these
requires considerable effort and time to succeed, and we accept
that change does not come easily or quickly to any sector. We
have been asked to do things differently and we are. As time
moves on, we expect to execute our development interventions
even more efficiently to the benefit of millions of smallholder
farmers and families worldwide.
In closing, I would like to thank the Congress for its
strong support of this vital initiative and note that we
greatly appreciate your continued support of our work. Feed the
Future is more than an initiative. It is part of the lasting
architecture of our development platform and lays the
groundwork for us to be more effective, more efficient, and
more successful in the work that we do. Feed the Future is
bigger than any one agency or administration. It is part of our
global legacy.
Thank you for inviting us to speak with you today. I
welcome any questions, comments, and suggestions you may have.
[The prepared statement of Ms. McKenna follows:]
Prepared Statement of Tjada McKenna
Good morning Chairman Cardin, Ranking Member Corker, and members of
the subcommittee. Thank you for inviting me to speak with you today. I
am pleased and honored to be able to talk to you about the important
role that the U.S. Government is playing to help reduce global hunger
and poverty through the Feed the Future initiative, the challenges we
face, and our progress thus far.
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)
recently released a report estimating that there are now approximately
870 million hungry people in the world, 98 percent of them living in
developing countries. While these numbers have adjusted down from
recent estimates, it is still 870 million too many. Compounding this
problem, research indicates that by the year 2050, the world's
population is projected to increase by 38 percent to more than 9
billion, which, combined with changing diets, will require up to a 60-
percent increase in food production to feed us all. We confront these
challenges in a world that has less land and fewer resources available
for production.
Against this backdrop, at the 2009 G8 summit, President Obama
pledged to provide at least $3.5 billion over 3 years--between fiscal
year 2010 and fiscal year 2012--to attack the root causes of global
hunger and poverty through accelerated agricultural development and
improved nutrition. The U.S. Government's commitment leveraged more
than $18 billion in additional support from other donors, creating the
financial capacity to significantly reduce the number of people living
in extreme poverty and suffering from hunger and undernutrition. This
commitment to the importance of agriculture in sustainably reducing
hunger and poverty could not have come at a more important time. For
more than two decades, funding for agriculture had been on the decline,
leaving the world ill-prepared to cope with the growing challenge of
food insecurity. In 2007 and 2008, soaring prices for basic staples
coupled with shortsighted policy responses, like export bans and panic
buying, had set the world on edge. But it also convinced global leaders
that it was finally time to do things differently.
In September 2012, the U.S. Government met President Obama's $3.5
billion pledge. In fact, we have now obligated $3.786 billion and
disbursed $1.134 billion against the President's pledge. And while we
are proud of the United States leadership and commitment in this
effort, there is still so much more to be done.
Feed the Future expands the United States impact as a political and
moral force in the fight against global hunger and poverty. With a
focus on smallholder farmers, particularly women, this initiative
supports countries in developing their agriculture sectors as a
catalyst to generate opportunities for broad-based economic growth and
trade, which can support increased incomes and help reduce hunger.
While we recognize the importance of providing food aid and other
humanitarian assistance during crises to save lives and protect
livelihoods, Feed the Future helps promote a lasting solution to hunger
through a commitment to agricultural growth and other actions to
prevent recurrent food crises. Feed the Future also integrates
nutrition interventions to ensure that our investments lead to both
improved agriculture and better health, and supports conflict
mitigation and good governance efforts that are required to achieve the
goals of reducing poverty and undernutrition.
When Feed the Future was launched, the President asked that we do
things differently to get better results for every taxpayer dollar
invested in this effort. We have taken that directive to heart, and are
proud of the many ways we are working toward that goal.
Just last month, the administration released the first Feed the
Future Progress Report and Scorecard, which present the progress
achieved by Feed the Future from May 2009 through May 2012. The Report
and Scorecard detail the strides that the initiative is making in
research and development, leveraging private sector dollars, building
capacity, and achieving key results to sustainably reduce hunger and
poverty. The Progress Report shows that, by marshaling resources for
food security and by improving the way we do development, Feed the
Future aims to reduce the prevalence of poverty and the prevalence of
stunted children under 5 years old by 20 percent in the geographic
areas where we work.
We have already seen many successes. In fiscal year 2011 alone,
Feed the Future helped 435,728 farmers in Bangladesh learn to apply
deep fertilizer placement and urea briquettes, improving management
practices on 244,605 hectares and leading to a 15-percent increase in
rice yields. As a result, the country's Barisal division experienced
its first-ever rice surplus. Globally, in fiscal year 2011 we directly
benefited more than 6.6 million households, brought 2.4 million
hectares of land under improved technologies or management practices,
and increased investment in agricultural and rural loans by $103
million.
COLLABORATION
We are improving coordination in many ways. Feed the Future
resources are aligned with country-led priorities. Donors can achieve
more effective and lasting results when they champion the development
visions and efforts of partner countries' own governments and citizens.
Feed the Future worked with other development partners to assist focus
countries in creating and implementing their own multiyear Country
Investment Plans (CIPs) for agricultural development, such as those
under the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Program (CAADP).
These plans are based on transparent and inclusive consensus-building
processes, including engagement of the private sector, civil society
and other stakeholders, and take into account the interests of women
and other disadvantaged groups. In addition, these country-owned plans
lay out priority areas, clear costing and projections of financial
need, defined targets, and desired results.
Through Feed the Future, we are working hard to improve
collaboration within the U.S. Government. Previous GAO reports have
concluded that earlier U.S. Government efforts on food security lacked
a cohesive interagency strategy. Much of Feed the Future's durability
as a new model stems from the creation of an overarching whole-of-
government strategy, embedded in the Feed the Future Implementation
Guide, to combat food insecurity and undernutrition. Feed the Future
has been successful in implementing that strategy, joining the
resources and expertise of the U.S. Agency for International
Development (USAID), the U.S. Departments of Agriculture, Commerce,
State and Treasury, the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), the
U.S. African Development Foundation, the Peace Corps, the Overseas
Private Investment Corporation, and the Office of the U.S. Trade
Representative. This is the first time that we have effectively
connected all U.S. Government efforts targeted at global hunger and
food security and underpinned our resources with rigorous systems to
track performance. In fiscal year 2011, five of these agencies reported
into the Feed the Future Monitoring System, enabling us to create a
governmentwide picture of the results of our combined efforts.
Feed the Future is showing that interagency partnerships can work
and be successful. As the initiative's Deputy Coordinator for
Development, I work closely with my counterpart at the State
Department, Deputy Coordinator for Diplomacy Jonathan Shrier, to ensure
that all of the agencies involved are integrated into the initiative
via a cohesive, coordinated strategy both here in Washington and on the
ground in Feed the Future focus countries. For example, with over half
of its total investment portfolio supporting food security, MCC's
experience has helped guide Feed the Future's program design,
particularly on land tenure and property rights, infrastructure,
monitoring and evaluation, and gender integration. MCC and USAID are
working closely to complement and build on each other's food security
investments. In Ghana, for example, USAID will support three MCC-funded
post-harvest Agribusiness Centers, benefiting about 3,000 farmers. And
in Senegal, USAID will support MCC's investment in irrigated
agriculture and roads by promoting value chains, soil management,
access to credit, post-harvest facilities, capacity-training, quality
standards, and marketing in the same geographical areas.
We know that neither the U.S. Government nor partner governments
can do this work alone. Civil society organizations in donor and
partner countries bring a wealth of ideas, energy, and resources to the
fight against global food insecurity and undernutrition and are
critical to the success of Feed the Future. Their work complements the
work of governments, multilateral organizations, and the private
sector--including program implementation, product delivery, advocacy,
education, and even funding. We value our close relationship with these
partners. This relationship was highlighted by Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton, who recently announced at a Feed the Future event that
InterAction, an alliance of 198 U.S.-based organizations, has pledged
more than $1 billion of private, nongovernmental funds over the next 3
years to improve food security and nutrition worldwide. We look forward
to working with them on key food security issues.
Likewise, the importance of the private sector's role in food
security cannot be overemphasized. The private sector brings the
necessary investment and needed technology for countries, communities,
and citizens to create opportunities for new businesses, stronger
farms, and more vibrant markets. Our strategic alliances with the
private sector align their core business interests with our development
objectives. These ``win-win'' partnerships advance the impact of
sustainable development and foster private sector-led growth in
emerging markets, critical to reducing poverty, fighting hunger, and
improving nutrition. The U.S. Government will further its partnership
with the private sector through participation in the G8's New Alliance
for Food Security and Nutrition, which has already mobilized more than
$3.5 billion in new private sector commitments from more than 70
African and international firms looking to expand their agriculture-
related business across Africa. The U.S. Government will also mobilize
private sector investments through its contribution to the World Bank-
housed Global Agriculture and Food Security Program's Private Sector
Window, which offers loans, equity capital, and advisory services.
A FOCUS ON WOMEN AND SMALLHOLDER FARMERS
In addition to improving coordination within and across sectors,
Feed the Future is doing development differently by integrating
important cross-cutting issues in all of our work, for example, by
focusing on women as part of the solution. Women play a vital role in
advancing agricultural development and food security. They participate
in all aspects of rural life--in paid employment, trade and marketing,
as well as in tending crops and animals, collecting water and wood for
fuel, and caring for family members. Yet women have less access than
men to land, financing, production inputs, technical assistance, and
other resources that could help them become better producers and
providers for their families. The FAO estimates that if women had the
same access to productive resources as men, they could increase farm
yields by 20 to 30 percent, translating to enough food to feed an
additional 150 million people. To better empower women agricultural
producers to reach their full potential, Feed the Future promotes
women's leadership in agriculture, fosters policy changes that increase
women's land ownership, and strengthens their access to financial
services. Through the initiative, female farmers are encouraged to
adopt new agricultural technology aimed at increasing productivity and
reducing unpaid work. To measure how well our investments are tracking
against this ambitious goal, Feed the Future, in collaboration with the
International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and the Oxford
Poverty and Human Development Initiative of Oxford University, launched
the Women's Empowerment in Agriculture Index in early 2012. The index
is the first tool to measure women's growing role in decisionmaking
about agricultural production; their growing ownership of land,
livestock, and other resources; their leadership in the community; and
their control of time and income.
We also continue working toward equal, nondiscriminatory and secure
land rights in the areas in which we work. Across the developing world,
farmers, particularly smallholders, face challenges securing their
rights to land and other natural resources. This may limit their
ability to keep others off their land; limit their incentives to
improve land or adopt new technologies; limit their ability to leverage
resources most effectively; and hinder development of shared usage
arrangements, for example, between herders and farmers. Around the
world, weak land governance systems contribute to political, social,
and economic instability. By formalizing the rights of land and
resource users and by making land governance systems and institutions
more accountable, accessible, and transparent, positive incentives to
conserve resources and put them to productive and sustainable use will
be created. Under Feed the Future, we encourage governments and private
sector investors to recognize and respect the legitimate rights of
individuals, communities, and legal entities, whether held formally or
through custom, to manage, benefit from the use of, and trade rights to
land and other resources. Formalizing these rights will foster a more
secure and stable enabling environment to support economic growth and
improved agricultural productivity. The United States has played a
leading role on international negotiations for political instruments to
promote sound resource governance policies; notably, a USAID official
served as the international chair of the negotiations at the FAO's
Committee for World Food Security for the Voluntary Guidelines for
Responsible Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests. The United States is
also a leading voice in the development of the Principles for
Responsible Agricultural Investment.
HIGHLIGHTING NUTRITION
The Feed the Future initiative also actively integrates nutrition
and agriculture interventions. Studies show that strong nutrition early
in life contributes to human and economic capacity through improved
learning and productivity, and contributes to a robust, capable
workforce. Strong nutrition--particularly during the 1,000-day window
from pregnancy to a child's second birthday--contributes to economic
growth and poverty reduction. Strong nutrition also promotes gender
equality and opportunities for women and girls, lessens susceptibility
to other deadly diseases, and is critical to national prosperity,
stability, and security. Feed the Future supports food value chains
that have high nutritional benefits and works with families to improve
not only agricultural productivity and income, but also dietary
diversity. We are also working hand-in-glove with our global health
teams to identify and strengthen linkages between agriculture and
nutrition. On a programmatic level, we are implementing both Feed the
Future and global health activities in the same geographic zones to
maximize results. In fiscal year 2011, 8.8 million children under 5
were reached by Feed the Future-supported nutrition programs.
We continue to work to improve and increase our impact in this
area. During a high-level meeting on the Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN)
Movement at the U.N. General Assembly this year, USAID Administrator
Rajiv Shah announced that the agency needed to do more to ensure that
the principles and programmatic priorities of SUN are fully integrated
across all relevant USAID-supported programs in the 14 countries where
SUN, Feed the Future, and global health efforts overlap: Bangladesh,
Ethiopia, Ghana, Guatemala, Haiti, Malawi, Mali, Mozambique, Nepal,
Rwanda, Senegal, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia.
UTILIZING NEW TECHNOLOGY AND RESEARCH
Feed the Future is also focusing on research as a key to
transforming rural agriculture economies. We cannot expect to increase
global food production by 2050 without the development of new
technologies and practices to produce more with fewer inputs. In May
2011, the U.S. Government released a new Feed the Future research
strategy informed by a consultative, multistakeholder process led by
USAID, in close collaboration with USDA and university partners. As
part of the new strategy, Feed the Future has better aligned all U.S.
Government agency research programs to improve resource efficiency and
generated new relationships with the private sector. In one major push,
USAID and USDA are working together on high-impact research to combat
wheat rust, a major threat to wheat production worldwide, and
aflatoxin, a toxic fungus that infects many crops and causes illness.
We are moving research results from the laboratory to the field. In
fiscal year 2011 alone, Feed the Future helped 1.8 million food
producers to adopt improved technologies or management practices that
can lead to more resilient crops, higher yields, and increased incomes.
This research strategy takes into account the critical challenge
that climate change poses to food production around the world. As
carbon dioxide concentrations rise, global temperatures are increasing,
precipitation patterns are changing, and ocean acidification is on the
rise. These changes are already affecting agriculture and food security
directly. Feed the Future is working in concert with the U.S. Global
Climate Change Initiative to develop strategies and undertake research
to help food producers both reduce greenhouse gas emissions and adapt
to climate change so that food security can be increased despite
changing climate patterns.
Feed the Future strategies are designed not only to accelerate
agriculture-led growth and reduce undernutrition, but also to encourage
sustainable management of land, water, fisheries, and other resources.
Poor land use and agricultural practices are common factors that
increase the vulnerability of developing countries to global threats
such as water scarcity and pandemic disease. A core focus of the Feed
the Future research agenda is sustainable intensification, the concept
of producing more agricultural output from the same area of land while
reducing negative environmental consequences. Feed the Future
integrates environmental concerns into our investments and builds the
capacity of partner countries to take advantage of opportunities in
effective resource management and proactive adaptation to environmental
challenges. Climate-smart agriculture practices like conservation
agriculture and agroforestry enable the capture and storage of water
and nutrients in soil to support plant growth and conserve soil. For
example, Feed the Future is leveraging resources to better inventory
and track land resources for agriculture and is building capacities
with host governments and other partners to geospatially map land cover
and land use for integrated management of watersheds.
We are working to ensure that these great strides achieved in
research are sustainable. To do that, it is critical that we work to
develop the next generation of agricultural leaders. Through Feed the
Future's Borlaug 21st Century Leadership Program, the U.S. is helping
to train individuals and strengthen developing country public and
private institutions, enabling them to take advantage of scientific and
technological breakthroughs to promote innovation across the
agricultural sector. The program will provide short-term training to
over 2,500 students, researchers and agricultural leaders; provide
fellowships and mentoring to nearly 1,000 agricultural researchers;
provide full fellowships to 75 M.S. or Ph.D. students; and improve more
than 60 institutions in Africa, which will in turn affect over 250,000
students.
BUILDING RESILIENCE AND SUSTAINABILITY
Collectively, these efforts are all meant to help build up the
long-term resilience of communities so that they are able to adapt to
and recover from shocks and stresses and move forward with enhanced
livelihoods. A recent DFID study showed for every $1 spent on
resilience, $2.80 of benefits is gained through avoided aid and animal
losses. By supporting stronger markets, better infrastructure, and new
technologies, Feed the Future will help build resilience and equip
communities with the tools, the knowledge, and the enabling environment
to thrive in times of prosperity, and to overcome difficulties in times
of hardship. With clear lessons learned from our response in the Horn
of Africa drought last year, as an agency USAID is doing business
differently to build resilience among vulnerable communities in the
Horn and elsewhere to ensure continued growth by bringing our relief
and development teams together for joint assessments of local needs.
USAID's Bureau for Food Security, which leads Feed the Future, is
working closely with the USAID Food for Peace program and the Bureau
for Democracy, Conflict, and Humanitarian Assistance to integrate
resilience programming to help communities better prepare for, respond
to, and bounce back from crises when they do occur. While we cannot
prevent future shocks from occurring, we can help make them less
devastating while ensuring the continuation of long-term growth.
HOLDING OURSELVES ACCOUNTABLE
Finally, Feed the Future is doing things differently by measuring
results and holding ourselves accountable through rigorous monitoring
and evaluation. To do this, we have created the Feed the Future Results
Framework, which establishes the goals and objectives of the
initiative, linking standard performance indicators to desired results.
In addition, the Feed the Future Monitoring System collects information
on the Results Framework's baselines, targets and results.
Following MCC's model of conducting rigorous analysis during
project design, USAID has adopted cost-benefit analysis to help improve
resource allocation, quantify the expected benefits of our
interventions on households, and identify better monitoring and
evaluation indicators. We are also committed to implementing impact
evaluations to capture what a particular project or program has
achieved, test causal linkages, and determine to what extent outcomes
link to particular interventions. USAID is planning to conduct over 30
impact evaluations of Feed the Future investments in agriculture,
nutrition, and food security. And we have developed a Feed the Future
Scorecard document to hold ourselves publicly accountable to doing
business differently. In the scorecard, we have identified eight
strategic areas of performance critical to meeting our global food
security targets. Each strategic area has specific goal statements
describing what we intend to improve as we deliver development aid, and
each statement has associated measures and milestones to be met by
2015. We share the responsibility of meeting these targets with our
partner countries and external stakeholders, and we plan to update the
scorecard at least annually.
As an initiative, Feed the Future faces many challenges: ensuring
productive interagency and donor collaboration; more effective
integration of agriculture and nutrition; and the threats posed by
global climate change, to name a few. While we acknowledge that all of
our work in these areas may not have been seamless or perfect up to
this point, we also accept that change does not come easily--or
quickly--to any sector. We have been asked to ``do things
differently,'' and we are. As time moves on, we expect to execute our
development interventions even more efficiently, through the learning
processes we have instituted, to ultimately help the many millions of
individuals who still go to bed hungry each night. That is our goal,
and we continue to work toward it with diligence and creativity.
In closing, we would like to thank the Congress for its strong
support of this vital initiative. Feed the Future is more than an
initiative; it is part of the lasting architecture of our development
platform and lays the groundwork for us to be more effective, more
efficient, and more successful in the work that we do. Feed the Future
is bigger than any one agency or administration--it is part of our
global
legacy.
Thank you for inviting me to speak with you today, and I welcome
your guidance, comments and any questions you might have.
Senator Cardin. Thank you very much for your testimony and
for your service.
Mr. Shrier.
STATEMENT OF JONATHAN SHRIER, ACTING SPECIAL REPRESENTATIVE FOR
GLOBAL FOOD SECURITY, DEPUTY COORDINATOR FOR DIPLOMACY FOR FEED
THE FUTURE, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE, WASHINGTON, DC
Mr. Shrier. Thank you. Good morning, Chairman Cardin,
Senator Lugar, and members of the subcommittee. Thank you for
the opportunity to speak with you about U.S. diplomatic efforts
to combat world hunger and undernutrition.
As my USAID counterpart has emphasized, global food
security is high on the international agenda. President Obama
and Secretary Clinton have prioritized the issue for
humanitarian, economic, and national security reasons. Our food
security diplomacy facilitates the work of multiple U.S.
agencies and ensures that leaders around the world stay focused
on the fight against hunger and undernutrition.
In Feed the Future focus countries, we help promote policy
change and keep food security priorities high on national
agendas. For example, when the worst drought in 60 years struck
the Horn of Africa last year, Secretary Clinton contacted the
leaders of Ethiopia and Kenya to press for specific policy
shifts that could help ensure lasting food security even as we
extended emergency assistance. We also worked with Tanzania to
establish a nutrition-specific line in its national budget to
ensure more effective coordination of the country's national
nutrition strategy across agencies.
We work with strategic partner countries like Brazil,
India, and South Africa to leverage their food security
expertise to benefit Feed the Future focus countries. For
example, in Mozambique we are partnering with Brazil to help
farmers grow more vegetables, improve post-harvest handling,
and support research, and we are doing this in cooperation with
a major United States university. We recently announced new
agreements with Brazil to extend our collaboration to Haiti and
Honduras.
We also understand that to end world hunger, we need the
collective efforts of governments, donors, international
organizations, businesses, and in particular, civil society.
Through our diplomatic efforts, we foster collaboration with
civil society at home and abroad to help achieve Feed the
Future's food security and nutrition goals.
In 2010, during the U.N. General Assembly meetings,
Secretary Clinton launched the 1,000 Days partnership which
helps mobilize governments, civil society, and private sector
actors to promote action to improve nutrition in the 1,000 days
from pregnancy to a child's second birthday.
In 2011, Secretary Clinton focused her energy on
spotlighting the role of women in agriculture.
And this year in September 2012, as a result of our
outreach efforts, Secretary Clinton was able to announce a $1
billion pledge of private, nongovernmental funds for food
security investments by members of InterAction, an alliance of
U.S.-based NGOs. Five InterAction members alone pledged more
than $900 million toward the goal, including Catholic Relief
Services, World Vision, Heifer International, Save the
Children, and ChildFund International.
U.S. leadership on the L'Aquila Food Security Initiative,
known as AFSI, has also helped advance food security goals.
Thanks to congressional support, the United States has been
able to meet the $3.5 billion pledge for AFSI that President
Obama made in 2009. This bolsters the resolve of other donors
to meet their own financial pledges and maintain strong support
for global food security. Under the U.S. chairmanship of AFSI
in 2012, donors agreed to report more detailed information than
ever before on their food security investments in individual
developing countries.
Our diplomacy also plays a leading role in the U.N.
Committee on World Food Security negotiations, working through
the U.S. mission to the U.N. agencies in Rome, the United
States guided the committee's process to develop and adopt
voluntary guidelines on land tenure which also helps to address
natural resources constraints and natural resource management.
Now we are turning our attention to the follow-on effort to
develop voluntary principles on responsible agricultural
investment.
Food security remains a priority for the Obama
administration. Feed the Future is one of the premier examples
of development diplomacy as envisioned in the Quadrennial
Diplomacy and Development Review. Working together across the
whole of the U.S. Government with other governments and
throughout the international community, we are determined to
make significant progress toward ending hunger and
undernutrition in our lifetimes.
Thank you for congressional support for our food security
efforts.
I look forward to taking your questions.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Shrier follows:]
Prepared Statement of Jonathan Shrier
Good morning, Chairman Cardin, Ranking Member Corker, and members
of the subcommittee. It is an honor to appear before this subcommittee
to testify about the U.S. Government's efforts to help end world hunger
and improve food security and nutrition around the globe.
President Obama and Secretary Clinton have prioritized food
security on the U.S global agenda for humanitarian, economic, and
national security reasons.
As USAID's testimony notes, the Food and Agriculture Organization
(FAO) estimates that one in eight people worldwide--almost 870 million
people--suffer from chronic hunger. By 2050, population growth and
changing food demands will require up to a 60-percent increase in
agricultural production, according to the FAO.
Our best traditions of compassion compel us to act to help end
hunger and undernutrition. Because we can help, we must help--that is
our moral imperative. But ending hunger and undernutrition is also in
our national security and economic interests.
As we witnessed in 2008, spikes in food and energy prices threw
tens of millions of vulnerable people in the developing world back into
poverty. High and volatile food prices in 2008 touched off
demonstrations in dozens of countries, contributing to political
unrest. We can see how preventing food insecurity becomes a matter of
national security.
President Obama and Secretary Clinton have been strong advocates
for food security, making the case for increased investments in
agriculture and nutrition because they can have immediate and long-term
impacts in the lives of children, help move people out of poverty,
create stronger communities and open new markets. Our economy's future
growth will depend on growth in the rest of the world. Many of our
future customers will live in markets outside of our borders, including
in emerging economies and low-income countries that have been
particularly vulnerable to economic shocks.
The 2009 G8 summit in L'Aquila, Italy, was a pivotal moment for
hunger and poverty reduction. There, President Obama rallied Presidents
and Prime Ministers as well as leaders of key international and
regional organizations to join together to reverse a three-decade
decline in investment in agricultural development and launch the
L'Aquila Food Security Initiative (AFSI). This initiative was designed
to attack the root causes of global hunger through accelerated
agricultural development and improved nutrition.
In keeping with the global L'Aquila Food Security Initiative,
President Obama launched the U.S. Government's Feed the Future
initiative, and he asked that we do things differently to get better
results for every taxpayer dollar we are investing. This means that
countries develop their own plans for food security, increase their own
funding for agriculture, and are accountable for sound plans and
actions. It means taking a comprehensive approach that focuses on how
countries can increase their own production, marketing, and nutrition
programs, so they can help prevent recurrent food crises and do not
have to rely on food aid in the future; focusing on women as a key part
of the solution; integrating natural resource constraints into our
plans; and measuring results.
To achieve these goals, Feed the Future leverages the capacity and
expertise of different agencies across the U.S. Government, including
the U.S. Department of State; the U.S. Agency for International
Development (USAID); the U.S. Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, and
the Treasury; the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC); the Office of
the U.S. Trade Representative; the Overseas Private Investment
Corporation and others. Working in close coordination with my USAID
colleague, Deputy Coordinator for Development Tjada McKenna, I act as
the Deputy Coordinator for Diplomacy for Feed the Future.
ROLE OF DIPLOMACY IN IMPLEMENTATION OF FEED THE FUTURE
AND OTHER FOOD SECURITY INITIATIVES
U.S. food security diplomacy actively supports the work of multiple
U.S. Government agencies to advance our global food security agenda and
further our Feed the Future priorities. We do this through policy
coordination among major donors, strategic partners, and multilateral
organizations, ensuring that food security and nutrition remains high
on bilateral and global policy agendas. Through our engagement with the
G8, G20, U.N. agencies, and other economic cooperation platforms, such
as APEC and Summit of the Americas, we help ensure that leaders stay
focused on the fight against hunger and undernutrition.
U.S. leadership in the L'Aquila Food Security Initiative, focusing
on sound food security policy, innovation, and reliable metrics, has
helped advance the initiative's goals. Our ability to fulfill the U.S.
financial pledge on schedule by obligating $3.786 billion over 3 years
promotes confidence among other donors to meet their own financial
pledges and maintain strong financial support for global food security,
shouldering responsibility along with us. As of May 2012, 4 of the 13
AFSI donors had fully disbursed their AFSI pledges, and we expect to
announce further donor progress at the end of the AFSI pledge period
later this year. Under the U.S. chairmanship of the AFSI followup group
in 2012, AFSI donors agreed to provide in-depth information on how they
are investing their food security assistance at the individual country
level. These detailed materials were published in May and represent a
significant advance for transparency and accountability.
The United States has worked closely with G20 countries, the World
Bank, and other multilateral organizations and civil society
organizations to establish the Global Agriculture and Food Security
Program (GAFSP), a multidonor trust fund to help millions of poor
farmers grow more and earn more so they can lift themselves out of
hunger and poverty.
In 2\1/2\ years of operation, GAFSP has attracted pledges of nearly
$1.3 billion from nine development partners to help support the food
security strategies of low-income countries. GAFSP's Steering
Committee, which includes civil society and developing country
representatives, has also allocated $658 million to support 18
countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America. GAFSP financing will help
boost the incomes of approximately 8 million smallholder farmers and
their families by increasing farm productivity, linking smallholder
farmers to markets, and helping farmers to mitigate the risks that they
face. In Sierra Leone, for example, GAFSP financing has underwritten
the delivery of improved extension services to farmers to help them
boost yields in key staple crops. GAFSP has also financed the
rehabilitation of 250 kilometers of rural roads in Togo to better
connect farmers to local markets and has provided 18,000 farmers with
better access to improved seed varieties and fertilizer. The United
States is currently working with other donors--including the Gates
Foundation and several other development partners--to replenish this
successful fund.
The United States also plays a leading role in the U.N. Committee
on World Food Security negotiations. Over the past 2 years, working
through the U.S. Mission to the U.N. Agencies in Rome and in
collaboration with USAID and MCC, we guided the committee's
consultative process to develop Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible
Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries, and Forestry in the Context of
National Food Security that were approved in May 2012. Now, we are
turning our attention to the follow-on consultative process aimed at
developing voluntary, nonbinding principles on responsible agricultural
investment.
We work with strategic partner countries--Brazil, India, and South
Africa--to leverage the expertise and influence of government, the
private sector, and civil society partners in these countries in order
to collaborate to improve food security in Feed the Future focus
countries. For example, we are partnering with Brazil in Mozambique to
help farmers increase the productivity of their vegetable crops,
improve post-harvest packing, storage and processing, and support
research on food technology innovation. We also recently announced new
agreements with Brazil to work together in Haiti to improve land use
and promote conventional and biofortified crops and in Honduras to
increase agriculture productivity, decrease malnutrition, and promote
renewable energy.
At the national level with individual Feed the Future focus
countries, we help promote policy changes and keep food security
priorities high on national agendas. For example, when the worst
drought in 60 years struck the Horn of Africa, Secretary Clinton
contacted the leaders of Ethiopia and Kenya to press for specific
policy shifts that could help assure lasting food security even as we
extended emergency assistance. The administration worked with Tanzania
to establish a nutrition-specific line in its national budget to ensure
effective coordination and implementation of the country's national
nutrition strategy. We have helped countries like Guatemala, Uganda,
and Mozambique to introduce new measures to improve financial
accountability and strengthen their countries' commitment to nutrition.
We understand that to end world hunger we need the collective
efforts of governments, donors, institutions, businesses, and, in
particular, civil society. As Secretary Clinton highlighted in her
remarks on the margins of the U.N. General Assembly this year, ``Civil
society organizations are crucial to our success, both in the public
and private sector; they have longstanding relationships in communities
and valuable technical expertise, and they work every single day on
their commitment to try to make this world a better place for all of
us.'' Through our diplomatic efforts we engage and facilitate
collaboration with civil society at home and abroad to help achieve
Feed the Future's food and nutrition security goals.
For example, in 2010, Secretary Clinton launched the 1,000 Days
partnership, which is helping mobilize governments, civil society, and
the private sector to promote action to improve nutrition in the 1,000
days from pregnancy to a child's second birthday. The partnership helps
disseminate research information and the latest innovations in
nutrition and best practices. With financial support from the Gates
Foundation and Walmart and in collaboration with the Global Alliance
for Improved Nutrition and InterAction, we facilitated the
establishment of an organization to promote the 1,000 Days message and
support the U.N.'s Scaling Up Nutrition movement. Thanks to these
efforts, more and more stakeholders are prioritizing nutrition
interventions during the critical 1,000 days when adequate nutrition
has the greatest lifelong impact on a child's health, ability to grow,
learn, and contribute to the prosperity of her family, her community,
and her country.
Our diplomatic and development efforts have also focused on
spotlighting the role of women in agriculture. Women make up the
majority of the agricultural workforce in many developing countries,
but they often earn less because they do not have rights to land,
access to finance, natural resources, and the best inputs needed for
production. Research shows that when women's incomes increase, their
families are more financially secure, eat more nutritional food, and
are less hungry and undernourished. Women are more likely to invest
their earnings in the health, education, and nutrition of their
children. Feed the Future is funding innovative approaches for
promoting gender equality in agriculture and land use and to integrate
gender into agricultural development and food security programs.
In September 2012, as a result of our outreach efforts, Secretary
Clinton announced a $1 billion pledge of private, nongovernment funds
for food security from InterAction, an alliance of 198 U.S.-based NGOs.
Five of its member organizations together pledged to contribute more
than $900 million toward the total, namely Catholic Relief Services,
World Vision, Heifer International, Save the Children, and ChildFund
International. We look forward to deepening coordination of our efforts
with civil society partners to achieve greater impact and scale in our
food security and nutrition efforts.
Progress in the Feed the Future effort continues. Diplomacy played
a key role in negotiating with G8 partners in particular in developing
and launching the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition,
announced by President Obama in May 2012. The New Alliance is a shared
commitment to achieve sustained and inclusive agricultural growth and
raise 50 million people in sub-Saharan Africa out of poverty over the
next 10 years by aligning the commitments of Africa's leadership to
drive effective country plans and policies for food security; the
commitments of private sector partners to increase investments where
the conditions are right; and the commitments of the G8 to expand
Africa's potential for rapid and sustainable agricultural growth.
Food security remains a policy priority for the Obama
administration. For us at the State Department, Feed the Future is one
of the premier examples of development diplomacy as envisioned in the
Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review. The State Department
works closely with USAID to align diplomatic and development goals,
develop the Feed the Future budget, and continue support for the work
of our partners in advancing our global food security agenda. Working
together across the whole of the U.S. Government, with other
governments, and throughout the international community, we are
determined to make significant progress toward ending hunger and
undernutrition in our lifetimes.
Senator Cardin. Again, thank you for your testimony and for
your service.
We have been joined by Senator Casey, and as I mentioned
earlier, we thanked Senator Casey, working with Senator Lugar,
for his leadership on the Global Food Security Act. It is nice
to have you with us.
There is no question that President Obama and Secretary
Clinton have made this issue a very high priority, and that is
clear in policies here in the United States. It is also clear
to the international community.
I tell you, though, it is somewhat disappointing that we
have not been able to name the coordinator for Feed the Future,
and there has been a frequent turnover in the position of
deputy coordinator. And it seems to me that for the stability
of the agency, these positions need to be filled, and it is a
concern to us that they have not. I know that the two of you
cannot address that directly, but it has to make it more
challenging when one position is not filled and the other has
frequent turnover.
Ms. McKenna, you mentioned the fact that there was the
progress report that identified much of the positive progress
that has been made in Feed the Future, but it did not identify
the challenges. It seems to me that we could spend a lot of
time complimenting ourselves on the progress that we have made
and we have made progress. But what is important is to focus on
where we can make more progress, the challenges that we have,
where do we need to put our resources, where do we need to put
our priorities, where do you need congressional attention. So I
want to give you an opportunity to share with this committee
the challenges that you see in Feed the Future and where we can
be of greatest help in trying to make sure that we can achieve
as much as we can and leverage the resources as greatly as we
can.
Ms. McKenna. Thank you, Senator Cardin.
In the progress report, we identify our success to date,
but we also had a section entitled ``How FTF Has Evolved''
which talks about what we are learning and what is ahead. And I
think in that section is where we try to distill some of the
key challenges that we have been facing.
A key focus of our energy has been on monitoring and
evaluation and being able to talk about the results of our
work. In the course of doing that, we have also needed to set
targets and how many people we are going to reach and where our
money is going to go. So some of the evolutions that we have
made include revising--our initial estimates were just based
strictly on cost, by unit costs, what we knew about what it
takes for a unit cost to bring a farmer out of poverty. Since
then, we have been able to refine that, and now we have refined
our targets to be that we want to reduce poverty by 20 percent
in the areas that we work, what we call our ``zones of
influence,'' and also reduce undernutrition in those areas by
20 percent. And so what we have learned is we want to be more
effectively targeting the poorest populations, focused on
lifting them out of poverty, and working with that subsegment
and looking at M&E specifically with that population. And so
that is one of the adjustments we have made.
We also recognize that we need to go deeper to making sure
that in the field that we are working closely with civil
society and that they are more effectively integrated into our
work. So we talked about that and have renewed our focus on
working with both U.S.-based NGOs as well as local civil
society organizations and will deepen that commitment.
We also look forward to deepening our work in natural
resource management and coordinating our efforts on climate
change as well.
I think without authorization, we have really been able to
still set a very strong foundation for Feed the Future in terms
of developing a Feed the Future guide, a strategy, a whole-of-
government coordination strategy that will really stand the
test of time. But, obviously, there is always more we can do to
improve our efforts at coordination and to have more agencies
reporting in to our whole-of-government Feed the Future
monitoring system.
Senator Cardin. I think there is great interest here on the
coordination issues. It is not only among the NGO community
that you have mentioned, from which you have gotten substantial
support, but how is that coordinated and leveraged between the
governmental sector. It is also coordination within our own
agencies with the humanitarian aid and emergency food aid
programs that we have, how well are they coordinated with Feed
the Future as to making sure that we are again using the
resources in the most effective way to leverage, as much as we
possibly can. Can you just elaborate a little bit more as to
what steps you are taking to coordinate these stakeholders?
Ms. McKenna. Yes. In fact, right after our testimony today
from 1 to 5 p.m., Jonathan and I are leading an interagency
offsite to actually spend more time talking about where we can
go deeper in these efforts.
One of the areas that we started that we really started to
make significant progress on starting last year is in one of
the areas that you mentioned, which is coordinating the food
aid assistance with our longer term agricultural development
work. ``Resilience'' is kind of the code name that we have for
all those efforts, and it has been a major focus of our energy
this year, focusing on crises in the Sahel and also in the Horn
of Africa.
There have been a couple of quick wins that we have been
able to do in that area that we will continue to build on. One
is we put crisis modifiers into our longer term growth
programs. So when our forecast is showing us that a severe
weather event is likely to occur in an area or something else
that would put more people in poverty, we are able to take our
emergency assistance funding, put it into our longer term Feed
the Future funding to specifically address those populations
and to add in resilience work there.
Another example of how we have blended the economic growth
with the communities that are likely to receive food aid as an
example of our work in Ethiopia where we are working with
commercial abattoirs. A lot of the pastoral communities in
those areas--that pastoralism is a way of life, but by
promoting commercial abattoirs and making them available in the
areas where those pastoralists tend to migrate, we have also
now provided economic opportunities for those farmers. So we
are starting to address it. We will get deeper in food aid.
And across agencies, we are also working to identify which
pieces really fit into Feed the Future, making sure they are
reporting into the monitoring system, and making sure those
efforts are coordinated at the ground in the same geographic
areas.
Senator Cardin. Tomorrow there will be a hearing in the
Environment and Public Works Committee on Hurricane Sandy, and
I will be talking about resilience. I think resiliency is very
important in Feed the Future as to what steps we are taking to
deal with the realities of the circumstances. As we pointed
out, extreme weather conditions are having an incredible impact
on food security, and we have to build that into our programs
to make sure that we recognize the realities of what is
happening globally if we are going to be successful long range
in our efforts.
Mr. Shrier, let me just get you involved here on the gender
issue. To me, the No. 1 issue in dealing with the long-term
sustainability is to deal with farmers, women, and the
treatment of the developing world on land reform and the manner
in which they treat women that are providing most of the labor
in agriculture today. Can you just share with us--I know
Secretary Clinton has been active in this regard--but how that
is being integrated into the food security issues?
Mr. Shrier. Absolutely. Thank you for that question,
Senator Cardin.
So you are right. In many developing countries, women do
make up the majority of the agricultural workforce. In several
sub-Saharan African countries, it is as high as 60 or 70
percent of the agricultural labor. But the challenge is that in
many of these countries, women do not have equal access to the
best inputs, the best improved seeds, fertilizers, access to
resources such as land or financing. And research has
demonstrated that if that access were equalized, you could see
increases in productivity of 20 to 30 percent, and if you
globalized that, that could amount to well over 100 million
additional mouths being fed.
So this is something that we have to focus on, and that is
why it is integrated throughout our Feed the Future work in the
programs that we have got designed country by country. It is
also an area where we are looking for better ideas, and so last
year, Secretary Clinton and Administrator Rajiv Shah from USAID
launched a new intensified research effort to attract the best
innovations for improving the role of women in agriculture and
improving policies and other techniques to improve gender
treatment and gender equality in areas ranging from
productivity technologies to land access and land tenure, as
you mentioned.
Senator Cardin. I would just urge us to put as much of a
spotlight on this as possible. I think it is important that the
international community knows that this is an issue that the
United States is going to maintain a continued interest in.
Senator Lugar.
Senator Lugar. Ms. McKenna, a key component of the Feed the
Future program is the partnerships that the United States has
with each of the 19 focus countries through the negotiation of
Country Investment Plans. I would like to ask you, first of
all, how did we determination which 19 countries we would deal
with? I understand plans have now been formulated with all 19
after considerable negotiation. But describe, if you will, the
challenges of those negotiations as well as challenges that
remain really after we believe we have something on paper with
each of the 19.
Ms. McKenna. Thank you.
We spent a lot of time in the early life of the initiative
focusing on that because we felt like it would lead to better
results. And so we are really proud of our work working with 19
focus countries.
As you know, focus countries are where we really have
committed to deep levels of investment with those governments.
And we chose those 19 countries based on a few factors. One was
the level of need, so looking at absolute levels of hunger and
poverty in those countries. The other is how agricultural
growth really would provide economic stimulus in those
countries as often indicated by percent of those populations
that rely on agriculture. The third factor that is most
important was our opportunity for partnership with those
countries because we did see this as deep partnership, and we
looked at the country investment plan process as a part of
developing that process.
Africa really took the lead in this area through their
CAADP, their Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development
Program, which set continental standards for how investment
plans should be developed in terms of consulting with local
society, civil society, private sector, other actors. And we
worked closely with governments to make sure those happened.
What we have done with our funding to provide the proper
incentives to help that happen was we really have focused our
funding in specific areas of the country where we believe we
can have the greatest impact, as well as on specific value
chains and activities. And I have made that clear and made sure
that almost all of our funding is focused on those few things
instead of providing out too thin.
We use evidence-based and results-based ways to evaluate
how we are doing in those countries every year which includes
how the country is following up on its commitments to support
this with their own budgets, policy changes that they are
making. For example, one of the things that we need to evaluate
now is Mali. Senator Cardin mentioned some of the instability
in Mali right now and how it affects it. So we will undergo a
process to review them as a focus country, determine what to do
with those resources. So there is a constant look at where we
are in that country and a constant view of this as a
partnership where both sides need to keep their sides of the
agreement.
Senator Lugar. Are those negotiations or agreements a
matter of public record? Are there press accounts in the
countries of our work, as well as the decisions made by their
leadership?
Ms. McKenna. Yes. In developing the country investment
plans, part of the requirement for that is that there are
public sessions on what those plans are and public
consultations. And there has been great media fanfare in all of
those activities.
In addition, as we go forward executing our work, we make
sure that the public understands exactly where we are working,
what we have committed to working in. Our Web site--
feedthefuture.gov--goes into that extensively, but we also take
every opportunity in-country to reach out to stakeholders and
to continue to remind them of what our priorities have been and
how we have been working with the government and other actors
to fulfill them.
Senator Lugar. Let me switch for a moment to the research
component of Feed the Future, which is approximately $120
million annually. I understand that a large focus of this
includes research on new seeds that may be more productive
generally, as well as under varying climatic conditions.
Now, are genetically modified organisms a part of the
research agenda for Feed the Future? If so, how are GMO's being
received in Feed the Future countries?
Ms. McKenna. Part of our job is to really bring the best of
what the American people and the American public have to offer
to our work, and research and our innovations in science and
technology are a key part of that. Our research agenda is
really focused on looking forward toward sustainable
intensification of production, looking at the effects of
climate change, and anticipating what the needs of populations
will be and leveraging what we have done in the United States,
as well as our research abroad.
We view genetically modified crops and biotechnology as
part of a tool kit of solutions that can provide better--for
example, increased resistance to drought or climate change
activities or better yields or reduced use of certain
pesticides and chemicals in production. So we encourage the
governments in the countries that we work with to look at the
range of things in their tool kits which would include
biotechnology products and to make their own decisions about
what is appropriate for their country. But we certainly support
that research and we certainly believe it is part of a tool kit
that a country and that farmers, in particular, need to thrive
going forward.
Senator Lugar. I raise the question because specifically I
have had debates over it with German parliamentarians or even
in Ukraine in which they have stoutly affirmed no GMO.
Furthermore, they will not accept crops from Africa that have
any trace of GMO. The influence there has been profound. So we
are not simply talking about something that is a little bit of
research here or there. If we are really serious about yields
and about a large change for the single woman farmer dealing
with bad seed and bad fertilizer and bad transportation, this
is why I asked the question.
And I hope that there has been acceptance in these 19
countries. Has there been resistance? Are they contaminated by
the European influence or anybody else?
Ms. McKenna. So I would like to assure you we support both
the research but we also support the building of institutions
that can understand those activities that can develop the
proper regulatory environments to welcome those products in and
that can also help to inform the public on the right things. Of
course, you will always have opponents who make their voices
heard in those countries, but we believe that our approach of
providing the countries and the scientific institutions in
those countries with information and providing that information
also to smallholder farmers are one of the key antidotes to
those other outside pressures that those countries face.
Senator Lugar. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Senator Cardin. Senator Casey.
Senator Casey. Thank you so much, Senator Cardin. I want to
thank you for calling this hearing and for highlighting this
issue, the issue of food security. We do not talk about it
enough in the Senate, and I am grateful that you are
demonstrating continued leadership on this issue.
And, Senator Lugar, it has been great to work with you on
these issues over at least the time I have been here, 6 years
now. We are going to miss your voice in the Senate, but I know
that voice will not be quiet. I think if people in both parties
can agree on one thing--and there are maybe more than one. A
few things we all agree on, but I think it is a commitment that
we need to make on an issue like this that can be bipartisan.
And you provide us with that inspiration, and your work in this
area and your public service will continue to inspire us. So we
hope when you think we are not paying enough attention, that
you knock on our door and remind us. But we are looking forward
to working with you in your next chapter and are just so
grateful for the work you have done.
I wanted to emphasize--or I should say maybe just to focus
for a moment on the private sector aspects. I know it was
covered in the testimony. This is an era of our history where
often if it is a government-only approach to an issue or a
challenge or a priority, there is a segment of society, I
guess, that would denigrate that, that if it is government that
is doing it, somehow it is not going to meet the objectives we
all hope for. I think that is unfair. And I have worked in two
levels of government, State government and the Federal
Government. So I take umbrage with that. But I do not think we
should ever miss an opportunity to have partnerships where the
private sector can work with any level of government or
nonprofit organization.
So this is one area where I think, as good as the work is
by the Federal Government, the State Department, USAID, any
other part of our Government, I think it is good to have
private sector involvement. And I know from the testimony that
that was highlighted with regard to the New Alliance, the $3
billion in private investment from 45 companies. So that is
good news and we should encourage that and support that.
I guess some questions have been raised about what that
means in the real world of getting the job done on the food
security objectives we have here. One concern that has been
raised is that civil society groups in various countries would
be excluded, and I want to have you comment on that.
But also one question that we have is what assurances are
there that donors and governments in Feed the Future countries
will sustain that investment in smallholder agriculture. So if
you can focus on that.
And then finally with regard to the U.S. and G8 donors, how
do we ensure that the New Alliance will ensure civil society
organizations, farmers' groups, women's groups, small
cooperatives, small and medium-sized enterprises that they will
all be included or integrated within the overall strategy?
So I think the two or three questions I set forth apply to
both of our witnesses, but maybe, Ms. McKenna, if you want to
start to address it.
Ms. McKenna. Certainly. I have been privileged to be able
to put a lot of my energy into some of the private sector
outreach components, so I am really happy to talk about that.
The private sector that is interested in working in these
areas, both international private sector, but also local
private sector--for them, these are long-term commitments. When
you talk to them, there is a universal recognition. We need to
be good corporate citizens. We need the smallholders to develop
to be future customers of ours, but to also be great suppliers.
So I think our intrinsic interests are all aligned. They may
speak different languages. The private sector may not speak in
the same language as the civil society or government, but part
of our job has been to translate and to bring those communities
together and we have happily done that particularly through the
New Alliance.
The first step in that is really providing transparency in
what is going on. I think in the examples that we have seen as
being harmful or not in people's best interest are things that
are not done in a transparent manner. So by having the New
Alliance really focus on companies and letters of intent, we
have brought those interests and intents to light, made that
transparent, but also have fostered a public dialogue between
those companies, the governments, and also helping them to
connect to the farmers in the communities in which they want to
serve.
Each of the private companies that work with us agreed to
work around the spirit and the principles of responsible
agricultural investment. They have all come to us with
questions on how to do that and how to work with that. And I
think part of our work as donors is helping them to understand
what that means and providing our development expertise with
their innovation and investment that they want to bring to
those areas.
We also have encouraged countries to set up structures
where they can interact effectively with the private sector, as
well as civil society and smallholders and others in those
conversations. Examples of that are Ethiopia has created an
agricultural transformation agency that is working across its
government sectors but also is responsible for bringing other
stakeholders into the conversation. And Tanzania has a southern
agricultural growth corridor, and they have an ownership group
that is actually kind of coowned with government, local farmer
organizations, and others to bring that together. So that is
the kind of work that we are encouraging.
In terms of civil society, we absolutely want to include
them. And I think what we are doing and the work we are focused
on is making sure that they are included at the local level on
the ground. We do a lot of consultation in Washington. We have
required it of our missions to do more of that local
consultation, and we are looking at ways to create handbooks or
best practices for them to do even better jobs of that going
forward. But the goal is to make sure all voices are heard and
that these things are done in a transparent, open manner, and
then that is what we continue to work toward.
The New Alliance itself--a lot of what we have done with
the New Alliance--we have really tried to drive it down to the
local level because that is really the best way to get to small
farmer organizations, to local society and that. So we have
country cooperation frameworks where governments have laid out
on paper what their policy changes would be. Private sector
companies, through the form of their LOI's, talk about what
commitments they want to make, and then donors actually have
articulated what commitments they want to make. And by making
that all public in these cooperation framework documents, we
are asking everyone to hold us accountable for what we say in
those documents for each of those sectors. So I think the focus
really is on transparency, accountability, and developing
mechanisms on the ground for those conversations to continue to
happen.
Senator Casey. I know I am out of time for this round, but
maybe we can get back to it in the next round.
Senator Cardin. Well, thank you.
I want to observe that I think one of the most significant
hearings this full committee has ever had is when we had Bill
Gates and Bill Clinton before us. Their testimony was
incredible about the ability of the NGO community to deal with
humanitarian issues. I remember the questioning dealing with
how they handle corruption in a country and when it becomes
difficult to get the aid to the people, what is their policy.
And their policy was pretty clear. They will not be there. If
the aid cannot get to the people, they are not going to feed
the corruption of local officials.
Senator Lugar and I have joined together on a transparency
initiative to make sure that the wealth of a country goes to
its people and does not to feed corruption.
What steps are you all taking to make sure that we are not
advancing corrupt regimes by giving them the resources, to make
sure that the funds, in fact, are getting to the people? And
are we prepared to leave a country if we cannot effectively
help the people?
Mr. Shrier. Thank you, Senator Cardin. Perhaps I will say a
few words and then invite my USAID colleague to add.
So corruption is a great challenge in economic growth and
development.
Senator Cardin. I am looking at the list of countries, and
some of them have real challenges as far as governance is
concerned.
Mr. Shrier. Right, and so one of the considerations when we
were selecting countries for the focus country list in Feed the
Future was the ability of the government in that country to
work with us as a partner to deliver results. Not every
government on the list is perfect. There is room for growth, to
be sure. But we certainly considered these issues and designed
our programs based on that consideration so that in many places
we do work through implementing partners instead of, or in
addition to, government agencies. Implementing partners can be
local organizations or local firms that provide these sorts of
services. And so we can thereby be better assured that the
money we deliver is producing real results. And over time, we
also work with these governments through other programs beyond
the Feed the Future effort itself to improve the control of
corruption.
There is a significant U.S. effort governmentwide on
anticorruption, which we could provide you further information
on.
Senator Cardin. I would welcome that.
I understand we want to be engaged in these countries. We
want to take steps to make sure that the aid gets to the
people, but if you reach a point where that is not possible,
are you prepared to leave?
Mr. Shrier. So you cited, Senator Cardin, the example of
Mali where we have essentially put our operation on hold while
the situation is so unsettled. So that is an example of us
looking at reality and making an adjustment as a result.
Ms. McKenna. May I add that we are particularly focused on
their governance and their policy work in agriculture. And so
part of our funding--a lot of it is directly with smallholders,
but there is always part of it that was working with local
systems or local institutions that would be in charge of
executing some of those programs and building their capacity to
make sure that things happen correctly. Before we work through
any local systems, we also have a whole audit and measurement
process to make sure that those local systems can effectively
use that money, have systems for monitoring and control of
those funds. And so we are very cognizant of that and make sure
that our efforts in agriculture and food security either are
working through other implementing partners or that we are
building and strengthening and monitoring the government
systems or the local systems that would handle those funds.
Senator Cardin. We fully understand the more that we can
get prosperity in a country, the better chance we have of good
governance. If you do not have good governance, it is hard to
get the prosperity to the people. It is a circular problem. We
understand that and we have got to enter someplace.
But I just urge you to follow the leadership of Congress
here on transparency. We have got to be very open as to the
circumstances in the countries we are operating in, and if we
cannot effectively get aid, we have to be prepared to leave
rather than to help finance a corrupt regime. Obviously, we
have humanitarian concerns. We want to make sure we move
forward with humanitarian concerns, but we want to make sure
that these systematic changes that are made are going to lead
to good governance and we cannot be party to helping to finance
corrupt regimes.
Senator Lugar.
Senator Lugar. I noted in the Feed the Future publications
a map of the 19 countries, which is very helpful in identifying
precisely what we are talking about today. And these countries,
just for the benefit of everyone in the room, are not only in
Africa but in Latin America and in Asia so that there is quite
a cross-section of different kinds of governments and
backgrounds.
Even more interesting was the progress scorecard in which
you cited accountability. You have really tried to put
something down on paper. And it will be very interesting to
watch the development of those figures and the projections, the
hopes really for the 2012 fiscal year as compared to the 2011
which you have.
I am curious as to what kind of extension programs are
being developed. Clearly that component of education, research,
the reaching out in a practical way might offer some continuity
to these trends and attract young people, middle-aged people,
whoever, to really take on something beyond the planting
function and the maintaining of existence. What can you report
about those sorts of programs?
Ms. McKenna. Well, we know from our experience here in the
United States that extension networks are very important, and
part of our work in Feed the Future with getting technologies
to smallholders, obviously extension remains important in that
work.
We have a multifaceted, multipronged approach to extension
in-country. One, we work very hard to leverage U.S.
universities and our own U.S. knowledge and that. So there are
a lot of programs that we do both at USAID but also with USDA
and others where we are connecting those universities and
institutions to extension services in countries.
Senator Lugar. Have you been able to identify specific
universities in some of your literature and which countries or
with whom?
Ms. McKenna. Yes. We can make that available and send you a
report on that. But we have extensive partnerships with U.S.
universities, and extension is one of those areas where the
common thread that you will see across many of those
partnerships.
[The submitted written report from USAID follows:]
UNIVERSITIES THAT WE WORK WITH
Aquaculture & Fisheries CRSP
Oregon State University (Lead University): Global
Purdue University: Ghana; Kenya; Tanzania
Virginia Tech: Ghana; Kenya; Tanzania
Auburn University: Uganda, South Africa
Alabama A&M University: Uganda
University of Georgia: Uganda, South Africa
University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff: Tanzania
University of Rhode Island: Vietnam, Cambodia
University of Connecticut-Avery Point: Vietnam, Cambodia
University of Hawaii-Hilo: Nicaragua, Mexico
Louisiana State University: Nicaragua, Mexico
University of Michigan: Nepal, Bangladesh, Vietnam, China
University of Arizona: Mexico, Guyana, Indonesia
Texas Tech University: Mexico
North Carolina State University: Philippines, Indonesia
Dry Grain Pulses CRSP
Cornell University: Kenya
Iowa State University: Uganda, Rwanda, Tanzania
Kansas State University: Zambia
Michigan State University (Lead University): Angola, Mozambique,
Honduras, Ecuador, Rwanda, Tanzania
Penn State University: Malawi; Mozambique; Honduras; Tanzania
Texas A&M University: Kenya; Zambia; South Africa
University of California-Riverside: Senegal; Burkina Faso; Angola
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign: Burkina Faso; Niger;
Nigeria
University of Puerto Rico: Honduras; Angola; Haiti
Horticulture CRSP
Cornell University: Bangladesh; India
Michigan State University: Benin; Kenya, India, Nepal, Sri Lanka
Ohio State University: Bolivia; Chile; Ecuador; Guatemala; Honduras;
Peru, Nicaragua, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda
Purdue University: Kenya; Tanzania; Zambia
Tennessee State University: Cambodia; Thailand; Vietnam
University of California-Davis (Lead University): Bangladesh; Cambodia,
Vietnam, Kenya; Nepal; Rwanda; Tanzania; Uganda, Benin, Gabon,
Ghana, Democratic Republic of the Congo
University of Hawaii-Manoa: Cambodia; Vietnam
University of Wisconsin-Madison: El Salvador; Guatemala; Honduras;
Nicaragua
Integrated Pest Management CRSP
Clemson University: Indonesia; Philippines; Cambodia
Michigan State University: Tajikistan
Ohio State University: Global; Kenya; Uganda; Tanzania
Penn State University: Bangladesh; India; Nepal
Virginia State University: Kenya; Tanzania; Uganda; Ethiopia
Virginia Tech (Lead University)
Adapting Livestock Systems to Climate Change CRSP
Arizona State University: Nepal
Colorado State University (Lead University): Kenya
Emory University: Kenya; Ethiopia
Princeton University: Kenya
South Dakota State University: Mali, Senegal
Syracuse University: Senegal
Texas A&M University: Mali
University of California-Davis: Tanzania
University of Florida: Niger; Tanzania
University of Georgia: Mali
University of Louisiana-Lafayette: Nepal
Utah State University: Nepal
Peanut CRSP
Auburn University: Ghana
Cornell University: Haiti
New Mexico State University: Uganda; Kenya
North Carolina State University: Ghana, Burkina Faso
Purdue University: Brazil
Texas A&M University: Ghana; Mali; Burkina Faso
University of Alabama: Ghana
University of Connecticut: Uganda; Kenya
University of Florida: Bolivia, Ghana, Mali, Burkina Faso, Guyana,
Haiti
University of Georgia (Lead University): Uganda; Ghana; Mali; Burkina
Faso, Kenya
Virginia Tech: Uganda; Kenya
Sorghum, Millet and Other Grains (INTSORMIL)
Kansas State University: Botswana; El Salvador; Mali; Nicaragua;
Nigeria; Senegal, Ghana, Burkina Faso, Niger, Kenya, South
Africa, Tanzania
Ohio State University: Tanzania; Zambia
Purdue University: Botswana; Burkina Faso; Mali; Niger, Nigeria,
Senegal, South Africa, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania
Texas A&M University: Costa Rica; El Salvador; Guatemala; Haiti;
Honduras; Nicaragua; Panama, South Africa
University of Nebraska-Lincoln (Lead University): Ethiopia; Mozambique;
Tanzania; Uganda, Zambia
West Texas A&M University: Botswana; Mali; Mozambique; Niger; South
Africa
Sustainable Agriculture & Natural Resource Management CRSP
Kansas State University: Ghana; Mali
North Carolina A&T State University: Cambodia; Philippines
Penn State University: Bolivia, Ecuador
University of Hawaii-Manoa: India; Nepal
University of Denver: Bolivia, Ecuador
University of Tennessee: Lesotho; Mozambique
University of Wyoming: Uganda; Kenya
Virginia Tech (Lead University): Ecuador, Bolivia, Haiti
Nutrition CRSP
Tufts University (Lead University): Nepal, Uganda, Malawi
Harvard University: Nepal, Uganda
Johns Hopkins University
We have also been looking at the use of information
technology and looking at kind of mobile-based extension or
other Internet-enabled extension where you can provide other
types of services to smallholders like market-based information
or climate or weather. And we recently launched another
Information and Communications Technology, ICT, and extension
challenge.
We also have a farmer-to-farmer program which we have had
for quite a while. It connects U.S. farmers directly on the
ground to farmers.
Also, Peace Corps is one of our partner agencies in Feed
the Future, and those provide great front-line resources for
both nutrition education as well as agricultural education. And
we have supported them to increase the number of agriculture
volunteers directly supporting Feed the Future.
Senator Lugar. In testimony we have had before this
committee from the Gates Foundation, they emphasize, in
addition to all we have talked about thus far, the whole
problem of transportation; transportation both of crops once
the farm gets beyond merely sustaining a single family and
markets, at least some way in which there might be some change
in the economic circumstances of the farmer if the produce can
get to a market and money can get back to the producer in the
process of all of this.
Are these areas that you are also looking at? Are they a
part of the Feed the Future program?
Ms. McKenna. Yes. Very similar to the Gates Foundation, we
really try to look across the whole value chain, and looking at
things around post-harvest storage and value addition are
critical parts of that. There are two examples we can give of
that, and one of them brings in the private sector.
We have a partnership between PepsiCo, the World Food
Programme, and USAID and the Government of Ethiopia where they
are taking chickpea, which is a local crop which is highly used
in that diet, and they have created a higher value-added
opportunity for that in creating a chickpea smush for chickpeas
as a food aid product. And so they are working with local
processors that are in the rural communities to provide markets
for those chickpeas so that the farmers--to kind of alleviate
some of the transport issues. But it also provides better
research and technology to those farmers because they have to
use better varieties of chickpeas, and with the value addition,
they can get better prices and more local markets for those. So
that is one example.
Another piece of work that we have is with General Mills
and a program they have started called Partners in Food
Solutions where they have brought together expertise from other
companies and created a volunteer technical advisory force that
really works with processors in rural communities to help them
improve the efficiency so that they can buy more crops. But
they also work to help them improve storage practices, storage
warehouses, and other pieces like that.
We also have university partnerships, for example, with
Purdue where they have a chickpea storage, these triple bag
storage products that then can be used in rural communities.
So we really are very focused on that side of the value
chain. It is easier to talk about the smallholders, but the
smallholders need the transport exactly like you said and post-
harvest storage and other things and we look to address that.
Senator Lugar. I appreciate your mentioning Purdue because
we have had strong ties there in that outreach. So you are most
thoughtful. [Laughter.]
Mr. Shrier, before you try to respond to this, let me just
add one further question while I have some time here and that
is the nonemergency programs are a part of Feed the Future.
Describe what these are and what sort of progress is being made
in the so-called nonemergency area.
Ms. McKenna. So a lot of our work on Feed the Future builds
on prior work. Prior to Feed the Future, we always had the
nonemergency food aid program through our Food for Peace
Division. We took lessons learned from those programs. For
instance, in Mozambique, some of those programs are working
with cashew farmers to provide higher value crops for more
vulnerable areas. There also has been work with risk insurance
for more vulnerable areas that are prone to disasters.
Senator Lugar. Like Indiana this year in the drought.
Ms. McKenna. Yes, exactly.
So Feed the Future has really built upon and expanded that
work and those lessons. So we look at that nonemergency
portfolio as very complementary and a key partner of ours in
our work.
Senator Lugar. Mr. Shrier, did you have a comment?
Mr. Shrier. Yes. I just wanted to say, Senator Lugar, that
in addition to the issues of transportation and market linkages
that Ms. McKenna mentioned, we also do work on trade and
promoting trade liberalization and trade facilitation in Feed
the Future regions. And so our regional strategies, in
particular, work at helping countries to remove border checks
and other barriers to trade, to improve the standardization of
standards and regulations across countries in a given region so
that interregional trade can expand, as well as international
trade more broadly. So that is another key to the challenge of
food security.
Senator Lugar. It is just critically important. The
balancing of trade in food by the international trading system
is a major factor in hunger, and I am delighted you are working
on it.
Thank you.
Senator Cardin. Senator Casey.
Senator Casey. Thanks very much.
I wanted to return to an issue that Senator Cardin raised
initially with regard to women and in these countries where it
is particularly difficult to put in place strategies to allow
them to be more a part of the effort to get the results that we
want. In particular--and you may have addressed this in your
testimony. I just wanted to press on this a little bit. The
Women's Empowerment in Agriculture Index. If you could just, A,
describe what that index is and, B, highlight for us the use of
that to date so far as kind of a measuring tool.
Ms. McKenna. We are very proud of that index. We developed
it in cooperation with Oxford University, their human poverty
lab, and the International Food Policy Research Institute,
IFPRI.
So the Women's Empowerment in Agriculture Index is the
first of its kind and it is to really measure changes in
women's empowerment in the agriculture sector. And so it really
looks at, I believe, five factors that are critical to that.
One is women's role in household decisionmaking around
agricultural production, women's access to productive capital
like loans and lands. One of the things we have seen in the
past is as soon as a crop becomes more profitable or a cash
crop, it becomes the man's crop, no longer a woman's crop. So
making sure that women still have control of that and are able
to be the ones who are the signatories on loans and land
decisions is quite important.
Adequacy of women's income to feed their families. So that
is women controlling the income once it comes in the household
which has been an issue in the past.
Women's access to leadership roles in the community. When I
managed grants at the Gates Foundation, I would notice--in the
early days before we got better at this, we would notice that
when you looked at all the farmer members that are signed up
for your project, it was all the men, but yet it was all the
women out in the field doing the work. So basic things like
making sure--but if those women's names were not on the rolls
as the member, they were not getting the checks and the income
from that activity.
So the index looks at those and women's labor and time
allocations. I think one of the errors of the past is that we
did not--we introduced new technologies, but it was the women
in the field that had to do that work. So you have to really be
sensitive that you are introducing technologies and
applications that are actually decreasing the amount of time
that they have to spend in the field more than increasing it.
So the Women's Empowerment in Agriculture Index really
takes all those dimensions into consideration and disaggregates
the data. So going forward, we are launching it in all of our
Feed the Future focus countries and our zones of influence, and
going forward, we will be able to look at that and say, OK, our
work is doing well on this aspect of the indicator, but there
are still issues with women's access to land or loan. How do we
improve that? So I think it will allow for much more productive
targeting and much more effective work going forward.
We have had a lot of inquiries from other organizations as
to how they can actually be a part of the index and how they
can adapt it. So IFAD, the U.N. Rome organization,
International Fund for Agricultural Development, has looked
into how they use it and a few other organizations are working
with us to see how they can also incorporate the index into
their activities.
Senator Casey. I mean, do you have examples that you have
employed to describe the impact of this kind of an index or the
utilization of it?
Ms. McKenna. When we launched the index, some of the early
pilots showed some interesting learnings. I think, for example,
in Bangladesh, they noticed there was one part of the index
where in the areas where we were working, that number was not
right. I believe it was around the women's access to productive
capital, but I would have to get back to you to validate that.
That then, by even just the pilot studies that we have launched
in some of our locations, has allowed us to do some better
targeting and program development in those areas. And I think
we will have more examples like that going forward that we will
be able to speak to and refer to in our work.
[The written information supplied by USAID follows:]
One of the most advantageous benefits of the Index is that it can
serve as a diagnostic tool to help us better understand the most
binding constraints that are impeding women's engagement in the
agriculture sector and, perhaps the growth of the agriculture sector
itself. Due to the fact that 10 different indicators are collected to
calculate the Index, it offers the ability to look across a number of
areas and identify which are most hindering equality and empowerment.
USAID/Bangladesh was able to employ the WEAI after they conducted
their full baseline, which included the Index. Overall, they found the
greatest constraints for gender equality and women's empowerment were:
(1) lack of control over use of income; (2) little control over
productive resources; and (3) weak leadership in the community.
Although much of the programming had already been designed by the time
the mission got the results of the WEAI, they were able to look back at
some of the components of programs they had planned and see how they
would affect those three constraints. While they have not made drastic
revisions to programs based on the WEAI, they have been able to expand
or make use of project components that will address those constraints.
They also used the information to inform the design of one project set
to start in FY 2013 that works with women raising poultry and links
them with inputs and resources to better engage in the poultry value
chain.
Senator Casey. Mr. Shrier, this is a broader question.
Maybe you could particularize it for this issue or for any
issue. But the broad question is this. Sometimes it is in the
testimony. Sometimes we ask about it; sometimes we do not. But
one of the purposes of having hearings like this is for you to
tell us what you hope Congress would do to make--not to make
your life easier necessarily--that is probably impossible--but
to put in place legislative strategies that would further the
goals of Feed the Future.
Now, I realize that sometimes the best thing for the
Congress to do is to provide resources as best we can and to
get out of the way and let these programs develop on their own.
But is there anything legislatively that you would hope that we
would be able to do in the next year or so in addition to the
obvious questions of dollars and appropriations, but just any
kind of legislative piece that would be helpful? I know that is
kind of broad and you can certainly amplify it through a
written response.
Mr. Shrier. Thank you, Senator Casey, for that question and
that offer.
I guess what I would say as an initial response--and I
think we may want to get back to you with a more complete
written response. But the world committed at the L'Aquila
summit to respond with the scale and urgency needed to achieve
sustainable global food security. That is not going to be
something that is accomplished in 3 years or 5 years or 10
years. It is accomplishable in our lifetimes, but it will take
a sustained effort and that requires sustained resources
certainly but also sustained attention. And so the work of this
committee and of Congress more generally in keeping the issue
of food security high on the U.S. agenda has been important to
our diplomatic efforts to keep the world focused on this
challenge. So we have moved from the days when food security
and agricultural development was something that was discussed
in technical meetings or by specialized ministries to a world
where this is the stuff of Presidents and Prime Ministers'
meetings, of summits in the G8, the G20, and through the major
institutions of the international system. So having the backing
that we have already had from Congress over the years will
continue to be crucial to that effort.
Senator Casey. So keep it as a front burner issue.
Mr. Shrier. Absolutely.
Senator Casey. Thank you.
Mr. Shrier. Thank you.
Senator Cardin. I think that was a very important point.
Thank you, Senator Casey, for raising that.
Let me thank our panelists. Thank you again for your
service. We will now move to the second panel.
Without objection, I am going to include in the record a
statement made by Mercy Corp.
Senator Cardin. Our second panel includes our private
sector stakeholders. We are pleased to have Paul O'Brien who is
vice president for policy and campaigns of Oxfam America where
he oversees the policy and advocacy work, including teams
focused on agriculture and climate change, aid effectiveness,
extractive industries, humanitarian response, and U.S. regional
programs.
Prior to joining Oxfam, Mr. O'Brien lived in Afghanistan
for 5 years where he worked in the Office of the President and
the Ministry of Finance as an advisor on aid coordination,
development planning, and policy reform. Prior to that, he
worked for CARE International as the Afghanistan advocacy
coordinator and African policy advisor.
He is the cofounder of the Legal Resources Foundation in
Kenya and founder of the Human Rights Research and Advocacy
Consortium in Afghanistan.
Mr. O'Brien has his law degree from Harvard Law School and
has published on humanitarian policy, human rights, and
emerging trends in development. Welcome.
Conor Walsh is the Tanzania Country Director for Catholic
Relief Services. I always like to have Catholic Relief Services
present since they are a strong presence in my own State of
Maryland in Baltimore.
In Tanzania, Mr. Walsh leads a team of more than 90 staff
and oversees a wide array of relief and development programs
which ultimately benefit close to 400,000 Tanzanians. Since
joining CRS, Mr. Walsh has served in a number of posts,
including Angola, Haiti, Honduras, and Nicaragua. He has
extensive experience overseeing programs in food security,
agroenterprise, health, emergency assistance, and human rights.
Mr. Walsh holds a master's degree in international
development from Columbia University.
Connie Veillette is the independent consultant and senior
adviser to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs' Global
Agricultural Development Initiative. Working in the area of
international development for more than 20 years, Dr. Veillette
served as a specialist in foreign assistance at the
Congressional Research Service for 5 years. As a staff member
of this committee working for Senator Lugar, she led the
committee's report, ``Global Food Insecurity: Perspectives from
the Field,'' which served as the basis for the Lugar-Casey
Global Food Security Act introduced in the 111th Congress.
As an independent consultant currently working with the
Chicago Council on Global Affairs, she continues to follow and
evaluate the work of the U.S. Government in the field of global
food security and would be available to address the
effectiveness of Feed the Future initiatives, including its
research component.
It is a pleasure to have all three of you present. As you
have heard from the first panel, this has been a high priority
of the administration and a high priority of Congress. It is
critically important that we work together with the private
sector. We welcome your observations as to how well the program
is working to carry out its goals and whether it could be more
effective.
With that, let me first call on Mr. O'Brien.
STATEMENT OF PAUL O'BRIEN, VICE PRESIDENT FOR POLICY AND
CAMPAIGNS, OXFAM AMERICA, WASHINGTON, DC
Mr. O'Brien. Thank you, Senator Cardin and Senator Lugar,
both for this hearing and for your ongoing leadership on the
issue.
We are, as Oxfam working in 90 countries, big supporters of
Feed the Future for many of the reasons discussed today.
Particularly the focus on agriculture and as a flagship for how
the United States ought to be doing development in the world,
we think it is defining the rules across the board.
You, Senator, asked us to have a robust discussion around
challenges, and I would like to offer three challenges that I
think Feed the Future is going to be facing in the years to
come and on which your leadership will be critical and on which
we hope to see the administration lead also. Those challenges
speak generally to the tensions between Congress'
responsibility to track tax dollars while also embracing the
idea that local leaders must lead. I would like to speak to
that. The challenge of recognizing the role of the private
sector without leaving them to an unregulated free-for-all, and
the challenge of tackling climate change not just as a
technical problem but as a political issue.
So on the first threat or challenge, the development
community woke up some time ago--I would loosely say 10 years
ago--to the reality that we--collectively as donors, as NGOs--
are not collectively going to be capable of lifting 870 million
people out of hunger or any significant number. In the end of
the day, that challenge will ultimately fall to the
institutions on the ground, the governments, the private sector
actors, and the communities that must engage this issue
themselves. That is old news, but it presents a set of
challenges for us as a development community and in the Rome
Principles, we see those challenges articulated.
We know that if we want those countries to lead, those
communities, those private sectors, we must invest with and
through them. We must challenge them on the outcomes, not on
inputs. We must give them long-term challenges to succeed. And
that is something on which Feed the Future has been both
courageous, articulate, and insightful.
But across the U.S. Government that raises a particular
tension because we are asking you as Congress to authorize and
the administration to spend tax dollars through other
institutions. Many in my community think that we are going too
far in supporting local leadership and that ultimately we are
going to see some of those moneys wasted because, as you
pointed out, we face corruption and sometimes a lack of
capacity in the countries where we have decided to invest.
We went out and surveyed how the United States is doing in
its effort to invest more through local institutions, and here
is what we found. There has been a real change in the
conversation between local stakeholders, local governments but
sometimes civil society and the United States. They feel that
we are listening better, talking more, engaging more. However,
when we asked them, Are you seeing an increased ability to
influence U.S. Government funding and how it is spent? two-
thirds said not that much over the 5 years that we asked,
meaning we are listening better, they are feeling better
informed about what the United States is doing, but still a
significant proportion of them feel they do not exercise enough
influence in directing our assistance.
So while many in our community and I think some Members of
Congress will say we may be going too far in putting local
institutions, local governments, local communities in charge of
their own development, our sense is we have not yet gone far
enough, but Feed the Future is on exactly the right track by
trying to do that. USAID is on exactly the right track with
USAID Forward.
And just on your question of corruption, Senator, I would
like to say as you well know, the challenge we all have to
crack that circle you talked about is that in each of the 19
countries, there are corrupt individuals who have no real
interest in reducing hunger in their own countries, but there
are also reformers and leaders in government and civil society
who want to get political legitimacy, who want to prove both to
the international community and their own people that they are
willing to take this fight on. And if we can parse out the
societies and find out where the corruption is and is not and
strengthen the reformers and the moderates and those more
committed to the governance you talked about, we can actually
crack that circle. So that is all I will say on that.
On the second question which is the role of the private
sector, I think we all for the same reasons, resource
constraints and the breadth of the challenge, recognize that
the private sector is profoundly important in moving forward
our efforts to address food insecurity. And we think Feed the
Future has been very strong on that and we embrace the New
Alliance. But, of course, we all recognize that the way this is
going to work effectively for people in poverty is the way we
regulate the private sector. And one concern that I wanted to
bring to your attention there that we think Feed the Future
could be a leader on: land.
Over the last 10 years, there has basically been a land
free-for-all globally, 227 million hectares sold off to
investors, often leading to women, children, and men being
thrown off their land without adequate compensation or
consultation. What can we do, what can Feed the Future do, what
can USAID do to incentivize the right regulatory regime to get
this under control before too many smallholder farmers get
removed from their land?
The FAO has put out a set of guidelines, voluntary
guidelines, on land tenure. We think if Feed the Future
explicitly embraced and funded efforts to adopt those
guidelines by governments, by others, they could move the
discussion on land tenure significantly forward and get some
better regulation around what we see as a land free-for-all.
The New Alliance--we think it is going in the right direction,
but let us remember these are large corporations who have
different interests at heart. So while they think about what
they want more broadly, which is higher profits and better
production of food to meet the needs of their shareholders,
which is their legitimate interest, can we get them to align
what they are doing transparently--and we embrace that idea--
with the needs of smallholder farmers on the ground? And that
is the tension there. What can we get the New Alliance
companies to say about embracing the importance of smallholder
farmers and the role of the Rome Principles, which is not
clearly aligned with the way the companies have been talking
about it. So those would be our proposals for cracking that
challenge on Feed the Future.
Finally, climate change. It is great to hear that we are
now having a robust discussion not about whether it is a
problem but how we resolve it. And none too soon. We think that
since 1980, corn production has reduced by 5 percent globally
as a consequence of climate change, meaning the impact of
climate change has been about 5 percent of production. In
southern Africa because of climate change, we expect corn may
be--there may be 30 percent less corn as a consequence of
climate change in southern Africa. Big numbers.
It is good to see Feed the Future focus and invest in the
technologies that we are going to need, better and more
improved seeds, better water management. But we all know that
technologies are probably going to be insufficient to tackle
what is happening with our weather. We are going to need
political commitments to and institutions that are explicitly
capacitated and committed to addressing climate change. So we
would be looking to see Feed the Future be more explicit not
just about the technological dimensions and challenges of
climate change but also the political and institutional
challenges of getting countries to accept that they are going
to be having to adapt their agricultural economies to climate
change over the next few decades.
So thank you very much for your time on those issues.
[The prepared statement of Mr. O'Brien follows:]
Prepared Statement of Paul O'Brien
Mr. Chairman, I want to thank you and Ranking Member Corker for
holding this hearing on the Feed the Future Initiative. I greatly
appreciate the opportunity to testify before this subcommittee. This is
an important moment to provide oversight to the Feed the Future
Initiative and the administration's approach to addressing global
hunger.
Oxfam America is an international relief and development agency
committed to developing lasting solutions to poverty, hunger, and
social injustice. We are part of a confederation of 17 Oxfam affiliates
working in more than 90 countries around the globe. We are also a
campaigning organization meaning that through policy engagement and
advocacy, we tackle the root causes of hunger and poverty in order to
help people create an environment in which they can claim and exercise
their rights.
On the issue of agriculture and food security, Oxfam's GROW
campaign is active in the United States and more than 40 other
countries to build a more fair global food system where everyone has
enough to eat always.
In the United States, Oxfam America's work to promote a more
equitable and just food system spans a broad number of issues from
addressing policies that drive food price volatility such as biofuels
mandates and commodity speculation to promoting positive public and
private investments in the agriculture sector to meet the needs of
small-scale food producers. We are also undertaking research and policy
analysis on the Feed the Future Initiative aimed at strengthening U.S.
foreign assistance programs focused on agriculture, food security, and
adaptation to climate change.
Our view is that the Feed the Future Initiative marks an important
shift for the U.S. Government--and USAID in particular--in terms of how
it works and the emphasis it accords to the critical issue of
agriculture. Food insecurity is a major global challenge and the Feed
the Future Initiative, if sustained, can contribute to lasting
reductions in poverty and hunger. I will highlight three areas--civil
society engagement; integration of climate change adaptation and
natural resource management into Feed the Future country investments;
and promotion of strong and secure land tenure and property rights
systems--that we feel are crucial areas where the Feed the Future
Initiative shows promise, but where work remains to be done.
I. SUPPORT FOR THE FEED THE FUTURE INITIATIVE
We strongly support the efforts made by the current administration
to bring renewed focus and attention to agriculture and food security.
After achieving significant increases in agricultural productivity
during the 1960s and 1970s, official development assistance to
agriculture exhibited a steady decline for more than two decades from
the mid-1980s to the first half of this decade. In 1986, agriculture
made up almost 10 percent of total official development assistance
globally. By 2006, that share had shrunk to less than 2 percent. The
sudden and dramatic price spike in 2008 has led to a significant
reinvigoration in aid to this sector. Importantly, it is not only
donors that have returned to focus on agriculture. In 2003 African
countries agreed, in what is known as the Comprehensive African
Agriculture Development Program (CAADP), to a target of allocating 10
percent of government budgets to agriculture.
For the vast majority of the more than 870 million people around
the world who suffer from hunger, food and agriculture production is a
key livelihoods strategy. Most of these food producers are women who
struggle with unequal access to resources to grow enough food to feed
their families and earn enough money to pay for basic necessities.
Investing in agriculture is thus an important strategy to reach people
living in poverty. In doing so, public and private investments in
agriculture, when appropriately designed and targeted can be a driver
of pro-poor economic growth and development. GDP growth generated by
agriculture is at least twice as effective in reducing poverty as
growth generated by other sectors.
In reflecting on early outcomes achieved since the Feed the Future
Initiative was announced, it is important to recognize first and
foremost that the true impact of the investments being made now in
agriculture and food security will take years to be fully realized. The
process of energizing rural economies, spurring agriculture development
and sustainably reducing hunger cannot be achieved over night or over
the course of only one growing season. They will take years to be fully
realized.
One of the most important lessons to take from the Feed the Future
Progress Report is that the quick wins are possible, but translating
positive outputs into long-term positive outcomes in terms of higher
incomes and improved food security and nutrition is a much longer
process. We urge Congress to find creative solutions to ensure that the
framework for poverty reduction developed in the Feed the Future
Initiative, specifically the emphasis on supporting small-scale food
producers, is sustained in this and future administrations.
II. CHANGING HOW USAID WORKS
Consistent with Principles agreed upon at the G8 summit in 2009,
the Feed the Future Initiative seeks to change the way U.S. foreign
assistance operates and the way the U.S. Government delivers aid. The
Rome Principles as they are known commit G8 donors to better alignment
with country strategies, deeper engagement with civil society actors,
improved coordination and collaboration with other development actors
and stakeholders and a sustained and holistic approach that addresses
both short- and long-term challenges to hunger.
A practical and important outcome of the U.S. commitment to the
Rome Principles is an emphasis on aligning resources and programs
provided by the U.S. Government with the priorities and strategies
developed by national governments. In African countries, this means
ensuring investments align with country agriculture investment
strategies (CAADP plans in Africa). Placing greater control of
development objectives, strategies and resources with developing
country governments, when responsibly done, is an important step toward
bolstering country ownership of the development process.
To further bolster this process and to ensure Feed the Future
programs are responsive to the needs of small-scale producers, the U.S.
has committed to greater consultation and engagement with in-country
stakeholders including, and from our perspective importantly, civil
society--especially farmer-based organizations and associations
representing the needs and interests of women food producers.
Oxfam research suggests that the emphasis on consultation is being
taken seriously and that as a result missions in focus countries are
changing the way they do business. To examine this issue, Oxfam has
undertaken research in seven countries, where researchers interviewed
nearly 250 development stakeholders to ask two questions:
How is the U.S. Government implementing new foreign aid
reform initiatives to improve aid delivery?
What effects have these changes created in their early
stages of implementation among the different development
stakeholders in countries?
What we found is a significant improvement in the way the United
States engages with civil society and other stakeholders. Whereas 4
years ago meetings with the representatives of the U.S. Government may
have been hard to come by, 77 percent of our surveyed stakeholders say
that now they are meeting with officials more frequently. And 74
percent of respondents told us that the quality of the interactions is
better.
When done right, these interactions can lead to better outcomes and
more mutually beneficial results. But it is clear from our research
that although there is an improvement in the quantity and quality of
interactions between U.S. officials and in-country stakeholders, it is
not yet translating into changing the types or focus of U.S.
investments. In our survey, 65 percent of local stakeholders felt their
influence over what the U.S. funds has either decreased or not changed
at all over the past 4 to 5 years. Consultation and engagement thus
remains a work in progress.
The potential for improvement is strong, not just because USAID is
taking the Rome Principles seriously, but also because other reforms
within the agency have embraced many of these same principles and ideas
and are turning them into improved practice at the mission level. In
this regard, it is important to highlight one effort--implementation
and procurement reform (IPR)--which is encouraging the agency to link
more with local actors, learn from their experience, offer support that
can build their capacity and create partnerships for lasting solutions
to hunger and poverty.
Implementation and procurement reform aims to place a greater share
of USAID's investments directly with country governments, local
businesses, and local organizations. In so doing, this increased
engagement can strengthen the capacity of governments as well as local
civil society and businesses while also increasing the breadth and
depth of U.S. partnerships. Greater competition created through IPR can
drive innovation and results and ensure the most efficient and
effective use of government resources. In this way, IPR is helping to
take the concept of consultation and build on it to create true
partnerships.
Oxfam applauds the commitment to country ownership and partnership
embraced by the Feed the Future Initiative and IPR. Specific benchmarks
and indicators should be developed and monitoring and reporting on
local partnerships should be incorporated into the Feed the Future
Progress Scorecard. Doing so will promote greater accountability and
sustainability of this initiative.
III. RENEWING FOCUS ON CLIMATE ADAPTATION AND NATURAL RESOURCE
MANAGEMENT
As the experience of extreme droughts in both East and West Africa
have demonstrated, climate change compounded by natural resource
degradation, poses a key challenge and is the basis of a substantial
portion of the risk farmers around the world face. Information
contained in the Feed the Future Guide indicates a clear recognition of
the importance of addressing these challenges. The Guide observes that
the sustainability and resilience of agriculture production depends on
a ``large-scale systems approach to environmental and natural resource
management'' including addressing climate change.
Assisting small-scale food producers adapt to climate change and
better manage natural resources is essential to the long-term success
of the Feed the Future Initiative and efforts to promote sustainable
development. As the lead implementing agency for both Feed the Future
and the Climate Change Initiative, USAID can do more to ensure climate
change and natural resource management (NRM) considerations are fully
mainstreamed into agriculture development programs.
Without efforts to help farmers adapt to climate change, current
levels of agriculture productivity will decline as extreme weather
events such as droughts and floods increase, dry seasons become longer
and hotter and rainfall patterns become increasingly erratic, affecting
rain-fed agriculture production. Projected impacts of climate change on
crop yields, which in the tropics and subtropics could fall 10-20
percent by 2050, could leave an additional 25 million children
undernourished by 2050 in developing countries. The long-term decline
in productivity will be punctuated by catastrophic crop losses caused
by extreme weather events. This summer's historic drought affecting the
Midwest, for example, is expected to reduce the U.S. corn harvest by 20
percent on a yield-per-acre basis.
For food producers, climate adaptation requires developing the
tools and knowledge and building the capacity to address current
hazards and manage risk and uncertainty associated with weather. Much
of the focus of current efforts within FTF to address natural resource
management and climate change, especially as highlighted in the
Progress Report, is on identifying appropriate technical solutions such
as improved seed varieties and better water management techniques. But
there is also a need to implement programs that address power dynamics
that shape access to natural resources essential for smallholder
agriculture. People living in poverty, women especially, lack equal
access to natural resources or decisionmaking power regarding their
use. Women produce over half the world's food yet own less than 10
percent of the land. It is estimated that if women had equal access to
resources (natural and otherwise), they could increase on-farm yields
by 20 to 30 percent.
USAID can improve upon current Feed the Future activities by
providing more regular training and technical support to mission staff
to enable them to more systematically integrate consideration of the
socioeconomic dynamics that shape climate change vulnerability and
resilience into project planning and monitoring. Such an approach would
reemphasize the focus on the particular challenges women face not just
as food producers but also as consumers and potential stewards of
natural resources.
The expected impact of climate change is compounded by the fragile
and deteriorating natural resource base, which in many countries is
resulting in diminished water resources, depleted soils and reduced
forests among other environmental pressures. In Africa alone, 650
million people are dependent on rain-fed agriculture in fragile
environments that are vulnerable to water scarcity and environmental
degradation. Without sustained attention to address this challenge, the
goals of Feed the Future are not achievable.
Better guidance and training for missions can help to address this
challenge and can also help USAID to better manage the synergies and
tradeoffs between improved yields and productivity, on the one hand,
and the integrity of the ecosystems on which successful farming
depends, on the other. Complementary information to guide
decisionmaking can be developed through the use of continuous
monitoring and learning. Better monitoring and evaluation systems need
to be put in place that can be used to attribute outcomes to specific
interventions and investments in order to capture a more comprehensive
understanding of how investments to address natural resource management
and climate change adaptation are impacting environmental
sustainability,
IV. MAKING PRIVATE SECTOR INVESTMENTS WORK FOR SMALLHOLDERS
Agriculture represents one of the best opportunities for the
estimated 1.5 to 2 billion people currently living in rural food
producing households to sustainably escape hunger and poverty. Small-
scale food producers themselves are the most significant source of
investment in agriculture in most developing countries. Supporting the
development of policies and investments to benefit small-scale
producers as entrepreneurs is critical. Too often, however, small-scale
producers are not considered to be investors at all, and policies
promulgated in developing countries marginalize them or create
incentives geared to supporting commercial level investments that can
compete with or displace small-scale producers. This is a critical set
of issues that Feed the Future must address.
As Oxfam has documented, not all investments in agriculture have
positive outcomes for people living in poverty. With regard to large-
scale land acquisitions, for example, Oxfam and many other
organizations have raised concerns that the recent wave of investments
in land in developing countries has included many instances of
dispossession, deception, violations of human rights and destruction of
livelihoods. In a recent Oxfam report, ``Land and Power: The Growing
Scandal Surrounding the New Wave of Investments in Land,'' we
documented five cases of land grabs that have hindered not helped
development and poverty reduction. And this is just the tip of the
iceberg. The Land Matrix Partnership has documented deals completed or
under development amounting to nearly 49 million hectares of land since
2000, mainly by international investors, with most occurring in recent
years. Our report and subsequent work on the problem of ``land grabs''
has sought to highlight the need for measures--norms, standards, and
protections--to defend the rights of people living in poverty.
I highlight this issue for two reasons. First, Feed the Future will
be less successful if attention is not paid to the importance of land
rights--security of tenure, access to and control over land--in
development outcomes. This is especially important for women, who often
face legal and social barriers to controlling the land they farm. In an
analysis of Feed the Future in Guatemala conducted by Oxfam, one of
findings was that the impact of the initiative is partially limited by
the fact that investments are not addressing structural issues
including highly unequal access to land. This finding is underscored by
World Bank analysis from 73 countries which found that countries which
start with a more equitable distribution of land have economic growth
rates two to three times higher than those with initially higher
inequality.
Second, in a number of ways the U.S. has taken an active role both
in addressing land issues and in the promotion of private investment in
agriculture. Much of this work is positive, but in other areas, Oxfam
has raised concerns with the administration.
Let me be clear: private investments--especially those made by
national companies based in developing countries, small- and medium-
sized enterprises, and small-scale producers themselves--can, and
should be, promoted in the development process as the primary engine of
sustainable job creation and broad-based economic growth. There is a
need to increase investment that not only promotes agriculture in a way
that ``does no harm,'' but in a way that ``does more good.'' What must
be achieved through positive agricultural investment is inclusive
economic growth, environmental sustainability and long-term poverty
reduction. And such investments need not include taking direct control
over land.
It is worth highlighting that the U.S. has provided significant
recent leadership to improve the environment for the effective
governance of land tenure, and in so doing lay the foundation for
responsible agriculture investment. Over the past few years, the U.S.
support has been instrumental in the development of a landmark set of
guidelines and best practices to assist countries in protecting and
promoting land rights. ``The Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible
Tenure of Land, Forests, Fisheries in the Context of National Food
Security'' can serve as an important set of benchmarks and standards to
guide national law, policy, and practice by governments and investors.
U.S. Government staff chaired the negotiations, which have been lauded
as highly inclusive and participatory. The result of this process is
broad support for the Voluntary Guidelines which were adopted at the
Committee on World Food Security earlier this year.
Now that the Voluntary Guidelines have been finalized, the next
step is for countries to review existing laws and policies and take any
necessary steps to ensure coherence. To do this, U.S. agencies'
development portfolios--whether they are part of Feed the Future or
not--should review their own policies to ensure they meet the standards
set out by the Voluntary Guidelines.
This is especially important for agencies and offices with
investment or lending portfolios, such as the Overseas Private
Investment Corporation and the Export/Import Bank. This process should
also ensure application of the Voluntary Guidelines to companies and
investors that do business with these agencies.
The other step the United States can take is to support
implementation of the Voluntary Guidelines, through bilateral foreign
assistance as well as by providing funding to the Food and Agriculture
Organization of the United Nations, which is leading support for the
implementation effort. Early piloting experience, which will include
building technical resources and capacity-building at the country
level, is a crucial step toward building a body of knowledge about how
to effectively utilize the Voluntary Guidelines as a tool for improving
the enabling environment in which tenure rights' holders have better,
more secure access to land and natural resources.
The Voluntary Guidelines figure prominently in another initiative
tied to Feed the Future and launched earlier this year at the G8. The
New Alliance is an effort to link donors, developing countries, and
private sector actors in new partnerships to contribute to a goal of
lifting 50 million people out of poverty. At this point six countries--
Ethiopia, Ghana, Tanzania, Mozambique, Cote D'Ivoire, and Burkina
Faso--and more than 80 companies have joined the New Alliance. In
forming each partnership Cooperative Framework Agreements have been
developed, which include specific policy commitments by developing
country governments, target funding levels for public sector
investments by G8 countries and investment targets by companies seeking
new market opportunities in African agriculture. Each Cooperative
Framework Agreement includes a specific endorsement of the Voluntary
Guidelines.
Oxfam welcomes the endorsement of the Voluntary Guidelines in the
New Alliance, but has raised a number of other concerns regarding this
initiative. For example, G8 leaders have indicated that commitments
made as part of the New Alliance will be consistent with existing
agriculture investment plans and have reiterated that the Rome
Principles such as consultation and civil society engagement apply as
well. In practice, the application of these principles has been weak.
Not only does this threaten the credibility of this initiative, it
threatens to undermine the trust built up over the last several years
between USAID, governments and stakeholders.
Compounding this concern, available information regarding the
nature of investments proposed by companies demonstrates a mixed
commitment to targeting small-scale producers. It is crucial that in
promoting private sector investments, the New Alliance and Feed the
Future more generally, prioritize integration of and support and
protections for small-scale producers.
We urge Congress to use its oversight authority to ensure the New
Alliance is developed in a manner that is coherent with the public
sector investments supported through the Feed the Future Initiative.
The U.S. Government must ensure a balanced approach to hunger and
poverty reduction, encouraging and supporting both public and private
investments in the agriculture sector. Small-scale producers must
remain at the center of this effort.
I thank the committee for the opportunity to share Oxfam's views
and I am happy to answer questions you may have.
Senator Cardin. Thank you for your testimony.
Mr. Walsh.
STATEMENT OF CONOR WALSH, TANZANIA COUNTRY DIRECTOR, CATHOLIC
RELIEF SERVICES, BALTIMORE, MD
Mr. Walsh. Thank you very much, Chairman Cardin and Senator
Lugar. Thank you for this opportunity to address the
subcommittee and to participate in this important hearing on
U.S. global food security efforts.
As you noted, I am here today to represent Catholic Relief
Services. We were established by the U.S. Conference of
Catholic Bishops and we are the international relief and
development agency of the U.S. Catholic Church. On behalf of
CRS, we appreciate the opportunity to provide our assessment of
Feed the Future.
CRS supports Feed the Future and we recognize the historic
nature of this initiative. We support the country ownership
model Feed the Future seeks to achieve and the whole-of-
government approach it is using to marshal U.S. resources.
We also commend the administration for rallying G8 donors
to support the country development plans of the Feed the Future
focus countries.
I would also like to add that the Feed the Future team in
Tanzania has done a fine job in executing this comprehensive
and integrated approach to development. The Feed the Future
staff there are highly experienced development professionals
who are genuinely committed to building the country's
agricultural sector and bolstering its food security.
Having said that, we do believe that Feed the Future as a
whole can be strengthened in three ways. No 1, it can sharpen
its focus on poor farmers. No. 2, it should balance the funding
instruments that are used to deliver its assistance. And No. 3,
it can improve the degree and the quality of participation by
civil society in its design and its implementation.
Turning to the first point, in Tanzania CRS is actually a
partner in Feed the Future. We are implementing a subcontract
that focuses on poor and vulnerable groups. These groups tend
to be smallholder farmers who operate on a subsistence level,
and our work helps to prepare them for the market by building
their assets and their skills.
Taken overall, however, Feed the Future in Tanzania has not
really focused very much on the vulnerable groups. Instead, the
bulk of Feed the Future resources have gone to regions of the
country that are relatively better off, and within these
regions substantial resources have gone to farmers who are
already involved in commercial production. While such
investments are called for by the Tanzanian Government's
national agricultural investment plan, which Feed the Future
supports, we are concerned that focusing only on areas
prioritized by the plan risks marginalization of the more
vulnerable.
Some of the work being carried out under Feed the Future
has great potential to improve smallholder farmers' ability to
farm profitably and to improve the livelihoods of the poor.
This work includes trade policy reform, rural infrastructure,
food processing, nutrition work, and research on seed and plant
varieties. Care has to be taken to ensure that improvements in
these areas reach the poor.
More importantly, though, we feel strongly that there
should be more Feed the Future projects in Tanzania and in
other Feed the Future countries that work directly with
smallholder farmers and other vulnerable groups and in
particular with women. These projects should focus on building
their skills and their capacity to be self-sufficient. From our
perspective, the measure of success in tackling hunger is tied
directly to whether smallholder farmers
are producing more food, are earning more income, are able to
provide a healthy diet for themselves and their children, can
maintain and build up productive assets like farm tools and
livestock, and whether they can afford to keep their children
in school. These are the indicators that matter in the fight
against hunger and they should be at the top of Feed the
Future's objectives.
My second point relates to the funding mechanisms that are
used to implement Feed the Future programs. Feed the Future
programs are implemented either through contracts or through
cooperative agreements. Private volunteer organizations like
CRS mostly undertake cooperative agreements as opposed to
contracts for a variety of reasons that are discussed in more
detail in my written testimony. I would like to take this
opportunity to highlight just one of those points.
Cooperative agreements give organizations more flexibility
in the way programs are designed and implemented. It allows
organizations like CRS to leverage private donor funding, and
it helps us incorporate our experience into program design.
More importantly, though, the flexibility that is inherent in
cooperative agreements better allows us to respond to realities
on the ground and to adjust strategies as conditions change.
There is perhaps a general assumption that contract mechanisms
allow the donor to achieve desired results within a shorter
timeframe and at lower cost, and this may be true if you are
building a bridge or constructing a highway. But our experience
has shown that the path to development cannot be neatly
designed like a blueprint for a construction project.
Development consists of changing behaviors, attitudes,
practices, and relationships within groups of society. This is
a fluid process and implementation, therefore, must be
adaptable and cooperative agreements are far better suited for
this purpose.
The reason I bring this up is because our observations
suggest that in many Feed the Future countries, USAID has
relied heavily on contracts to achieve development goals. While
this is not as true for Tanzania, the country that I am coming
from, it is a common occurrence across a number of Feed the
Future countries. The practice has discouraged PVOs like CRS
from contributing as implementers of the Feed the Future
program. In doing so, Feed the Future has not had the full
benefit of the substantial experience the PVO community brings
to implementing highly successful food security programs. If
Feed the Future is serious about having a lasting impact and
reducing hunger, there should be a better mix, a better balance
of contracts and cooperative agreements across all Feed the
Future countries.
My third and final point relates to the input in Feed the
Future program design and country development plans in the
field. We believe that in general Feed the Future feedback
mechanisms need to be strengthened to ensure that the program
can take advantage of knowledge and capacities that were built
in other food security programs.
My experience in Tanzania regarding input mechanisms is
mixed. On the positive side, CRS participated, along with
several other dozen NGOs and other stakeholders, in a feedback
session to validate and review the Feed the Future strategy,
and the mission also engaged at times with a number of civil
society groups to obtain input and advice, including the
Agricultural and Non-State Actors Forum which represents a
number of smallholder farmers. All of this is positive.
However, we feel a more regular mechanism for obtaining
feedback should be put in place. This could take the shape of
an advisory council or just holding regular meetings with civil
society groups, including local and international NGOs, faith-
based groups, and other stakeholders, to discuss the country
implementation plan, the investment plan, and to identify best
practices and scale up successful efforts. USAID could also
undertake a mapping exercise of previous projects in Feed the
Future countries to build on those experiences. What is
important is that PVOs, local NGOs, and others have a means to
communicate their experience and knowledge to Feed the Future
and that planners make every effort to incorporate and/or learn
from the information provided.
In conclusion, Chairman Cardin, thank you again for this
opportunity to present testimony before the committee, and I
would be happy to answer any questions you may have.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Walsh follows:]
Prepared Statement of Conor Walsh
I would like to thank Chairman Cardin and Ranking Member Corker for
calling this important hearing on U.S. Global Food Security Efforts,
with a focus on the Feed the Future Initiative. I am Conor Walsh and am
here today to represent Catholic Relief Services (CRS). I have been
with CRS for 17 years, and currently serve as the Country
Representative for Tanzania. On behalf of the organization, we
appreciate the opportunity to provide our assessment of U.S. Global
antihunger efforts, and in particular Feed the Future.
ABOUT CATHOLIC RELIEF SERVICES
Catholic Relief Services is the relief and development agency of
the U.S. Catholic Church. CRS was originally formed by U.S. Catholic
Bishops during World War II to aid in the resettlement of war refugees
in Europe. Today, our work focuses on aiding the poor overseas, using
the gospel of Jesus Christ as our mandate. The Church's social teaching
informs the work of CRS and guides us to aid the poorest people in the
poorest places, without regard to race, creed, or nationality.
The Catholic Church has broad and deep experience combating poverty
and hunger around the world and CRS has direct experience as an
implementer of U.S. foreign assistance programs. The U.S. Bishops and
CRS have close ties to the Church in developing countries, and CRS
often partners with institutions of the local Catholic Church to
implement programs. By partnering with Church institutions, CRS is
often afforded the opportunity to work with communities inaccessible to
the local government or other actors.
CRS presently operates in almost 100 countries and serves about 100
million people annually. Our programs address food security,
agriculture, HIV and AIDS treatment, health, education, civil society
capacity-building, emergency relief, and peace-building. In addition to
partnering with Church institutions, CRS works with a variety of other
partners to implement our programming, including other Private
Voluntary Organizations (PVOs), U.S. and foreign-based non-governmental
organizations (NGOs), local and national governments, international
organizations like the World Food Programme, and national and local
nonprofit organizations in the countries and regions where we work.
CATHOLIC RELIEF SERVICE'S RESPONSE TO GLOBAL FOOD INSECURITY
Improving food security for the poor and most vulnerable overseas
has long been a major priority of CRS. We use a variety of funding
sources for this work, both public and private.
Historically, most U.S. Government funding for food security has
been in the form of food aid. As a result, food aid is the largest
portion of CRS' public funding for development and emergency food
security programs. We receive funding from sources like the Food for
Peace nonemergency account administered by the U.S. Agency for
International Development (USAID),\1\ as well as U.S. Department of
Agriculture's (USDA) McGovern-Dole Food for Education and Food for
Progress programs, which allows CRS to conduct a wide range of
agriculture and food security initiatives. These include helping
smallholder farmers boost agricultural yields, introduce new crop
varieties, establish value chains, and train farmers in necessary skill
sets to become profitable and engaged in formal markets. CRS food
security programming also includes village run savings and loan
associations, which link to our agroenterprise activities.
Additionally, CRS has long engaged in mother and child nutrition
programs that provide nutritious foods and educate mothers in better
health and nutrition practices for their children.
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\1\ Food for Peace is also referred to as Title II, or Title II of
P.L. 480. Food for Peace Funding is split between emergency food
relief, and nonemergency programs that fund development food assistance
activities.
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In addition to public donor funding, CRS raises substantial private
funds which we dedicate to food security programs. We regularly
leverage these private resources with public donor funding. Every year
during Lent, CRS conducts a program called ``Rice Bowl'' in Catholic
parishes and with other partners across the U.S. to educate Catholics
about global hunger and generate funds for food security projects. In a
new program called ``Helping Hands,'' CRS collaborates with Stop Hunger
Now, a private food aid organization, to conduct food packing events
that provide food for the most vulnerable abroad. And recently, through
leadership from InterAction,\2\ U.S. PVOs have pledged a combined $1
billion in private funding over the next 3 years to food security
programming, with CRS making up $150 million of this pledge.
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\2\ InterAction is an alliance of U.S.-based international
nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) focusing on overseas disaster
relief and development.
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CRS presently operates in 17 of the 20 Feed the Future countries,
and in 8 of these countries--Ethiopia, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras,
Malawi, Mali, Tanzania, and Zambia--we implement major food security
programs.
GENERAL OBSERVATIONS CONCERNING FEED THE FUTURE
CRS supports the Feed the Future Initiative. Prior to the Obama
administration, the vast majority of U.S. foreign assistance efforts
directed to food security were funded through U.S. food aid programs.
While these programs were and continue to be a critical part of U.S.
foreign assistance, they were never funded commensurate to the level of
need. Now, through the President's comprehensive approach to
eradicating global hunger, Feed the Future, coupled with existing U.S.
food aid programs, we have begun to see more attention to, and more
appropriate levels of funding for, food security programming.
The administration has promoted Feed the Future as a ``whole of
government'' initiative to provide a country-led, comprehensive
approach to improving food security. We understand the enormity of this
challenge. A truly comprehensive approach requires a wide range of
stakeholders including the global donor community through the G8 and
G20 processes, as well as multilateral organizations, regional
governing and economic communities, recipient countries, beneficiaries,
and aid implementers. The whole of government vision requires pulling
together new and existing programs and funding mechanisms to achieve
common food security objectives. Appreciating these challenges, we
offer the following thoughts on specific aspects of Feed the Future
from the perspective of our field offices and provide suggestions for
how to strengthen its impact on the world's most vulnerable
communities. These suggestions deal with (1) the focus of Feed the
Future programming, (2) the funding instruments used by Feed the
Future, and (3) the ability of organizations like CRS to provide input
and advice on the implementation of the Feed the Future Initiative.
THE FOCUS OF FEED THE FUTURE
As indicated in its October 2012 Progress Report, the Feed the
Future Initiative intends to reduce global hunger largely through
increased agriculture-driven economic growth for smallholder farmers
and resilience programs for populations at risk of food crises. These
are laudable goals that CRS fully supports because we also believe the
key to tackling global hunger is to increase food security for the
poorest people in the poorest countries. In Feed the Future countries,
some smallholder farmers need direct assistance to boost agriculture
production and additional skills to connect them to market-driven,
value chain development efforts. However, we are concerned that some
Feed the Future efforts risk placing too little emphasis on smallholder
farmers and other vulnerable groups.
Possibly driven by pressures to show results quickly and
demonstrate the impact of scarce development funds, some Feed the
Future investments appear focused on improving the capacity of existing
commercial agriculture producers, sometimes at the expense of
addressing the needs of smallholder farmers and other vulnerable
populations. Commercial producers often already have access to assets
and credit, and sit at the higher end of value chains to produce
significant quantities for local consumption and export. They already
consistently sell products of reliable quality in attractive packaging,
meeting domestic, regional, and international certification standards.
While CRS supports efforts to build a strong commercial agriculture
sector in the developing world, building the capacity of existing and
relatively successful commercial agricultural producers will not
necessarily improve the lives of the poorest, who are the most food
insecure. Support must be delivered equitably across all segments of
the agricultural sector--big, medium, and small--and opportunities must
be made for smaller producers to work on an equitable basis with the
other parts of the agricultural value chain. Otherwise, the food
produced will have little impact on food security, especially if it is
for export, is not distributed well within a country, or remains too
expensive for the poor to buy. As examples, we have observed Feed the
Future programming that is biased toward medium- and large-scale
producers, instead of smallholder farmers, in Tanzania and Guatemala.
In Tanzania, CRS is a subcontractor to ACDI/VOCA under the
``NAFAKA'' contract. Our work within this project is directly linked to
vulnerable groups, but overall is a very small part of the Feed the
Future programming in Tanzania. The bulk of Feed the Future resources
have gone to agricultural producers targeted by Tanzania's national
agricultural investment plan, the Southern Agricultural Growth Corridor
of Tanzania (SAGCOT). SAGCOT seeks to concentrate public, donor, and
private sector investments in a corridor spanning the country's center,
starting from its western border with Zambia and stretching across to
Dar es Salaam. These regions targeted by SAGCOT already are relatively
better off economically compared to other parts of the country, and
beneficiaries within this corridor are relatively wealthier farmers,
some of whom are already involved in large-scale commercial production.
We have raised concerns with the USAID mission that not enough
attention is being placed on smallholder farmers, the bulk of whom are
in northern areas of the country. The mission has been sympathetic to
these concerns and is beginning to place more emphasis on addressing
the needs of vulnerable groups. However, we feel there continues to be
a bias in favor of wealthier areas and farmers because of a development
approach that assumes that benefits reaped by larger producers will
eventually cascade down to smallholder farmers and vulnerable groups--
which is a problematic assumption. We fear that if the benefits of Feed
the Future continue to be spread unevenly in Tanzania, the results will
ultimately exacerbate rather than alleviate income disparities, thus
contributing to political instability.
In Guatemala, Feed the Future is focused on three main goals: (1)
market-led, value-chain agricultural development, (2) strengthening the
health care sector, and (3) prevention and treatment of undernutrition.
All three Feed the Future components are aligned toward complementary
goals and target the same regions of the country. CRS currently
operates in Guatemala implementing a 6-year Food for Peace development
food assistance program that contributes to these goals by supporting
nutrition interventions for mothers and children under 2, and by
linking farmers at the bottom tier of producers into the Feed the
Future supported value chain programming. But we see that the value
chain, market-led agricultural development efforts have focused mainly
on improving the capacity of the better-off, commercial agricultural
producers in these areas to produce for and connect to national and
international markets. While we ultimately expect to graduate 700 farm
families into the Feed the Future value chain program, there are still
over 20,000 smallholder farmers in these regions that we are not
working with, and who could also benefit if Feed the Future provided
them the necessary support.
Feed the Future must do more to directly address food insecurity of
the poor at the same time it works to strengthen existing commercial
agricultural producers. In particular, Feed the Future can and should
do more to target smallholder farmers who make up lower level
producers. These farmers have little access to credit, own small
parcels of land or work land in a communal fashion, produce primarily
for themselves and for local consumption, and use less mechanization,
less certified seed, and less fertilizer in their agricultural
production. From our perspective, the measure of success in tackling
hunger is whether smallholder farmers are producing more food, are
earning more income, have better access to credit, are able to provide
a healthy diet for themselves and their children, can maintain and
build up productive assets like farm tools and livestock, and whether
they can afford to keep their children in school.
BALANCING OF FUNDING INSTRUMENTS
As a whole of government initiative, Feed the Future brings
together funding from traditional food aid programs, as well as the
Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), the Global Agriculture and Food
Security Program (GAFSP), nutrition funding within the Global Health
Initiative, and other specialized programs, to achieve a common set of
goals. However, Feed the Future's core funding comes out of the
Development Assistance account within USAID and is administered by the
Bureau of Food Security (BFS). As reported in the 2012 Feed the Future
Progress report, this core funding will be a little over $950 million
in FY 2012.
We believe Feed the Future programs have largely been awarded as
contracts,
as opposed to cooperative agreements. We began tracking funding
mechanisms used
by BFS in 2011 using information available on www.usaspending.gov and
www.foreignassistance.gov. Our findings showed that there was about a
2-to-1 ratio, in terms of dollars, going into contracts over
cooperative agreements. We attempted to repeat this analysis for 2012,
however we learned from USAID that not all data concerning Feed the
Future funding is publicly available, thus skewing our results for
2012. Nevertheless, our offices in Feed the Future countries have
reported to us their experiences. From this, we understand that Feed
the Future funding in Zambia and Tanzania has balanced contracts and
cooperative agreements. In contrast, funding in other Feed the Future
countries, like Ghana and Uganda, has been mostly in the form of
contracts.
The distinction between contracts and cooperative agreements is an
important one. When faith-based groups like CRS undertake U.S. funded
foreign assistance projects, the awards are generally in the form of
cooperative agreements. There are a few main reasons behind this:
First, we seek funding based not by the potential profit to
be made via government contracts, but instead by the number of
people we can help to live better, more dignified lives. This
conscious choice is reflected in our accounting systems as well
as our project management structures, which are aligned with
the regulations and requirements of cooperative agreements.
Second, cooperative agreements generally entail a
contribution to the program funding by the implementing
organization--in our case, we are able to leverage substantial
private donor funding to compliment the resources provided by
USAID.
Third, cooperative agreements give both USAID and
implementing organizations more flexibility in the way programs
are designed and implemented. This flexibility allows funding
recipients to contribute their considerable expertise to
program design, to better respond to realities on the ground,
to adjust strategies as conditions change, and to operate in
ways that do not impede on our core principles or violate
tenets of our founding faiths.
Fourth, the award terms and governing regulations of
cooperative agreements allow for meaningful engagement and
mutual ownership of program goals and results by local partner
organizations and host communities, who are primary
stakeholders of capacity-building organizations such as CRS,
and whose empowerment is a prominent goal of USAID FORWARD.
Last, there is a general assumption that contract mechanisms
allow the donor to achieve desired results within a short
period of time and according to precise specifications,
designs, and cost estimates. However, our experience has shown
that the most lasting impacts are achieved through development
interventions that are long-term and painstakingly implemented
through multiyear investments in physical resources as well as
human capital that build the skills and capacity of
beneficiaries and local partners. Fighting poverty is not like
building a bridge or a school, but rather consists of a process
aimed at changing behaviors, power relationships and
distribution of resources, building the capacities of local
organizations and communities for lasting change.
As noted earlier, CRS currently has a Feed the Future subcontract
in Tanzania, and we also are implementing a Feed the Future cooperative
agreement in Zambia and work as a subrecipient to CARE for a
cooperative agreement in Ethiopia. Nevertheless, the heavy reliance on
contracts by Feed the Future has greatly discouraged PVOs from
contributing as implementers of Feed the Future programming. This is
regrettable because these organizations have much to offer Feed the
Future countries. U.S. PVOs have deep experience in implementing highly
successful antihunger programs, and in many cases within the Feed the
Future target countries. PVOs have been working directly in poor
communities on food security programming for years, giving them on the
ground relationships and networks that can be leveraged to further
program goals. PVOs tend to collaborate with each other, both in
program implementation and in after program learning, allowing our
community to identify and perfect models that move very poor people up
the economic ladder. In fact, there is a rich body of demonstrated
success within the PVO community that can easily be scaled up and
incorporated into the larger Feed the Future country-led approach. As
just one example, CRS has recently completed the Global Development
Alliance program ``ACORDAR'' in Nicaragua, where we worked with
smallholder farmers to build their entrepreneurial skills, increase
food production, and help them engage in formal markets, thereby
bringing them to the next level of market-readiness and commercial
farming. Through a balance in funding instruments, Feed the Future
could do more to harness this expertise that PVOs offer.
INPUT IN PROGRAM DESIGN AND COUNTRY DEVELOPMENT PLANS
In addition to contributing to Feed the Future as an implementer,
CRS and other nonprofit organizations have also attempted to share our
experiences and expertise by providing input into Feed the Future
planning and program design.
CRS began engaging with the current administration on food security
when the Obama transition team started conducting outreach sessions. We
have often participated in Feed the Future meetings here in Washington,
DC, with the administration. USAID-Washington, USDA, and the State
Department should be complimented for their outreach efforts and open
door policy. We would also like to voice our appreciation for their
efforts to develop Feed the Future progress indicators across
implementing agencies. This is difficult, but very important work, as
it creates a truly results-based framework and standardizes it across
assistance programs. In the field, CRS has had more varied success
engaging those charged with Feed the Future implementation.
In Zambia, our office has indicated that the USAID mission has been
very good at engaging U.S. PVOs and local NGOs in both Feed the Future
strategy development, and bringing their input into the Comprehensive
Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) discussions regarding
Zambia.\3\
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\3\ Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP)
is an entity of the African Union, and consists of African countries
that have pledged at least 10 percent of their annual budgets to
agricultural investments. CAADP has played a significant role in
facilitating the writing of country development plans used to guide
Feed the Future funding.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
In Tanzania, CRS, and several dozen NGOs and other stakeholders
participated in a feedback session with consultants hired to design and
validate the Feed the Future strategy. It was unclear how the input
provided was used. Participants called attention to the need to include
smallholder and vulnerable farmers in actions specifically designed to
address their needs, and to the complexities of promoting nutritional
and agricultural productivity objectives under one strategy. CRS
subsequently organized a meeting for local NGOs and international PVOs
with the USAID Feed the Future team which was a very helpful
opportunity to learn more about the Feed the Future plan, but by then
the program had been fully designed and most of the grants and
contracts awarded. While the Feed the Future team seemed genuinely
interested in engaging with civil society actors, including vulnerable
groups, it also appeared they were uncertain how to achieve this. No
continuous consultations or mechanisms for obtaining such feedback are
in place, except for biannual partners meetings which do not lend
themselves to open dialogue and discussion since they are generally
formal presentations from the various contractors and grantees as
opposed to discussion opportunities.
In Kenya, we took the initiative to assemble a group of U.S.-based
PVOs and Kenyan NGO partners to engage USAID and the Government of
Kenya on food security. We were united in seeking greater input into
Feed the Future planning and the wider country-led approach. This
effort, however, has not reaped any significant changes that we can
see.
In Ghana, the U.S. Alliance to End Hunger used funding from a
private grant to assemble U.S. PVOs (including CRS) and Ghanaian NGOs
to engage the Government of Ghana and USAID and give input on Feed the
Future implementation. CRS also organized a stakeholder meeting with
several food security focused groups, farmers organizations, and other
local NGOs to review actions on Ghana's country plan. These efforts
have resulted in constructive dialogue, but more dialogue and learning
needs to occur. For instance, while Food for Peace activities are no
longer funded in Ghana, there is a wealth of information from past Food
for Peace programming, that should be gathered and institutionalized
for lessons learned. Such experience can certainly inform and improve
Feed the Future programming in other countries.
In general, our experiences in the field tell us that most Feed the
Future countries do not regularly seek input from either U.S.-based
PVOs who have implemented food security programming for many years, or
from local NGOs that have both a stake in the development of their
country, and something to offer to further this goal. In the instances
where we have organized our communities to provide such information, we
have seen, at best, mixed acceptance of our advice.
We feel that Feed the Future's lack of engagement with PVOs and
local organizations to seek their input represents another missed
opportunity for Feed the Future to meet its goals by building on the
successes of past programs PVOs have implemented. Several Feed the
Future countries either currently receive, or have in the recent past
received, food aid funding directed at assisting smallholder farmers
and other vulnerable populations. As noted above, PVOs have a
tremendous amount of experience implementing these programs, and have
both lessons learned and best practices that can be scaled up to great
effect. We believe, however, the sharing of this information must be
done in a more systematic and regular way.
We recommend that Feed the Future establish a permanent and
effective mechanism for U.S.-based PVOs and local NGOs to communicate
their experience and knowledge to Feed the Future, and that Feed the
Future planners make every effort to adopt, incorporate, and learn from
the information we provide. While we have in mind a mechanism for
ongoing dialogue to achieve this, we also recommend USAID undertake a
mapping exercise of recent food security interventions in Feed the
Future countries. This will help Feed the Future identify what has been
done to date, and could very well lead to the adoption of lessons
learned and best practices that were achieved by past programs.
CONCLUSION
Chairman Cardin, Ranking Member Corker, thank you again for this
opportunity to present testimony before the subcommittee. I hope the
observations and assessments we have provided concerning Feed the
Future prove useful to you as you provide oversight of the initiative.
To summarize the main points we covered:
We support Feed the Future's efforts to develop commercial
agriculture sectors, but believe that additional emphasis must
be placed more on directly helping smallholder farmers and
other vulnerable populations;
Feed the Future should work to better balance the mix of
contracts and cooperative agreements, so that organizations
like CRS, which have experience implementing food security
programs, can better bring their experiences and resources to
Feed the Future efforts; and
Feed the Future must more systematically and regularly
capture input from U.S.-based PVOs and local NGOs, to
effectively utilize these experiences to inform Feed the Future
planning.
As you continue your oversight of U.S. Food Security efforts and of
the Feed the Future Initiative, we hope you will continue to look to
CRS to offer ongoing assessments of USAID programs. Feed the Future is
a welcomed departure from the past as it seeks to address the
complexities of global hunger through a comprehensive approach that
brings all stakeholders into the process. It is our conviction that
U.S.-based PVOs and other civil society stakeholders should and will
play a key role in that process.
Senator Cardin. Thank you very much for your testimony.
Dr. Veillette.
STATEMENT OF DR. CONNIE A. VEILLETTE, INDEPENDENT CONSULTANT,
SENIOR ADVISER, GLOBAL AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT INITIATIVE,
CHICAGO COUNCIL ON GLOBAL AFFAIRS, FAIRFAX STATION, VA
Dr. Veillette. Thank you. Thank you for the opportunity to
testify today and thank you for the attention that the
subcommittee is bringing to this important issue.
I join my colleagues in this panel in arguing for a more
concerted effort in achieving global food security. The Obama
administration deserves much credit for prioritizing this issue
in its Feed the Future initiative and its leadership at G8 and
G20 meetings.
The challenge of achieving food security for the
approximately 870 million people who live with chronic hunger
has thankfully enjoyed bipartisan support, beginning with the
Bush administration's initiative to end hunger in Africa and
increases in development assistance for agriculture that began
in 2008. The Lugar-Casey global food security bill also had
bipartisan support in the Senate.
As we have heard today, the Feed the Future initiative
seeks to increase productivity and incomes among some of the
poorest and least productive populations in Africa, Central
America, and South Asia. While this is necessary, it may not be
sufficient given anticipated global trends. I would like to
identify three trends that will put incredible pressure on
farmers around the world going forward and then comment on how
Feed the Future can help address these trends.
I would also like to alert you that there will be a
forthcoming report from the Chicago Council on Global Affairs
that will discuss these trends in more detail and that will be
made available to the committee in early December.
First, the global population is projected to increase by 28
percent, reaching 9 billion people by 2050. The Food and
Agriculture Organization estimates that cereal production will
need to increase by 60 percent to keep pace with that demand.
Increasing the productivity of the least productive, largely
smallholders in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, is an
important component, but they alone will not be able to feed
the world. All farmers in every part of the world will need to
grow more to meet that demand.
Second, wealthier populations demand a more protein-rich
diet. We anticipate that populations will become more
prosperous in the decades ahead. Because the livestock industry
is a cereal-intense one, this suggests that demand for feed
grains will increase commensurately.
Third, climate change and weather variability will result
in productivity losses in many of the current bread baskets of
the world. Whether one believes climate change is manmade or a
naturally occurring cycle, it still requires adaptation, new
seeds that are drought and heat resistant, more efficient use
of farm inputs and water resources, and techniques that protect
the environment while not contributing further to greenhouse
gas emissions.
These three trends, population growth, changing diets, and
climate change, suggest that the current call for a 60-percent
increase in production may be a best-case scenario. Farmers
will need to produce more on existing cultivated land and do it
more efficiently, something that has been called resilient
intensification.
These challenges are not for the United States to solve
alone, but American farmers and businesses benefit from a more
prosperous global system. To address these challenges, we must
prioritize science and be more supportive of a greater role for
the private sector and increase trade flows. The scope of U.S.
food security programs needs to be widened accordingly.
The United States is no longer the global leader in
agriculture-related science, research, and development, but is
being outpaced by countries such as Brazil, China, and India.
Earlier investments made American farmers some of the most
productive in the world. The benefits of the Green Revolution
allowed productivity to triple even as the world's population
doubled. Research investments made in the United States with
the land grant universities in the lead benefit American
farmers and consumers and also have spillover effects globally.
U.S. assistance to build the capacity of foreign
universities and research facilities has also dropped off,
meaning that U.S. scientists lack partners in developing
countries to tackle such issues as plant disease and pests that
cross national borders with increasing frequency.
The private sector is increasingly investing in developing
countries as they seek new markets and suppliers, but
businesses avoid areas that lack a governance framework that
protects property rights, as we have discussed earlier, and
that allows for rampant corruption.
Local businesses are also less likely to expand or create
new ventures in areas where financing and infrastructure are
lacking. Agriculture can help create vibrant rural economies,
but businesses that support or benefit from agriculture need
some degree of confidence that their investments will produce a
return.
Likewise, trade barriers both globally and regionally need
to be lowered. Cross-border trade is burdened with corrupt or
untrained officials, outdated regulations, or poor
infrastructures in many developing countries.
Additionally, differing standards and approval processes
for the importation of improved seed, for example, mean that
African farmers often are unable to access the inputs that
would make them more productive.
The challenge of feeding 9 billion people has not been a
focal point of Feed the Future. However, its scope will need to
be broadened if we want to prevent more people from falling
into poverty from recurring bouts of price volatility if food
supply is not able to keep pace with growing demand. And while
the administration has recently recognized the role of the
private sector and trade, there is a lot more work that needs
to be done to fully develop and integrate these aspects into a
U.S. food security program.
I appreciate this opportunity to testify. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Veillette follows:]
Prepared Statement of Dr. Connie A. Veillette
Thank you for the opportunity to testify today on global food
security. I would also like to thank the subcommittee for their ongoing
attention to this issue.
I join my colleagues on this panel in arguing for a more concerted
effort in achieving global food security. The Obama administration
deserves much credit for prioritizing this issue in its Feed the Future
initiative and its leadership at G8 and G20 meetings. The challenge of
achieving food security for the approximately 870 million people who
live with chronic hunger has thankfully enjoyed bipartisan support
beginning with the Bush administration's initiative to End Hunger in
Africa and increases in development assistance for agriculture that
began in 2008. The Lugar-Casey Global Food Security bill also had
bipartisan support in the Senate.
As we have heard here today, the Feed the Future initiative seeks
to increase productivity and incomes among some of the poorest and
least productive populations in Africa, Central America, and South
Asia. While this focus is necessary, it may not be sufficient given
anticipated global trends.
I would like to identify three trends that will put incredible
pressure on farmers around the world. Then, I will comment on how Feed
the Future can help to address these trends. A forthcoming report from
the Chicago Council on Global Affairs will elaborate on these trends
and possible solutions, and will be shared with the subcommittee in
early December.
First, the global population is projected to increase by 28
percent, reaching 9 billion people by 2050. While this projection may
seem like a time too distant in the future to have much urgency, the
long lag time in bringing new technologies on line demands that
attention be given now to increasing productivity. For example the Food
and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates that cereal production
will need to increase by 60 percent by 2050 to keep pace with demand.
Especially disconcerting, global annual productivity has stagnated
since the 1980s with some exceptions in China, India and Brazil.
Increasing the productivity of the least productive--largely
smallholders in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia--is an important
first step to reducing poverty and hunger, but these farmers will not
be able to feed the world. All farmers in every part of the world will
need to grow more to meet that demand.
Second, wealthier populations demand a more protein-rich diet, as
has been demonstrated in emerging economies. We anticipate that
populations will become more prosperous in the decades ahead. Because
the livestock industry is a cereal-intense one, demand for feed grain
is likewise expected to increase.
Third, climate change and weather variability will result in
productivity losses in many of the current breadbaskets of the world.
Whether one believes climate change is man-made or a naturally
occurring cycle, it still requires adaptation--new seeds that are
drought and heat resistant, more efficient use of farm inputs and water
resources, and techniques that protect the environment while not
contributing to greenhouse gas emissions. The effects of global warming
are projected to significantly reduce agricultural productivity by as
much as 16 percent by 2080, and by as much as 28 percent in Africa.
These three trends--population growth, changing diets, and climate
change--suggest that current calls for a 60-percent increase in
production may be a best-case scenario.
If we are unable or unwilling to overcome these three challenges,
the world may become politically, economically, and ecologically more
unstable. There is a link between rising food prices, the global
economy, and political unrest. If supply does not keep pace with
demand, high food prices will push millions more into poverty. As food
takes up a larger portion of consumers' budgets, there are less
discretionary funds left for other necessities. Sharp increases in food
prices have added fuel to the fire among populations that may already
be suffering from unrepresentative or unresponsive governments.
From an environmental perspective, agriculture both suffers from,
and contributes to, climate change, producing between 15 and 25 percent
of greenhouse gas emissions. Farmers of all sizes will need to adopt
new approaches and techniques. With limits on the availability of
arable land and continuing pressures on water resources, farmers will
need to produce more on existing cultivated land and do it more
efficiently, something that has been called resilient intensification.
These challenges require that the global agriculture system, one in
which evidence shows is becoming increasingly fragile, must be seen as
one system with interrelated parts rather than as a zero-sum scenario.
These are not problems that the United States can, or should, solve on
its own, but American farmers and businesses would benefit from a more
prosperous global system.
Investing in agriculture has been shown to reduce poverty by
increasing family incomes and revitalizing rural economies in
developing countries. It results in more affordable food for both rural
and urban consumers. Focusing on women farmers has been shown to
improve the health and productivity of their children.
For these investments to be effective, the United States must
prioritize science, research, and development, and be supportive of a
greater role for the private sector and increased trade flows. These
areas are all ones in which the United States has comparative
advantages, but the scope of U.S. food security programs needs to be
widened accordingly.
The United States was once the global leader in science and
agriculture-related research and development, but it is no longer.
Those earlier investments made American farmers some of the most
productive in the world. The benefits of the Green Revolution since the
1960s allowed productivity to triple even as the world's population
doubled. But since the 1980s, investments in the agricultural sciences
have fallen with the United States being overtaken by China, Brazil,
and India. Research investments made in the United States, with the
land grant universities in the lead, benefit American farmers and
consumers, and also have spillover effects globally. There are roles
for both advanced breeding techniques--GM technologies--as well as
traditional breeding for improved seed varieties. Much progress needs
to be made in standardizing evidenced-based approval processes for all
types of scientific advances.
U.S. assistance to build the capacity of foreign universities and
research facilities has also dropped off, meaning that U.S. scientists
lack partners in developing countries to tackle such issues as plant
disease and pests that cross national borders with increasing
frequency. The spread of disease and pests, and issues of food safety
take on greater importance given their rapid transmission around the
world. Increased opportunities for exchanges of students and faculty
between U.S. and foreign educational institutions would greatly aid the
caliber and effectiveness of research efforts.
The private sector is increasingly investing in global agriculture
as businesses seek new markets and suppliers. But, businesses avoid
investments in areas that lack a governance framework that protects
property rights or that allows rampant corruption. The World Bank's
Doing Business index lists just seven African countries above the
median suggesting the necessity of focusing on the factors that will
contribute to business expansion and job creation.
Local businesses are also less likely to expand or create new
ventures in areas where financing and infrastructure are lacking.
Agriculture can help create vibrant rural economies, but businesses
that support or benefit from agricultural investments need some degree
of confidence that their investments will produce a return.
U.S. food security and development strategies should more fully
integrate market analysis to identify barriers to investment. Current
strategies by the Millennium Challenge Corporation and the Partnership
for Growth model, while requiring analysis to identify obstacles to
economic growth, are often lacking the perspective of local and
international business that could be helpful in facilitating greater
private investment.
Likewise, trade barriers--both globally and regionally--need to be
lowered. It is often easier to export to Europe than to a neighboring
African country because cross-border trade is burdened with corrupt or
untrained officials, outdated regulations, or poor infrastructure that
impedes the flow of commodities. The World Bank estimates that just 5
percent of grain or cereal imports to African countries originates from
the continent.
Additionally, differing standards and approval processes for the
importation of improved seed, for example, mean that African farmers
often do not have access to inputs that would make them more
productive. Further, in a world that is more susceptible to weather
variability, commodities need to more easily move from surplus-
producing regions to those suffering shortages. The goal should be to
eliminate the need for food aid except in cases of disaster, but this
requires a strong global trading system.
The challenge of feeding 9 billion people has not been a focal
point of Feed the Future. However, its scope will need to be broadened
if we want to prevent more people from falling into poverty if food
supply does not keep pace with growing demand. And while the
administration has recently recognized the role of the private sector
and trade, there is a lot more work that needs to be done to fully
develop and integrate these aspects into a U.S. food security program.
Feeding a growing world and eliminating hunger are daunting
challenges. During this period of budget austerity, targeted
investments in science, research, and development can be catalytic
drivers that also have domestic benefits. Additionally, supporting
business and facilitating trade can be accomplished through policy
reforms and do not require large budgetary resources.
Senator Cardin. Well, let me thank all three of you.
There seems to be a common theme here that you are all very
supportive of the programs that we have and the resources we
are making available, but each of you believes we could do
things a lot better. And that was, I think, the point of our
questioning in the first round, that there is strong support in
Congress on both sides of the aisle to deal with global food
security. These initiatives, we believe, are extremely
important, but we do believe we can do things better.
Mr. O'Brien, I was particularly impressed by your original
observation that we are listening better but we are not acting.
We hear the different concerns. I am curious as to whether you
believe that also applies to Government listening to the
nongovernmental sector.
Mr. Walsh, you mentioned a very important point in Tanzania
about focusing on perhaps the easier issues and not the more
vulnerable people, which is consistent with the local plan but
may not be in the best interest of the goals of our programs.
So are we running against a traditional bureaucratic
problem of turf or is it more of a political problem of how we
want to make sure that accountability is maintained? Can you
sort of give us your best judgment as to where you think the
major obstacles are to advance the causes that each one of you
have laid out which is more empowerment locally, dealing with
priorities on research, dealing with the more vulnerable
people? Where do you think is the easiest way for us? What are
the areas that we need to work on to be able to achieve those
objectives?
Mr. O'Brien, you may start.
Mr. O'Brien. Thank you, Senator.
Let me come at it this way. Is the Government listening to
the nongovernmental sector? Yes, but the nongovernmental
sector's blessing and curse is that we have a wide diversity of
opinions on what ought to be the right direction of things.
And I think at some level the key challenge for us on Feed
the Future is where is the future of development going to have
to be to tackle the challenges of tomorrow. We believe at Oxfam
that Feed the Future and leaders such as yourself are making
exactly the right call by saying it is not about us anymore. It
is about taking some risks to invest in the local institutions
that are going to drive solutions in the long term.
Of course, we would love to do nothing other than measure
inputs and outputs on a 1-year-to-year basis and make sure we
controlled every single dollar because then we could report
back to the American people on exactly what has happened to
their money. But what we have found from decades of development
is that being that risk averse is not delivering the long-term
food security and array of other solutions we need across the
development spectrum. So we have to take some risks.
The important thing to do is to be very smart about those
risks when you are dealing with corrupt environments where some
actors are going to work well with the dollars you give them
and others are not, and we are going to need very thoughtful
leadership in Congress to say in the end of the day we need to
have exit strategies from these environments. For that to
happen, we need leaders to lead, and they cannot lead if we do
not trust them to lead. So we are going to have to make some
calls in that regard. We cannot protect every dollar the way we
would like to if all we cared about was finding out where it
went.
Senator Cardin. Mr. Walsh.
Mr. Walsh. If I may, I guess I would say there are two
issues at play that explain why the focus on the poor might be
lost in Tanzania and in other countries. I think, on the one
hand, there might an assumption that by boosting food
production, ultimately it is going to benefit the entire
country sort of as a side effect, and that is a problematic
assumption. I think that it is necessary to look beyond the raw
figures of how many tons of maize are harvested. You have to
see who is doing the planting, who is doing the harvesting, and
who is selling it, where is it going. I think that there is a
strong possibility that the food will be exported and that the
vulnerable will be kept out of that altogether. So it is
important to keep the focus on the role that the smallholders
play in the entire production and value chain.
On the other hand, there is a lot of pressure that the
missions are under to show the results in the short term. We
think that the congressional oversight is correct, but they
also, I think, are under pressure to show that the Feed the
Future initiative is paying dividends in the short term. And
that is also something that I think we need to manage and keep
in mind that the benefits do take time to cascade down to all
of the levels of the pyramid, if you will, and by exerting too
much pressure and demanding too many quick results, we again
risk losing focus on the longer term benefits that food
security will ultimately pay but that take time to develop.
Senator Cardin. Dr. Veillette.
Dr. Veillette. Let me say that I think a major impediment
is one that we do not still know the full effects and that is
climate change. We are pretty sure it is happening. I do not
care really the need to identify why, but we need to be able to
adapt to it. What we do not know is what is the full effect
going to be. We anticipate that hot areas are going to get
hotter, that wet areas are going to get wetter, that it is
going to hurt those countries that are most vulnerable right
now to chronic hunger, that crops are going to move north. We
are going to see a change in the pattern of where we grow crops
and when we grow them. Corn farmers in the Midwest are planting
corn a full month earlier than they did even 4 years ago to
avoid the onset of very hot weather.
So because of that, we need to take into account not just
the science of dealing with climate change but also trade.
Going forward, having an open trading system is going to be
more important than ever because we are going to have to move
areas that are producing a surplus in food to those that have
the deficit. And as that system gets more and more gummed up,
we are going to continue to see price volatility and we have
got to be able to smooth that out.
Senator Cardin. Let me just make an observation. I think
the points you raise are very important points. It makes it
easier for us if we have ways of judging the activities and
governance of a country. That is why EITI was an important
initiative dealing with extractive industries. It was not as
strong as a lot of us would like, but it was a unified way that
we could judge progress being made in a country in dealing with
a specific issue that was a large source of funding for corrupt
governments. We in the United States have strengthened that
with Senator Lugar's help with the transparency initiatives
that we have been able to do on the extractive industries
through their stock listings. All of that, I think, helps us
give confidence.
We need the same thing in agriculture. The index we were
talking about earlier as it relates to women is an important
factor so that we can judge progress being made. And when we
have those factors, it takes pressure off the specific program
accountability issues which can interfere with other goals that
you all have mentioned.
Dr. Veillette, I could not agree with you more on
resiliency and adaptation. We absolutely need to deal with
that. We also need to deal with climate change. I think we need
policies that can really help us in dealing with the food
security issues that you have mentioned. I think your comments
are extremely helpful and I thank you very much for your
testimony.
Mr. Lugar.
Senator Lugar. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think the
panel has been terrific in trying to illustrate that we all
start with the humanitarian idea of feeding the world and we
describe the population now and cite 2050 and 9 billion people
and a deficiency of 870 million and so forth presently. But
then it becomes more difficult after our idealism is expressed.
Now, Feed the Future tries to deal with 19 countries, not all
of the countries of the world.
We have some of the problems that have been expressed today
in the United States. We are a very productive nation, but
fortunately through our food stamp program and school lunches
and various other activities, we try to meet the needs of 20
million to 30 million Americans. It is not the lack of food in
the country but the problems of poverty and distribution and
income. These are difficult problems even for ourselves with
whatever transparency we have.
Now, we try to translate this in the Feed the Future
Initiative to 19 countries, set up agreements, some degree of
transparency. But having said that, the facts are that there
are other players. I think, Mr. Walsh, in your testimony you
mention--as well as did you, Mr. O'Brien--the purchase of land,
227 million hectares and so forth, but then even within
specific countries perhaps landowners or corporations or
investors, consolidate and leave the single farmer or the poor
farmer out of the process. If this occurs even in national
scope, which we did not get into with the first panel, but it
is very clear that China, for example, has taken hold of land
either by purchase or rental in African countries, maybe
elsewhere, millions of acres or hectares and is shipping the
food back to China. It is a situation in which that government
has said we have got a big problem, and we do not have enough
land, or we are not producing enough here.
I was surprised that the Chinese were farming in Russia in
border areas with the permission of the Russians, an unusual
predicament strategically in the history of the world. But,
nevertheless, first things first. I guess the payment has been
sufficient to come in there and take it out. That is the same,
as far as the Chinese are concerned, with coal and with other
mineral resources.
So even as we are trying to think about equities, we also
have world politics and countries that have their own
situations.
Now, beyond that and this situation of trying to think
about how the single farmer or the small farmer deals with
this, the facts are that in our country consolidation of land
proceeds, and this enhances productivity. For example, to take
a local situation in Indiana, many young farmers coming out of
Purdue University do not have enough money to buy a great deal
of farmland, but they do need maybe 2,000 acres to farm to make
use of the best machinery that we now have available to
amortize those situations. So they rent from people who are by
and large elderly folks or some not living in the State
anymore. Eventually they make money, and they buy land and so
forth. But it is a situation in which--these are tradeoffs. On
the one hand, the use of the machinery, the planting,
fertilizer, all this type of thing goes much better with the
bigger machinery, but it takes a lot of acreage and bigger
farms and consolidation. Where this leaves the small farmer is
hard to tell.
As we draw criteria for the 19 countries in Feed the
Future, we look at our own situation, and it is one in which I
think Mr. Walsh has stressed the equities of how the poor are
managed right along with the efficiencies of this thing. But
these are extremely difficult tradeoffs getting back to the
overall idea of the population rising, and we need 50 or 60
percent more of this or that.
Then Dr. Veillette, as well as some of us, emphasized the
climate change problem. Now, here my experience as a farmer
this year was that my corn crop was almost wiped out. I was not
unique in Indiana. That was true of several other States
adjoining us and out into the Midwest. We had crop insurance, a
governmental situation in which we bought the maximum amount to
begin with, thank goodness, so that at least there is some
return from that land.
But we are talking about the small farmer facing not only
the formidable problems I have already expressed but climate
change and wipeout and no crop insurance. You really are up
against it because this is not a governmental problem anymore.
It is a global problem, and it is one in which we have really
got to do something about climate change. The international
efforts to do this in any systemic way certainly are lacking.
Now, I pose all of this to you to ask what can we
reasonably anticipate from Feed the Future given this global
set of problems? Is it good government? Well, that is a part of
it. The extension programs, some education. But at the same
time, I am amazed that they are hoping maybe for 20 percent
increases in some of their goals, not 100 percent, and this is
from a pretty low base. That is why I am hoping there is some
realism as to what Feed the Future can do as we have criteria
here in the Congress trying to evaluate them.
Does anyone want to hazard an opinion about any of the
above? We covered a lot of territory.
Mr. O'Brien. Sure. I am sure we all would like to say a
brief word because they were great questions, Senator. Two
brief points from me.
Oxfam has invested in microinsurance programs in the horn
in Africa which are weather indexed. We think they are working.
And we are working with Ethiopian insurance companies because
it has got to make business sense over the long term. But you
have got to have the right regulatory regime for that national
level insured to feel confident that this is a future business
proposition for them that is going to be viable once the aid
money diminishes. And so again, it is about creating that
institutional infrastructure.
On the land question, I would suggest that Feed the Future
would do well to learn lessons from the work that you have led
on the EITI. In the end of the day, if we can get better
regulation of land transactions with more transparency, more
consultation, better governance, and ideas around what kind of
regulatory regime is going to manage it--none of us want to end
investments in land. Farmers want to be able to sell their
land, but we want responsible investments. And some of the work
that you have done, I think, has broken new ground on how this
can work not just for extractive industries but for resources
like land where the end result is--and what we most care
about--these smallholder farmers that are getting removed from
their land get adequately compensated and consulted in the
transactions.
Mr. Walsh. Maybe I can take this opportunity to mention
something that I did not have a chance to cover in my
testimony, and it has to do with climate change. I think that
is absolutely a vital and critical issue that Feed the Future
needs to place far more at the center of its overall strategy
than it currently has because it is such a cross-cutting issue
and because it requires such a comprehensive approach. The good
thing about Feed the Future is that it is integrated and that
it does allow for so many different aspects of food security to
be addressed, whether it is nutrition, whether it is policy,
whether it has to do with the production of new and more
resilient crops.
Climate change, however, is getting sidelined, I believe,
in Tanzania and I think in other Feed the Future countries as
well. Yes, it is cross-cutting. So it is in there. The
assumption seems to be it is in there somewhere, but it is not
really being funded and it is not really being addressed in as
central a way as it needs to be. I am talking about activities
that need to be funded such as soil conservation and
conservation farming which contribute to the resilience of
farmers, as well as possibly mitigation of climate change.
These are activities that are not new. They are not
something that we need to completely invent from scratch. I
think some of the technologies exist now that simply need to be
rolled out more and that small farmers have a very good
opportunity to participate in. But it is not currently an
activity that is stand-alone or a significantly funded activity
in Feed the Future, and I think that needs to be bolstered with
funding as well as in the strategy itself.
Dr. Veillette. I think it would be reasonable for Feed the
Future to put a greater focus on the type of governance issues
that would provide a better environment for businesses to be
able to grow and invest. And I am not just talking about
international or U.S. businesses but those local businesses
that can revitalize rural economies. Part of that is policy
reforms, regulatory modernization, anticorruption issues.
Related to that is the issue about land grabs. Land titling
and land tenure is not very strong in many of these countries.
However, there has been a study done that in countries where
there is strong land titling and land tenure, there have been
the least amount of these large land deals. So obviously that
is a key component to tamping that down.
And then I also would reemphasize that there is a global
governance issue. It is not just the governance of the
countries that we are dealing with, but it is our trade
regimes. It is how we can bring about some better harmonization
and standardization in how we treat food safety issues, how we
treat the approval process for advances in science and
technology.
Senator Lugar. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Senator Cardin. Well, again, let me thank our witnesses.
This will not be the last of our interest in overseeing how
this program is working. It is a major part of our
international development assistance, and it is a major concern
of the U.S. Senate. So this will be a continuing interest and
we will be continuing to follow up and asking your help in
trying to evaluate how we can do a better job on global food
security for many reasons.
Thank you all very much.
Senator Cardin. And with that, the subcommittee will stand
adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 11:57 a.m., the hearing was adjourned.]
----------
Additional Material Submitted for the Record
Prepared Statement of Mercy Corps
Mercy Corps greatly appreciates Chairman Cardin's and Ranking
Member Corker's decision to hold this important hearing focusing on
global food security. Mercy Corps currently works in 44 countries
providing development and humanitarian assistance, and the obstacles
that vulnerable populations face in accessing adequate food are
consistent challenge across most of the places that we work. In places
as diverse as Mali, Yemen, Haiti, Kyrgyzstan, and many others, we work
with communities to improve their productivity, access to nutritious
food, and resilience to shocks. We appreciate the U.S. Government's
renewed commitment to improving agriculture development, which is often
the backbone of economies in the poorest countries in the world. We
would like to take this opportunity to highlight successful agriculture
development programs and encourage Congress and the administration to
take specific steps to solidify important development reforms and
gains.
FEED THE FUTURE SUCCESS: TITLE II NON-EMERGENCY PROGRAMMING
One of the cornerstones of Feed the Future (FtF), and one of the
great success stories of U.S. Government food assistance programs, is
Title II ``non-emergency'' programs, which work to prevent and
alleviate the kinds of food emergencies that require the majority of
Title II food aid. These multiyear programs authorized by the farm bill
and appropriated through agriculture appropriations bills help the poor
become more resistant to shocks, ultimately reducing the need for
emergency food assistance, particularly in areas that see cyclical or
recurring food emergencies such as the Horn of Africa and the Sahel.
Title II non-emergency programs fill the gap between emergency
relief programming and development assistance, and so are a vital step
in helping communities transition from being food insecure to improving
long-term agriculture development and becoming self-sufficient. For
example, Mercy Corps implemented a non-emergency Title II program in
Northern Uganda that supported families displaced by the Lord's
Resistance Army conflict to rebuild their farms and livelihoods upon
their return from displacement camps. This multiyear program provided
the flexibility to support families and help them recover from crisis,
while at the same time helped them to build a strong foundation for
their long-term economic development, reducing the need for families to
be dependent on emergency assistance.
The funding mechanism for Title II non-emergency has been a source
of controversy at times because it shares a funding stream with Title
II emergency funds, and because non-emergency programs rely in part on
``monetizing''--or re-selling--U.S. food commodities to finance program
activities. Mercy Corps believes that increased use of the ``Community
Development Fund'' mechanism within Feed the Future provides an
important way to address both concerns. The administration has already
begun using CDF cash resources, in a limited way, in place of
monetization within some Title II programs. This both give USAID
greater flexibility to scale up emergency response without undercutting
non-emergency resource levels, and reduces reliance on monetization to
fund program activities. This approach should be expanded in coming
years.
LOCAL AND REGIONAL PROCUREMENT
Among the best tools available to the U.S. Government to provide
urgently needed food assistance to respond to crisis is Local and
Regional Procurement (LRP). We strongly support this important type of
programming under Title II and believe it should be robustly funded.
With support from USAID and USDA, Mercy Corps has used LRP approaches
to deliver life-saving food assistance to over 1 million people and
strengthened markets in 11 countries in Africa, Asia, South America,
the Caribbean, and the Middle East through local and regional
procurement programs. The 2008 farm bill increased support for LRP,
authorizing a pilot program to implement and study LRP activities in
both emergency and non-emergency settings.
Rigorous research by GAO and Cornell University show that LRP
delivers food assistance quickly, effectively, and efficiently while
also helping to protect and rebuild resilient market systems.
Researched of the LRP pilot showed savings in both money (50 percent
savings for unprocessed grain and some pulses) and time (an increase of
62 percent in timeliness), adding an important and versatile tool which
can be used to reach people in need. Section 3207 of the Senate farm
bill makes permanent the authority for LRP projects at USDA at an
annual authorized level of $40 million. We encourage Congress to
permanently authorize LRP at the Senate level in the farm bill and for
this subcommittee to examine ways in which this authority can be
expanded.
FEED THE FUTURE-REACHING THE MOST VULNERABLE
We appreciate the U.S. Government's ``Whole of Government
Approach'' to Agriculture and would like to encourage Congress and the
administration to look closely at funding under this initiative to
ensure that it adequately focuses on the needs of those most vulnerable
smallholder farmers, especially women farmers. Recently USAID published
a FtF Progress Report showing the collective progress of the
administration's food security initiatives. We commend this important
first step and recommend Congress and the administration continue to
partner on FtF to improve transparency and accountability through
expanding the FtF Progress Report to show account specific (i.e., DA,
MCC Title II) results that highlight how FtF programs are reaching
intended beneficiaries and in particular, vulnerable populations.
HOW CAN CONGRESS FURTHER ADDRESS GLOBAL FOOD INSECURITY?
Congress can do its part to support the Feed the Future Initiative
by:
Passing a farm bill that reauthorizes Title II non-emergency
assistance, supporting reforms to international food aid that
allows for greater use of cash, especially the use of Local and
Regional Procurement;
Supporting the Senate SFOPS levels for FtF in FY 2013;
Support the Community Development Fund provision in the FY
2013 Senate SFOPS bill that allows for Development Assistance
funds to be used toward the Safebox authorization level; and,
Require a supplemental report to the recent FtF progress
report, which shows results disaggregated by FtF account, and
require account and country specific disaggregated reporting in
any future progress report.
Require appropriate environmental indicators of USAID
agricultural investments to be monitored and reported in any
future FtF progress report.
Chairman Cardin and Ranking Member Corker, thank you again for
holding this important hearing and your continued work and partnering
with the administration, we know that FtF can help address food
insecurity, one of the greatest needs of this century.
______
Response of Acting Special Representative Jonathan Shrier to Question
Submitted by Senator Benjamin L. Cardin
Question. Which agencies and programs of the United Nations,
particularly the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and World Food
Programme (WFP), are critical partners in U.S. efforts to improve food
security? How are Feed the Future and other U.S.-led initiatives
partnering with the U.N. and other international humanitarian
organizations to reduce hunger and poverty?
Answer. The U.S. Government works closely with U.N. agencies as a
member and partner to help advance global food security goals and align
food security activities under the donor principles adopted at the
U.N.'s World Summit on Food Security in Rome in 2009. This alignment is
reflected in the Feed the Future Presidential initiative, which
emphasizes country ownership; fosters strategic coordination among
donors, governments, multilateral organizations and the private sector;
addresses the root causes of hunger and poverty; and through our
diplomatic engagement supports efforts to increase the effectiveness of
U.N. institutions and encourage donor accountability.
As a leading member on the Executive Boards of the World Food
Programme (WFP), the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), and the
international Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), the United
States is helping to shape the priorities, policies, and approaches of
these organizations so they are aligned with donor principles and Feed
the Future's approach.
The U.S. Government also plays a leading role in high-level
negotiations related to food security, including the post-2015
Millennium Development Goals process and the U.N. Committee on World
Food Security. In October 2011, for instance, a U.S. official was
elected as vice chair of the committee, and another U.S. official
served as the international chair of the committee's consultative
process to develop Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance
of Tenure of Land, Fisheries, and Forestry in the Context of National
Food Security that were approved in May 2012. The U.S. Government is
also preparing to participate in the follow-on consultative process
aimed at developing voluntary, nonbinding principles on responsible
agricultural investment and will provide technical assistance to the
country chairing that 2-year process.
The United States has been a strong supporter of the work of the
U.N. High Level Task Force on Global Food Security established by
Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to strengthen coherence among U.N.
agencies in confronting the challenges of global hunger, food
insecurity, and undernutrition. For example, Secretary of State Clinton
launched the 1,000 Days partnership in 2010 to mobilize action by
governments, private sector firms, and civil society organization in
support of the Scaling Up Nutrition movement established by Secretary
General Ban.
The FAO, the World Food Programme (WFP) and the International Fund
for Agricultural Development (IFAD) have vast experience and expertise
to tap. The leaders of these agencies have all expressed support for
the G8 New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition, for example, and
the President of IFAD serves on the leadership group established to
oversee the New Alliance. These agencies have committed to coordinating
and aligning their investments in support of compacts and investment
plans for the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Program
(CAADP). These compacts and plans define evidence-based agricultural
and food security roadmaps for achieving the Millennium Development
Goal of halving poverty and hunger, and provide country-specific
frameworks for all new and ongoing investment in agriculture and food
security. Similar national strategies are also in design or in place in
Asia and Latin America to ensure efficiency and greatest impact at the
country and regional level.
FAO, WFP, and IFAD have also been strong partners in supporting the
work of the Global Agriculture and Food Security Program (GASFP), the
multidonor trust fund housed at the World Bank. These U.N. agencies are
part of the steering committee of the Public Sector Window of GAFSP,
which mobilizes and consolidates grant funding that is additional to
current programs in order to help support strategic country-led and
regional programs that are the result of country and regional
consultations.
More broadly, the FAO has well-developed technical and normative
capabilities, which can assist food insecure countries develop policy
and technical responses to their food security and nutrition gaps. The
United States works with the FAO to harness its scientific and
technical expertise to combat plant and animal pests and pathogens that
impact agricultural productivity and small farmer income. We also work
with FAO to promote ways to link poor farmers to markets through the
provision of improved seeds and inputs, technical expertise, assistance
in meeting international standards, and market information. We are
working with FAO through the G8 and G20 to build in mechanisms to
monitor and respond to volatility in food prices. The G20 has launched
the Agricultural Market Information System (AMIS) and the Rapid
Response Forum, which allow policymakers to track food production data
from around the world and create a forum to share information and
formulate policy responses in the event of global food crises. The
United States, represented by a USDA official, is currently chairing
the G20 AMIS effort, which is housed at the FAO.
The United States is the largest donor to the WFP in the form of
in-kind food aid and cash-based assistance to respond to crises around
the world. The WFP also has experience in market development through
local and regional purchases that can be leveraged by implementers of
similar programs. Work with WFP is not only focused on saving lives but
increasingly also on building household and community resilience to
better withstand future shocks. For example, a unique, trilateral
partnership between PepsiCo, USAID, and the WFP provides a
nutritionally fortified feeding product while helping to build long-
term economic stability for smallholder chickpea farmers in Ethiopia by
involving them directly in PepsiCo's supply chain.
In addition to the U.N. system, the United States has also worked
to advance food security and nutrition objectives through the
international organizations involved in agricultural research, notably
the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR);
the multilateral development institutions, and global and regional
policy platforms such as the G8, the G20, and APEC. All of these
multilateral institutions extend U.S. influence and impact far beyond
what could be accomplished through U.S. efforts alone, making them
critical partners in the fight against hunger and undernutrition.
______
Responses of Tjada McKenna to Questions Submitted
by Senator Benjamin L. Cardin
NUTRITION--INTEGRATION OF FEED THE FUTURE AND GHI
Question. Feed the Future and GHI report that their joint efforts
have led to reductions in the share of underweight and stunted children
in 18 countries.
Please describe the distinct nutrition-related activities by
GHI and Feed the Future and how these efforts are coordinated
at each stage (planning, implementation, monitoring, and
evaluation)?
Answer. Nutrition is the key point of intersection between food
security and health and improving nutrition is a high-level objective
of both the Global Health and the Feed the Future Initiatives. USAID
provides global technical leadership assistance to priority countries
in both initiatives to facilitate the planning, introduction, and
scale-up of high-impact nutrition activities. USAID's nutrition
portfolio is integrated across multiple initiatives and funding
streams. Integrated programing is essential to address the immediate
causes of child undernutrition--food and nutrient intake and health,
and the underlying causes--such as access to food, maternal and child
care practices, water/sanitation, and health services. The high level
of integration makes sense programmatically, but makes reporting more
complex. Feed the Future works with the Global Health Initiative to
ensure that USG nutrition investments have maximum impact on our target
populations. Through both initiatives, we implement nutrition
strategies that are based on country-specific needs and opportunities.
We build the capacity of health systems to screen and treat
undernutrition and use local food products to do so. We leverage
existing community workers--both health workers and agriculture
extension workers--to deliver nutrition education at a local level. We
also empower women in both initiatives by increasing access to new
farming skills, agricultural inputs, health knowledge, and quality
health services as a way of reducing poverty and improving their and
their children's health and well-being.
Investments include expanding the evidence base for nutrition to
guide policy product development, and strengthen nutrition programs;
building capacity to design, implement, and report on food and
nutrition programs and strengthen coordination and integration; and
introducing or expanding comprehensive evidence-based packages of
interventions to prevent and treat undernutrition. These packages of
interventions include social and behavior change communication to
improve nutrition practices, diet diversification, and delivery of
nutrition services including nutrient supplementation and management of
acute malnutrition.
Given the close linkages between agriculture and nutrition, we are
implementing Feed the Future and Global Health activities in a highly
coordinated manner in order to maximize results. A great example is
Nepal, where we are working with Save the Children and several local
partners to improve the nutritional status of women and children under
2 years of age in 25 districts by focusing on health behaviors, dietary
quality, dietary diversity, health services, and coordination. Another
great example is Ghana, where USAID is supporting the integration of
community management of acute malnutrition (CMAM) into the Ghana Health
Service. CMAM is proven to reduce mortality from severe acute
malnutrition to under 5 percent. In addition, it allows 80 percent of
children to be treated in their homes. USAID is also supporting
innovative approaches in local production of ready-to-use foods.
For Feed the Future, we have developed and rolled out a
comprehensive results framework that focuses our efforts across the
global initiative on two top-line results: reducing poverty and
undernutrition. We have a range of activities that feed into this, but
the results framework is a critical innovation to align our programs
and demonstrate how they contribute to our top-line goals. USAID
nutrition reporting for Feed the Future and the Global Health
Initiative use many of the same indicators, such as the prevalence of
underweight children under 5 years of age and the prevalence of wasted
children under 5 years of age, and prevalence of underweight women.
These are collected in the Feed the Future Monitoring System (FTFMS)
for review by both the Global Health Initiative and Feed the Future.
TITLE II NON-EMERGENCY ASSISTANCE PROGRAMMING
Question. Title II nonemergency programs are a unique type of
development program that have had wide ranging successes in the
developing world, including improving livelihoods for smallholders,
mitigating stunting of children and supporting local markets function
more efficiently. What lessons learned is USAID taking from successful
Title II nonemergency programs and incorporating into USAID development
programming?
Answer. Feed the Future coordinates closely with USAID's Office of
Food for Peace (FFP), which manages the programming of Title II
nonemergency resources. In general, Title II nonemergency food aid
programs are community-based programs targeted to very poor or
extremely poor households--``the poorest of the poor.'' Many of these
households depend on agriculture for livelihoods--either from farming
their own land or working on someone else's land. However, despite this
focus on agriculture, these households are often unable to meet their
family's basic food and nonfood needs for 12 months of the year.
Constraints, such as limited land size and labor availability, reliance
on less productive technologies and practices, and poor access to
markets and inputs, make it very difficult for these communities and
households to break out of poverty. Title II nonemergency programs work
at a local level providing a safety net for these extremely vulnerable
households and have a proven success record in many underserved
communities around the world.
Many Feed the Future programs focus on value chains and aim to
address constraints to agricultural productivity both within targeted
geographic areas and, in terms of policy, at a national level. For
example, if a lack of access to fertilizer and improved seed is a
significant constraint to productivity, Feed the Future engages the
host government and other interested partners to identify key
challenges and develop solutions. These could include creating a
regulatory framework to allow for greater private sector participation
in seeds markets or developing a network of agrodealers that can
provide improved seed and fertilizer to farmer groups. Post-harvest
loss is another good example. While Title II nonemergency programs
often work at the household level to reduce post-harvest loss and
improve food safety through better drying and storage technologies,
Feed the Future programming targets the next level up--working with the
private sector and farmer groups to develop regional initiatives, such
as creating a warehouse receipts program capable of serving thousands
of communities so that we can have impact in reducing poverty at a
significant scale.
There is inherent complementarity in these programs--with Title II
nonemergency programs providing assistance to acutely vulnerable
populations and Feed the Future assisting communities at scale to
participate in commercial agriculture in order to escape poverty over
the long term. The USAID Bureau for Food Security, which supports the
implementation of Feed the Future, and the USAID Food for Peace Office
are working to ensure the complementarity of their respective programs.
Feed the Future has learned much from FFP's decades of experience
and has adopted a number of strategies from FFP, including an expanded
focus on the resilience of vulnerable communities to the shocks that
exacerbate food insecurity. For example, in order to combat the recent
crises in the Horn of Africa and the Sahel, Feed the Future programs
include both longer term investments like increasing the commercial
availability of climate-resilient crops and reducing trade and
transport barriers, as well as direct funding for Community Development
Funds (CDFs). CDFs play a catalytic role in bridging humanitarian and
development assistance. CDF investments fund community-based
interventions aimed at increasing the economic and nutritional
resilience of the rural poor and accelerating their participation in
economic growth, while simultaneously freeing up more Title II
resources for emergency needs. The FY 2012 and FY 2013 Feed the Future
requests expand this effort. These programs bridge humanitarian and
development objectives through expanded support for productive rural
safety nets, livelihood diversification, microfinance and savings, and
other programs that reduce vulnerability to short-term production,
income, and market disruptions. As part of the Horn of Africa and Sahel
Joint Planning Cells, Feed the Future will reduce vulnerability to food
insecurity in the Horn of Africa and the Sahel by fully integrating
long-term economic development assistance with short-term emergency
relief and harnessing science and technology to help populations adapt
to increasingly erratic production seasons.
Feed the Future has also learned from FFP that it must focus on the
importance of women and women's nutrition in combating food insecurity.
Feed the Future works to ensure that women have access to increased
incomes to improve family diets; that agriculture delivers more
nutritious food, not just productivity gains; and that we build
preventative approaches to break the cycle of undernutrition that
contributes to poverty.
In addition, some of the indicators of success we monitor include
the prevalence of underweight women and the recently launched Women's
Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI) to measure changes in women's
empowerment in the agriculture sector. The index is being used in Feed
the Future focus countries and is being incorporated in all Feed the
Future population-based baseline surveys. Another pilot program
launched in FY 2012 was the Evidence and Data for Gender Equality (U.N.
EDGE) Initiative, a new partnership between the U.S. Government and the
U.N. that seeks to accelerate existing efforts to generate comparable
gender indicators on health, education, employment, entrepreneurship,
and asset ownership.
Finally, Feed the Future has learned from FFP that micronutrients,
not just an overall availability of food, must be a part of food
assistance. A number of Feed
the Future programs fund the research of vitamin-rich crop varieties
that provide needed vitamin A, zinc, and iron. For example, Feed the
Future's Harvest Plus program field-tested vitamin A-rich orange-flesh
sweet potato (OFSP) and iron- and zinc-rich beans in Uganda. In Rwanda,
five new iron-rich bean varieties were released. Children and women are
the main beneficiaries of these new bean varieties, which will provide
up to 30 percent of their daily iron needs.
LEVERAGING U.S. NGOS' COMMITMENT AND EXPERTISE
Question. At the U.N. General Assembly, U.S.-based nongovernmental
organizations (NGOs), led by Interaction, pledged more than $1 billion
of private, nongovernmental funds over the next 3 years to improve food
security and nutrition worldwide.
What are USAID and the State Department doing to partner
with U.S. NGOs to ensure coordination of effort and leveraging
their expertise in international agricultural development?
Answer. We know that sustainable development goals cannot be
achieved by our efforts alone. As President Obama, Secretary Clinton,
USAID Administrator Shah, and other leaders have stated, for our
development efforts to be successful, we must work across sectors and
across borders. The more these efforts are coordinated, the greater
impact they will have.
The $1 billion pledge of private, nongovernmental funds over 3
years reflects the importance that U.S.-based civil society
organizations attach to food security and the crucial role they play in
the effort to end world hunger. U.S. and partner government efforts can
be multiplied by NGOs' contributions and expertise. We will continue to
work with InterAction and their member organizations as they work to
meet this commitment and we will all work to align our efforts behind
shared, country-led objectives.
Our NGO partners have been helpful advocates and conveners,
bringing together governments, the private sector, and other civil
society organizations in unique partnerships to further our collective
progress against global food insecurity and undernutrition. For
example, in 2010, Secretary Clinton and leaders from Ireland, the
United Nations, and many other NGOs launched the 1,000 Days partnership
in 2010 to mobilize governments, civil society, and the private sector
to improve nutrition in the critical 1,000 day window of opportunity
from pregnancy through a child's second birthday.
NGOs serve as implementing partners in many Feed the Future
programs. NGOs also help to advance food security objectives as a
result of their local ties. They are able to reach communities that can
be challenging to access and understand local needs on the ground; this
expertise helps to ensure programs are tailored to specific communities
and can achieve maximum impact. In Senegal, for example, in
collaboration with local partners, Feed the Future is engaging over 350
community nutrition volunteers who teach families to prepare nutritious
meals and practice good hygiene. This program helps farmers improve
agricultural practices in over 80 community demonstration gardens. By
identifying locally grown, nutritious foods, these workers are helping
reduce micronutrient deficiencies in children in over 350 villages.
Valuable feedback from our NGO partners has been a key
consideration in the evolution of Feed the Future including in the
design of approaches and interventions. With this in mind, we have
focused on the importance of gender equality in addition to the need
for expanded opportunities for women and girls; increased our strategic
focus and programming on climate resilient agricultural development;
increased program integration between nutrition and agriculture;
expanded financial inclusion programming (e.g., microcredit),
especially for women and the very poor; and deepened our focus on water
issues though the expansion of small-scale water management
technologies, promotion of water-use efficiency and drought tolerance
of major cereal crops, and support to several of the Consultative Group
on International Agricultural Research centers located around the
world.
In addition, Feed the Future focus country investment plans, which
are country-led multiyear investment plans for food security, were
formed in consultation with civil society. This has helped ensure that
each country investment plan represents a national, comprehensive
strategy for significantly reducing hunger and poverty and improving
food security in a particular country.
We are committed to ongoing engagement with local and international
NGOs as we strive to achieve Feed the Future's key objectives: to
reduce poverty and undernutrition. Feed the Future interagency partners
are developing an action plan to strengthen engagement with NGOs and
civil society organizations. This plan will encourage broad-based
dialogue; foster creation of new partnerships among donors, the private
sector, and partner governments; and promote best practices.
POST HARVEST LOSS
Question. Post-harvest loss and commodity spoilage are significant
challenges in the harsh climates of the developing world.
What efforts are currently underway to mitigate post-harvest
losses by providing materials and technical assistance related
to improved storage?
Are concerns about commodity losses a driver of FTF policy,
and to what extent do the economic impacts of those losses
affect FTF decisions with respect to resource allocation and
budget planning?
Is USAID working with any specific project, or with any NGO
or private sector company that focuses on safe storage
techniques, and if so, what is the nature of the engagement and
are the results proving to be positive in terms of loss
mitigation and improved ability to bring products to market?
Answer. Addressing the challenges posed by post-harvest loss and
spoilage is critical to fighting food insecurity. According to a recent
World Bank/FAO report, ``[t]he value of postharvest grain losses in
sub-Saharan Africa [are estimated] at around $4 billion a year. . . .
This lost food could meet the minimum annual food requirements of at
least 48 million people.'' \1\ Feed the Future programming targets
post-harvest loss in its focus countries in a number of ways, across
agricultural value chains prioritized by the beneficiary governments
and as part of the Feed the Future multiyear strategies.
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\1\ http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTARD/Resources/
MissingFoods10_web.pdf.
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At the household level, Feed the Future programs work on improved
drying and household storage methods to help families avoid losses
post-harvest. This work is coordinated with Food for Peace programs. At
the community level, Feed the Future works on mobilizing private
finance by providing credit guarantees, which support the development
of small and medium agroenterprises that focus on storage, transport,
and food processing. Feed the Future programming also works with the
private sector and farmer groups to develop regional initiatives like
warehouse receipts programs capable of serving thousands of communities
with storage access and confident proof of ownership when they store
their crops.
Under Feed the Future, USAID also works with interagency partners
to address post-harvest loss issues. In Ghana, USAID supports three
MCC-funded post-harvest Agribusiness Centers, benefiting about 3,000
farmers. In Senegal, USAID supports MCC's investment in irrigated
agriculture and roads in the Senegal River Valley and the Southern
Forest Zone by promoting value chains, soil management, access to
credit, post-harvest facilities, capacity training, quality standards,
and marketing in those same areas.
Addressing post-harvest losses was a frequently identified
strategic focus in all of our Feed the Future focus countries'
multiyear strategies and implementation plans. These strategies form
the basis of initial program planning and budget allocation of Feed the
Future funding. Post-harvest loss is also prominently featured in our
focus countries' Country Investment Plan (CIPs), which are country-led
multiyear investment plans for food security efforts formed with input
from the NGO community, other donors, and the private sector.
The Feed the Future research agenda also focuses on mitigating
post-harvest loses. Our efforts to increase legume productivity, for
example, include the development of disease- and stress-tolerant, high-
yielding varieties of protein-rich legumes. They also emphasize
improved market linkages, post-harvest processing, and integration of
legumes into major farming systems to improve household nutrition and
incomes, especially for women.
For example, with our assistance, in Maguiguane, Mozambique, the
Ministry of Agriculture is helping farmers improve post-harvest
packing, storage, and processing of their produce through a new
vegetable processing and distribution center, which benefits 480
farmers. Techniques, models, and knowledge learned from this processing
and distribution center are provided to Mozambique's national
agricultural research institute (IIAM). Meanwhile, the Support Program
for Economic and Enterprise Development (SPEED) program works on policy
changes that promote transportation, port modernization, and electrical
infrastructure.
In another example, Feed the Future is investing in projects
specifically targeted at post-harvest handling and storage issues in
Rwanda. In Rwanda post-harvest losses for beans and maize are currently
estimated to be as high as 30 percent. In FY 2011, Rwanda's Post-
harvest Handling and Storage (PHHS) project, implemented by NGOs Carana
and ACDI/VOCA, leveraged $387,000 in private sector funds to support
the establishment of post-harvest handling and storage centers. Through
the project, a 3,000 ton storage facility will impact more than 10,000
smallholder farmers. During the same period, 59 producer unions, trade/
business associations, and community-based organizations received
direct assistance from the PHHS project. As a result, a majority of
participant farmers reported receiving better prices for their products
due to increases in quality and not one of the more than 22,000 farmers
trained in post-harvest handling practices reported produce rejected by
buyers.
Safe storage and infrastructure issues in many of our focus
countries will remain serious issues for some time to come, but we are
committed to continue working on them as a means to create sustainable
food security, increased health outcomes, and poverty reduction.
PROGRESS REPORT DATA
Question. Although respecting Feed the Future's whole of government
approach, it would be valuable to see the progress of the USAID
Development Assistance funds for Feed the Future separated from other
accounts, such as MCC and title II nonemergency. It would also be
helpful to publish country specific results. This would help make a
better case to Congress and the American taxpayer for funding
allocations, and clarify how each account is being used allowing for
data to be shared so different programs can learn cost saving measures
from each other.
Is disaggregated Feed the Future data publicly available for
the different accounts that contribute to Feed the Future? If
yes, where can it be found?
If there is no disaggregated Feed the Future data publicly
available, would USAID consider publishing a supplemental
report to the progress report showing disaggregated results for
each account?
Once disaggregated by account, would USAID consider
publishing country specific results to see progress in each
Feed the Future country?
While we would appreciate USAID publishing these
supplementals as soon as possible, in the long term, and
consistent with USAID's aid transparency initiative, this data
would ideally be publically available for third parties to
analyze. Will USAID be providing more specific project level
funding and results data to AIData2.0 or the Foreign Assistance
Dashboard?
Answer. The Feed the Future Monitoring System (FTFMS) was created
to compile results from several agencies and includes comprehensive
indicators for Feed the Future that are being used by the five U.S.
Government agencies that are supporting Feed the Future activities. The
U.S. Agency for International Development, U.S. Department of
Agriculture, Millennium Challenge Corporation, the Global Agriculture &
Food Security Program, and the International Fund for Agricultural
Development reported in FY 2011. As a whole of government initiative,
each agency contributes its expertise to support the initiative's
mission; some agencies work on implementation and others collaborate on
policy and technical issues. All aspects of the initiative are vital to
its success; however, much of the data in the FTFMS focuses solely on
the implementation side of the initiative, and does not reflect the
policy or technical contributions. As a result, the information in its
disaggregated form would not reflect the full contribution of all
partner agencies. Feed the Future-wide results do appear in the Feed
the Future Progress Reports.
However, USAID is using this rigorous and specific system to hold
itself and its partners accountable for real impact and results and has
reallocated budgetary resources in line with this evidence. We are
adding U.S. African Development Foundation and more comprehensive Peace
Corps results in FY 2012. FTFMS tracks the 57 FTF indicators, including
the eight Whole-of-Government indicators reported on by at least two
agencies (see chart, Annex 1). The whole-of-government indicators have
been developed or adapted based on consultations with all agency
partners.
While the Feed the Future Progress Report strives to give a picture
of the aggregate of our work, it does not provide country-by-country
results. We are currently in the process of receiving and reviewing the
data for FY 2012 for each country. Once that process is complete and
the information is cleared internally, we will update our Feed the
Future Country Snapshots, which have previously been made available to
interested Members of Congress and their staff. We will forward these
updated snapshots to you as well when they are completed. (Please see
Annex 2 for last year's submission.)
Finally, AIData2.0 and the Foreign Assistance Dashboard are
currently not able to present project-level data for Feed the Future.
We do maintain and update a variety of outlets that help offer more
frequent updates, such as www.feedthefuture.gov, social media
platforms, and a monthly newsletter. In addition, we are currently
funding 20 independent impact evaluations of our work around the world.
Individual missions plan to fund another 15-20 independent impact
evaluations which will be conducted by third parties.
[Editor's note.--Annex 1 could not be duplicated in the printed
hearing but will be maintained in the permanent record of the
committee. It can also be viewed at http://
www.feedthefuture.gov/resource/summary-chart-feed-future-
indicators.
Annex 2 was too voluminous to include in the printed
hearing. It will be maintained in the permanent record of the
committee.]