[House Hearing, 111 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
A CALL TO ACTION ON FOOD SECURITY:
THE ADMINISTRATION'S GLOBAL STRATEGY
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HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON AFRICA AND GLOBAL HEALTH
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED ELEVENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
OCTOBER 29, 2009
__________
Serial No. 111-72
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Foreign Affairs
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.foreignaffairs.house.gov/
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COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS
HOWARD L. BERMAN, California, Chairman
GARY L. ACKERMAN, New York ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida
ENI F.H. FALEOMAVAEGA, American CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey
Samoa DAN BURTON, Indiana
DONALD M. PAYNE, New Jersey ELTON GALLEGLY, California
BRAD SHERMAN, California DANA ROHRABACHER, California
ROBERT WEXLER, Florida DONALD A. MANZULLO, Illinois
ELIOT L. ENGEL, New York EDWARD R. ROYCE, California
BILL DELAHUNT, Massachusetts RON PAUL, Texas
GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York JEFF FLAKE, Arizona
DIANE E. WATSON, California MIKE PENCE, Indiana
RUSS CARNAHAN, Missouri JOE WILSON, South Carolina
ALBIO SIRES, New Jersey JOHN BOOZMAN, Arkansas
GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia J. GRESHAM BARRETT, South Carolina
MICHAEL E. McMAHON, New York CONNIE MACK, Florida
JOHN S. TANNER, Tennessee JEFF FORTENBERRY, Nebraska
GENE GREEN, Texas MICHAEL T. McCAUL, Texas
LYNN WOOLSEY, California TED POE, Texas
SHEILA JACKSON LEE, Texas BOB INGLIS, South Carolina
BARBARA LEE, California GUS BILIRAKIS, Florida
SHELLEY BERKLEY, Nevada
JOSEPH CROWLEY, New York
MIKE ROSS, Arkansas
BRAD MILLER, North Carolina
DAVID SCOTT, Georgia
JIM COSTA, California
KEITH ELLISON, Minnesota
GABRIELLE GIFFORDS, Arizona
RON KLEIN, Florida
Richard J. Kessler, Staff Director
Yleem Poblete, Republican Staff Director
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Subcommittee on Africa and Global Health
DONALD M. PAYNE, New Jersey, Chairman
DIANE E. WATSON, California CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey
BARBARA LEE, California JEFF FLAKE, Arizona
BRAD MILLER, North Carolina JOHN BOOZMAN, Arkansas
GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York JEFF FORTENBERRY, Nebraska
SHEILA JACKSON LEE, Texas
LYNN WOOLSEY, California
Noelle Lusane, Subcommittee Staff Director
Lindsay Gilchrist, Subcommittee Professional Staff MemberAs of
10/26/09 deg.
Sheri Rickert, Republican Professional Staff Member
Antonina King, Staff Associate
C O N T E N T S
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Page
WITNESSES
Thomas Melito, Ph.D., Director, International Affairs and Trade
Team, United States Government Accountability Office........... 6
Helene Gayle, M.D., M.P.H., President and Chief Executive
Officer, CARE.................................................. 27
Julie Howard, Ph.D., Executive Director, Partnership to Cut
Hunger and Poverty in Africa................................... 41
Reverend David Beckmann, President, Bread for the World.......... 54
Mr. Richard Leach, Senior Advisor, Public Policy, Friends of the
World Food Program............................................. 62
LETTERS, STATEMENTS, ETC., SUBMITTED FOR THE HEARING
Thomas Melito, Ph.D.: Prepared statement......................... 8
Helene Gayle, M.D., M.P.H.: Prepared statement................... 30
Julie Howard, Ph.D.: Prepared statement.......................... 45
Reverend David Beckmann: Prepared statement...................... 56
Mr. Richard Leach: Prepared statement............................ 65
APPENDIX
Hearing notice................................................... 90
Hearing minutes.................................................. 91
A CALL TO ACTION ON FOOD SECURITY: THE ADMINISTRATION'S GLOBAL STRATEGY
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THURSDAY, OCTOBER 29, 2009
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on Africa and Global Health,
Committee on Foreign Affairs,
Washington, DC.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 9:35 a.m. in
room 2172, Rayburn House Office Building, the Honorable Donald
M. Payne, (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
Mr. Payne. The meeting of the Subcommittee on Africa and
Global Health will come to order. Let me welcome everyone here
this morning and thank you for joining us on this Subcommittee
on Africa and Global Health for its critically important
hearing entitled, ``A Call to Action on Food Security: The
Administration's Global Strategy.''
A number of people and I am sure you will hear from each of
the witnesses about the growing number and the concern for the
number of people who go hungry each day, the number varies, but
we know that it is high, and our estimates say that it is
shocking that 1 billion people have gone through a food and
economic crisis--going hungry--during the course of the year
over the last few years, and the situation, unfortunately,
contrary to our goals of the Millennium Challenge, is going in
the opposite direction. The number of people affected is
astonishing.
Moreover, the United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon
reports that the proportion of undernourished people has risen
as well. This flies directly into the Millennium Development
Goal. Therefore, there is perhaps nothing more important than
we can be discussing this morning than what the United States
is planning to do to address the food and security of nearly
one-sixth of the world's population.
This hearing is the latest in a series of close to a half-
dozen hearings on food security and food assistance that this
subcommittee has held in the past 2 years. The last such
hearing was held on June 4th of this year, focused on the local
and regional purchases (LRPs) can play in enhancing our aid's
effectiveness.
Today's hearing will discuss the U.S. Global Hunger and
Food Security Initiatives which Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton unveiled at the United Nations General Assembly this
past September. Following Secretary Clinton's announcement, the
State Department released a draft document which outlined the
administration's strategy whose goals are to ``substantially
reduce chronic hunger, raise the incomes of rural poor, and
reduce the number of children suffering from undernutrition.''
This is a welcomed paradigm shift back to strong investments in
agriculture development and this means that there will be our
goal to increase food security and as a critical element of
long-term sustainable development in poor regions of the world,
particularly in Africa, and that is really where we have to
focus. You can feed people forever, but you have to deal with
the root causes of the problem.
I commend President Obama for encouraging these bold steps
and Secretary Clinton who has taken on this as a major priority
of the administration and has assigned her own Chief of Staff
Counsel, Cheryl Mills, to lead up the initiative.
The U.S. Global Hunger and Food Security Initiative builds
upon the commitment made at the G-8 Summit in L'Aquila in Italy
where countries agreed to $20 billion over 3 years toward the
global partnership for agriculture and food security. This
partnership will focus on promoting sustainable agricultural
production, productivity, and rural economic growth.
Last month the G-20 in Pittsburgh reaffirmed these
commitments and called for the establishment of a World Bank
Food Security Trust Fund to finance medium- and long-term
investments in agricultural productivity and market access in
low-income countries. The administration's food security
initiative, therefore, will work in tandem with the global
partnerships, and I think it is important to point out that
both the U.S. and the global initiatives stress that assistance
provided through these programs will be complementary to the
ongoing emergency food assistance. The emphasis on agricultural
production and rural development does come not a minute too
soon. It is something that we really should have been focusing
on in the past; because, according to the Food and Agricultural
Organization of the United Nations it will take a 70 percent
increase in global food production to feed the world's
population by 2060, the world's population is expected to be
1.9 billion due to both population growth and rising income,
9.1 billion, yes. I might have said million, but it is billion
as we all know.
There is also greater recognition, as emphasized
particularly in the administration's strategy, on the role of
women and the importance of empowering them with education,
tools, and assistance they need to make up. As we know, they
are the majority of the small farmers, the small holder
farmers, and they are the engines of development in every
society, and I think that is very clear and that has been a
proven fact for decades.
While the U.S. initiative is welcomed and encouraged, many
of the details are still to be ironed out. Thus, today's
hearing will include an assessment of where the initiative
stands as we speak, what it seeks to achieve, and what
recommendations we might have to further develop it as we
evolve with this policy.
Let me remind us that it comes as no surprise that with the
levels of poverty that exists in the world today that the
number of people who cannot afford to grow or buy the food they
need to live healthy, productive lives have dramatically
increased. According to UNICEF, 25,000 children die every day
due to poverty. This is unconscionable, and it must change.
This is simply wrong. We can and must do more to end poverty.
It is simply a moral imperative.
I sincerely thank the panel of our esteemed witnesses whose
testimony we will hear before us today to share their insights.
Each one of you are experts in your own way, and we would like
to see how we can move forward as we address this very
important issue. Following the remarks from the ranking member
and the other members' comments, I will introduce the witnesses
and we will proceed with their testimony.
Mr. Smith?
Mr. Smith. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and I want to
thank you for calling this very important and timely hearing
designed to examine the administration's recently released
consultation document that proposed a strategy which aids
global food security. According to the U.N. Food and
Agricultural Organization, people are food insecure and they do
not have enough physical, social or economic access to
sufficient safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs
and food preferences for an active and healthy life.
The FAO's 2009 report ``The Food of Insecurity in the
World'' states that the decline in the numbers of chronically
hungry people that was occurring some 20 years ago has been
reversed, largely due to less available official developmental
assistance devoted to agriculture. That unfortunate policy
outcome, combined with the current global food and economic
crisis, has resulted in an estimated 1 billion undernourished
people around the world. The majority of those who lack food
security, an estimated 642 million, live in Asia and the
Pacific. Sub-Sahara Africa also has a large number at 265
million, and has the highest prevalence at one out of every
three persons undernourished.
It is disturbing to note that the developed countries are
not immune from this deficiency. We have around 15 million
people living in our midst who are food insecure. It is
shocking to hear that hungry and undernutrition kills more
people globally than AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis combined.
Hunger and malnutrition are the underlying causes of death of
over 3.5 million children every year, or more than 10,000
children each day.
Poor households in the developing countries currently are
facing a particularly devastating challenge for food security
for two reasons. One is the global nature of the economic
crisis which reduces the availability of coping mechanisms such
as currency evaluations, borrowing or increased use of ODA, or
migrant remittances that would otherwise be available if only a
certain region or regions were impacted. Another is the food
crisis that preceded the economic crisis which had already
placed poor households in a weak position.
Several initiatives have been announced over the past few
months to galvanize international action to address this
crisis. The Global Partnership for Agriculture and Food
Security was announced at the G-8 Summit in Italy, in July, in
which summit leaders and other countries and organizations
established a goal of mobilizing, as you pointed out, $20
billion over the next 3 years, in particular, to promote
sustainable production, productivity and rural economic growth,
and additional countries have since pledged an additional $2
billion to this effort. Unfortunately, there are reports that
about one-half to two-thirds of that commitment is actually
just in aid that has merely been repackaged.
The view of 27 in Pittsburgh, however, in September,
endorsed the initiative embraced by the G-8 and also called for
an establishment of a World Bank Food Security Trust Fund. The
purpose of this fund will be to boost agricultural productivity
and market access in low-income countries by financing medium-
and long-term investments. Later that month, the United Nations
Secretary-General and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton issued
a joint statement in which they agreed to build upon the global
partnerships initiated in Italy.
The Secretary of State also released a consultation
document at the end of September taking the views of numerous
interested parties with respect to our proposed strategy to
address global hunger and food security. I commend the
Secretary for emphasizing the importance of imports from small-
scale farmers and related agricultural producers in the
consultation process.
We are here today to examine this initiative and hear from
the Government Accountability Office and our other very
distinguished witnesses on the panel, and again, I look forward
to hearing your insights as we craft this strategy.
I yield back.
Mr. Payne. Thank you very much, Mr. Smith, and now I would
like to introduce our panelists. First, we have Dr. Thomas
Melito. Dr. Melito is director of International Affairs and
Trade Team at GAO. In this capacity he is primarily responsible
for GAO work involving multilateral organizations and
international finance. Over the last 10 years, Dr. Melito has
been focusing on a wide range of development issues, including
debt relief for poor country's international food security and
human trafficking. As part of the human trafficking portfolio,
Dr. Melito led a review of U.S. Government and international
efforts to monitor and evaluate their international programs
and projects.
Since 2007, Dr. Melito has testified several times to
Congress on the GAO's reviews of U.S. food assistance efforts,
including on weaknesses and in monitoring any valuations.
Dr. Melito holds an M.A. and a Ph.D. in economics from
Columbia University and a B.S. in industrial and labor
relations from Cornell University.
The second witness will be Dr. Helene D. Gayle. Dr. Gale is
president and chief executive officer of CARE USA. She heads
one of the world's premier international humanitarian
organizations. Dr. Gayle spent 20 years with the Centers for
Disease Control, focusing primarily on combatting HIV and AIDS.
She then directed the HIV, TB and reproductive health programs
at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Dr. Gayle is chair of
the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV and AIDS. She has
published numerous scientific articles and has been featured in
media outlets as the person from New York Times, Washington
Post, Glamour, Vogue Magazines--the ladies tell me that is
important--Essence--they also say that too--Financial Times,
National Public Radio and CNN.
Dr. Gayle was born and raised in Buffalo, New York, earned
a B.A. in psychology at Barnard College, and an M.D. from the
University of Pennsylvania, and a M.P.H. from Johns Hopkins
University. It is good to have you with us.
Our next witness is Dr. Julie Howard. Dr. Howard has served
since 2003 as the executive director of the Partnership to Cut
Hunger and Poverty in Africa, an independent nonprofit
coalition dedicated to increasing the level of effectiveness of
U.S. assistance and private investment in Africa. Dr. Howard
holds a Ph.D. in agriculture economics from Michigan State
University, and an M.S. in international agriculture
development from the University of California, Davis, and a
B.A. in international care from George Washington University.
She has carried out research and written on agricultural
technology development and transfer in Zambia, Mozambique,
Ethiopia, Uganda and Somalia. Dr. Howard is co-author with
Michael R. Taylor of ``Investing in African's Future: U.S.
Agricultural Development Assistance for sub-Saharan African,''
2005, and with Alexander Ray Love of ``Now is the Time to Plan
to Cut Hunger and Poverty in Africa,'' 2002. Dr. Howard also
serves as an adjunct assistant professor of development at
Michigan State University.
Now, who is no stranger to us, Reverend David Beckmann. Dr.
Beckmann is one of the foremost U.S. advocates for policies and
programs to reduce poverty in the United States and worldwide.
He has been president of Bread for the World for 15 years,
leading large scale and successful campaigns to strengthen U.S.
political commitments to the hunger and poverty. Before that he
served at the World Bank for 15 years, and Dr. Beckmann was one
of the prime movers to have legislation passed and kept the
U.S. focused on supporting the Millennium Challenge goals in
2000 when there was some wavering as we saw in 2005. As a
matter of fact it was when it was thought that the United
States might move back from its commitment of 2000 to halve
poverty by 2015, and so we really appreciate the work of Bread
for the World.
Dr. Beckmann founded and served as president of the
Alliance to End Hunger, which engages diverse U.S. institutions
to build political support that will end hunger. Dr. Beckmann
is also president of Bread for the World Institute which does
research and education on poverty and development. Dr. Beckmann
is a Lutheran clergyman as well as an economist earning degrees
from Yale, Christ Seminary and the London School of Economics.
He has written many books and articles, including
``Transforming the Politics of Hunger and Grace at the Table:
Ending Hunger in God's World.''
Last but not least, we have Mr. Richard Leach. Mr. Leach
serves as the senior advisor for Public Policy for Friends of
the World Food Program. He established the organization in
1997, and in 2003 and 2004, he directed a global initiative to
address the hunger among children. From 1991 to 1993, Mr. Leach
served as foreign policy staff on the U.S. House Select
Committee on Hunger which did so many great things during the
time, and we really appreciate your work on that very important
committee. He has also served as senior advisor to the World
Health Organization and is a member of the American Bar
Association's task force on reform of the United Nations
Commission on Human Rights.
In 1993, he was appointed by the Clinton administration to
direct a nationwide campaign to increase solid immunization
rates, and later transformed a campaign operation into a branch
of the United States Center for Disease Control and Prevention,
and we know how important immunization is with the epidemic
that we have seen in recent history.
Mr. Leach practiced law for 1986 to 1990. He served as
chairman of the board of directors of the American Lung
Association for the District of Columbia from 2004 to 2006 and
is currently a member of the board of directors of United
Mitochondrial Disease Foundation.
At this time we will start with our first witness, Dr.
Melito.
STATEMENT OF THOMAS MELITO, PH.D., DIRECTOR, INTERNATIONAL
AFFAIRS AND TRADE TEAM, UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY
OFFICE
Mr. Melito. Mr. Chairman and members of the subcommittee. I
am pleased to be here to discuss the extent to which host
governments and donors, including the United States, are
working to improve global food security. This problem is
especially severe in sub-Saharan Africa with one out of every
three people considered undernourished. Worldwide the number of
undernourished people has been growing and now exceeds 1
billion. As the largest international donor, contributing over
half of food aid to supplies to alleviate hunger and support
development, the United States plays an important role in
responding to emergencies and ensuring global food security.
Global targets were set at the 1996 World Food Conference
when the United States and more than 180 nations pledged to
halve the total number of undernourished people worldwide by
2015. In recent years, GAO has issued a number of reports on
international food assistance issues that made recommendations
to improve U.S. food aid and global food security.
My statement today is based on our May 2008 report and on
recent and ongoing work. I will focus on two topics. First, I
will discuss host government and donor efforts to halve hunger,
especially in sub-Saharan Africa by 2015. Second, I will
discuss the status of U.S. agencies' implementation of GAO's
2008 recommendations to enhance efforts to address global food
insecurity.
Regarding the first objective, we found that host
governments and donors, including the United States, have made
little progress in halving hunger for these three key reasons:
First, host governments in sub-Saharan Africa have not
prioritized food security as a development goal, and as of
2007, only eight countries had fulfilled the 2003 pledge to
direct 10 percent of government spending to agriculture.
However, these data represent an increase of four additional
countries that met the pledge between 2005 and 2007.
Second, donor aid directed toward agricultural was
declining until about 2005.
Third, U.S. efforts to reduce hunger, especially in sub-
Saharan Africa, focused primarily on emergency food aid and had
not addressed the underlying factors that contributed to their
recurrence and severity.
However, to reverse the declining trend in funding, in July
2009, the Group of 8 agreed to a $20 billion 3-year commitment
to increase assistance for global food security. The U.S.'s
share of this commitment is about $3.4 billion. It includes
about $1.4 billion in Fiscal Year 2010, representing more than
double the Fiscal Year 2009 budget request.
Regarding our second objective, in our May 2008 report we
recommended, first, the development of an integrated
government-wide U.S. strategy that defines each agency's
actions with specific timeframes and resource commitments,
enhances collaboration with host governments and other donors,
and improves measures to monitor the progress; and second,
report annually to Congress on the implementation of the first
recommendation.
Consistent with our first recommendation, U.S. agencies are
in the process of developing a government-wide strategy to
achieve global food security with the launching of a food
security initiative. In April 2009, the new administration
created the Interagency Policy Committee. In late September
2009, State issued a consultation document that delineates a
proposed comprehensive approach to food security. Although the
document outlines broad objectives and principles, it has not
yet evolved into an integrated government-wide strategy that we
called for in our 2008 recommendations.
Such a strategy would define each agency's actions and
resource commitments to achieve global food security and to
promote improved collaboration with host government and other
donors, and include measures to monitor and evaluate progress
toward implementing the strategy.
Regarding our second recommendation, USAID officials stated
that they plan to update Congress on progress toward the
implementation of such a strategy as part of the agency's 2008
Initiative to End Hunger in Africa report, which is expected to
be released in the near future.
However, as we concluded in our May 2008 report, this
effort does not comprehensively address the underlying causes
of food insecurity nor does it leverage the full extent of U.S.
assistance across all agencies.
Finally, in response to a request from Chairwoman Rosa
DeLauro, we are currently conducting a review of U.S. efforts
to address global food insecurity. We plan to report on the
nature and scope of U.S. food security programs and the status
of U.S. agencies' ongoing efforts to develop an integrated
government-wide strategy to address persistent food insecurity
by using GAO criteria identified in prior products.
Mr. Chairman, this concludes my statement. I would be
pleased to any questions you or the members of the subcommittee
have. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Melito
follows:]Thomas Melito deg.
Mr. Payne. Thank you very much. Dr. Gayle.
STATEMENT OF HELENE GAYLE, M.D., M.P.H., PRESIDENT AND CHIEF
EXECUTIVE OFFICER, CARE
Dr. Gayle. Thank you, Chairman Payne and Representative
Smith, and members of the subcommittee. I want to thank you for
this opportunity to give brief comments on global hunger and
food security in the administration's food security initiate.
We applaud the initiative of the Obama administration and your
own longstanding leadership on this issue.
I speak today on behalf of CARE, a humanitarian
organization that fights poverty and its causes in nearly 70
countries around the world. As an organization, our very roots
are entwined with this issue since we began our work providing
care packages of food to people devastated by the effects of
World War II. Our over 60 years of global experience convinces
us that we can end extreme hunger and food insecurity around
the world if we put in place the right resources, the right
strategies, and have a sustained commitment to do so.
Last year, global crisis brought much attention to the
issue of world hunger. We need to maintain that focus because
that crisis is more than just last year's spike. And now to
make matters worse, climate change poses an additional threat
to the international community's efforts to reduce chronic
hunger.
CARE strongly supports the principles outlined in the
administration's Food Security Initiative and believes that a
country-led collaborative approach that addresses the
underlying causes of hunger is critical. We also support an
increased focus being placed on agricultural productivity, both
here in Congress and the administration.
That said, while agricultural development is a critical
element of a successful Food Security Initiative, it is not
enough to assume that improved agricultural loan will achieve
food security. A comprehensive initiative to combat global
hunger and assure food security must include flexible food
assistance, a focus on gender, social safety nets, and
nutritional support. Let me just take a few moments to talk
about each of these.
First, flexibility. There is no one-size-fits-all solution.
The effectiveness of both short-term emergency aid and long-
term development programs could be greatly improved if donors
would allow countries and the organizations working with them
to choose the most appropriate cost-effective approach to
responding to any given food security situation.
Practitioners should be free to use imported food aid when
it is most appropriate, free to purchase local food or food
locally or regionally when that would be more appropriate, and
free to use cash transfers, vouchers, cash for work and other
non-food interventions when those are the most appropriate.
Decisions about whether to distribute vouchers, local or
regionally purchase food or food secured in the United States
should be based on two factors: Local market conditions and
local or regional availability of food in sufficient quantities
and quality to meet local needs.
Where markets work well and food is locally available in
sufficient quantity and quality cash transfers or vouchers are
generally the most efficient. When food is locally available
but markets do not function well, direct distribution of local
or regionally purchased food is likely to be the most
appropriate form, and where food is not locally or regionally
available in sufficient quantity and quality shipping food may
be called for.
However, we want to note that shipping food from the United
States to developing countries is slow, expensive, and
unpredictable. The cost of this tied food aid has shown to be
sufficiently higher, in many cases 30-50 percent higher than
alternative non-tied food aid, and can take as much as three
times longer to get food to the people who need it most. The
United States is now spending 20 times as much on food aid in
Africa as it is spending to help African farmers grow their own
food.
We also believe that this means moving away from the
practice of modernization, a practice that our organization is
phasing out of because of this inefficiency and risk to local
agricultural productivity.
Gender has been mentioned by both of you. We believe it is
important to place the special emphasis on investing in girls
and women because it is clear that it the best way to benefit
families and move entire communities out of poverty. However,
women have not been taken into consideration when programs and
policies related o food security are developed. Rural women
produce half the world's food, and in developing countries
between 60 and 80 percent of food crops, yet only one
deg.1 percent of farmland. If we are going to have an impact on
improving food security and agricultural productivity it is
important that women be placed at the heart of those policies
and that we make sure that any food policy and initiatives
toward food insecurity address gender-specific barriers to
accessing education credits and land tenure.
Social safety nets, we are pleased that this is one of the
three key objectives of the administration's comprehensive
approach to increase the impact of humanitarian and food
assistance, and social thinking. We must help countries create
social safety nets that prevent people in the margin from
falling into extreme poverty, and we put in our written
statement many examples of how social protective safety nets
have made a huge difference int deg. making sure that
those who are living on the margins of poverty or who are
already in poverty do not fall further behind because of a lack
of access to important social safety nets and ways of
mitigating the negative impacts of poverty and food insecurity.
If we can help prevent people who experience extreme
poverty fall further and further behind, we can have a greater
impact on moving them toward greater food self-sufficiency.
And finally, let me just touch on the issue of nutrition.
Hunger and malnutrition are the primary risks of global health,
as has been previously stated, in killing more people than
AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis combined. Additionally,
chronically malnourished children are unable to develop their
cognitive capacities adequately, thus reducing their ability to
learn at school and compete later as adults in the marketplace.
We suggest that nutritional impact play a key role in the Food
Security Initiatives and that nutritional assessment is used as
a key indicator of the initiative's effectiveness.
Just in closing, Mr. Chairman, and members of the
committee, you have an opportunity to make an extraordinary
difference throughout the world by taking bold actions to
advance a comprehensive Global Hunger and Food Security
Initiative that takes flexibility, gender equality, social
safety nets, and nutrition into consideration. As Secretary
Clinton said when she unveiled the administration's imitative,
``The question is not whether we can end hunger, it is whether
we will.'' The time to act is now. This hearing is an important
step. We ask this committee to markup global hunger and food
security legislation, the Global Food Security Act, H.R. 3077,
and the Roadmap to End Global Hunger Act, H.R. 2817, and stay
the course toward comprehensive flexible food security policies
focused on those who are most vulnerable with a focus on
inclusion of women. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Gayle
follows:]Helene Gayle deg.
Mr. Payne. Thank you very much. Dr. Howard.
STATEMENT OF JULIE HOWARD, PH.D., EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR,
PARTNERSHIP TO CUT HUNGER AND POVERTY IN AFRICA
Ms. Howard. Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member, thank you for
this hearing, and thank you for this opportunity to testify
about the administration's Food Security Initiative and
recommendations for the strategy going forward. Mr. Chairman, I
will make six key points today. I will focus my remarks on the
impact and recommendations of the food security strategy in
Africa, although I believe there recommendations are more
broadly applicable.
First, the new leadership on global food security from the
administration and Congress is impressive and promises a
significant expansion of funding to catalogue economic
development in Africa and elsewhere. For millennia, agriculture
has provided the foundation for economic well being and growth
worldwide. However, we seemed to forget this over the past few
decades when development assistance for agriculture declined
sharply. In 1979, agriculture assistance was 18 percent of ODA.
This has slipped to 2.5 percent by 2004.
Today, due in large part to the devastating impact of the
recent global food price crisis, agriculture has reemerged as
the key driver status to sustainably reduce poverty and hunger,
and this is especially important in rural Africa where 70
percent of the population lives and works.
The United States began increasing its investments in
African agriculture in 2005. The gain in U.S. assistance
between 2005 and 2008 was due primarily to the launch of the
MCC and the beginning of compact implementation. This is
documented in reports of the partnership earlier this month.
The MCC is in fact our first U.S. experience with assistance
that is driven by priorities set by partner countries. When
partners had the opportunity to choose the kind of economic
development assistance they wanted, they opted for agriculture
and agriculture-related infrastructure programs. That increase
between 2005 and 2008 was from $660 million to $1.1 billion.
That includes all U.S. assistance provided through bilateral
and multilateral channels.
We are expecting further and significant increases as has
already been discussed, the pledge at L'Aquila Summit, the
budgets that President Obama has submitted to Congress, all
very promising, and of course the release of the consultative
security documents.
The leadership on food security, we are pleased to note, is
coming not only from the administration but from Congress. The
Global Food Security Act of 2009, developed by Senators Lugar
and Casey, and in the House by Congresswoman McCollum, calls
for a comprehensive goal of government strategies for tackling
food security with sustainable agricultural development. The
bill would make U.S. aid deg.USAID the lead
implementing agency and also authorize add-on appropriations
that would be $2.5 billion by 2014.
Representative McGovern and Emerson have also introduced
important legislation focusing on the imperative of dealing
with both emergency needs and longer term agricultural
development.
These funding increases are significant and important, but
I think it is helpful to put these increases in context. Even
with projected increase, U.S. agricultural funding for African
nations are a relatively small fraction of U.S. assistance
globally, and continues to lag far behind health funding. Even
with the 2010 increase in agricultural programming for Africa
would be just 1.8 percent of global U.S. ODA and less than 10
percent of the assistance for Africa.
Due largely to the significant and important U.S. funding
in combating AIDS, the health program area received almost 60
percent of the USAID state-managed assistance in 2008, and
would received 67 percent under the 2010 budget increase.
The availability of resources is not the end of the story,
it is simply the beginning, and so our central question must be
this: How can donor resources supply the spark that will feed
the energy of hundreds of African organizations, individuals
and families in solving problems themselves that are now making
them food insecure?
So my second point is that we are very pleased to see a
demand-driven potentially responsive approach play such a
central role in the administration's global hunger and food
security consultation documents. We believe that embracing a
demand-driven approach will enable the U.S. and its bilateral
and multilateral partners to focus and coordinate their
resources and then translate or commitments into actions
sustained by Africans.
It should be clear that this would be a significant
departures from the way in which decisions about foreign aid
are made now. Although recipient countries and organizations
are involved in the process, decision-making about foreign aid
has traditionally been the prerogative of the donors. Donor
countries and organizations act as investors, determining the
total amount of funding, its allocation to specific countries,
the way the funds are managed, the kinds of results, impacts
that are expected, and who implements the program, and despite
consultations this final program is really country owned, and
the U.S. prolonged negotiations takes place each year between
the administration and Congress as well as in Congress to
structure the foreign aid assistance budget and direct its
implementation.
Further, the U.S. Government enters into agreements for
program implementation with NGOs, the colleges and
universities, the private businesses. These organizations align
the financial and staff resources to pursue development goals
that are set in Washington. We have two specific
recommendations.
First, it will be important to elevate this demand-driven
principle by instilling in U.S. law a strong presumption that
recipient countries will appropriately determine the priorities
for achieving food securities and agricultural development on
the ground.
And the second recommendation in this area is that the
demand-drive approach should be expanded to include regional
organizations. The African Union has placed a high priority on
regional organizations and effective regional integration of
markets, trade, and supporting institutions.
My third point, Mr. Chairman, is that funding and
implementation flexibility can be maximized through the
creation of a food security fund in the U.S. As you know,
currently the stove piping of programs, rigid separation of
funding accounts, and complex systems for selecting contract or
grantee organizations to lead implementation greatly
constrained the U.S. Government's ability to respond to country
priorities for changing conditions at the partner country
level.
Alternatively, a single congressionally mandated U.S. food
security fund could cut through this maze. The fund could be
tapped for the unique mix of assistance appropriate for each
nation or region, allowing the U.S. to respond to country
priorities and to changing realities on the ground.
Fourth, Mr. Chairman, U.S. programs ought to place a high
priority on local capacity and institution building, and adopt
a results-oriented learning approach. To deepen the
effectiveness of the demand-driven approach, the U.S. Food
Security Initiative should place more emphasis on using and
strengthening African local capacity and institutions. This
would underscore our long-term commitment to strengthening the
foundation for sustained agricultural development.
Also in implementing the Food Security Initiative, the U.S.
Government should set strong initiatives for contractors and
grantees to contribute to building the capacity of local staff
and institutions in both public and private sectors.
Fifth, while the consultative document is a promising
start, there are many questions about how the initiative will
be implemented in Washington and in the U.S. country regional
offices. U.S. efforts on food security will be complex, multi-
sectorial, and long term. Investing in country-led food
security plans will require acting on a number of fronts
simultaneously.
The diversity of current U.S. Government assistance
approaches is a strength and weakness. It implies potential for
responding with depth and expertise to a number of issues in a
variety of sectors, but it also implies clashing organizational
cultures, competition for resources and influence, and
uncoordinated implementation. Building and sustaining a
Washington team dedicated to food security is critical to
translating this commitment into action efficiently and
effectively.
Many questions remain to be answered. These are critical
for the successful implementation of the Food Security
Initiative. They include, first, at the Washington level, will,
as proposed under the Global Food Security Act, USAID take the
interagency lead in coordinating a whole-of-government approach
and in consultation with international donors? It is obviously
a very serious problem that we still do not have a USAID
administrator at this critical stage.
Second, is the current structure of the centralized
foreign-assistance budgeting system, under State's deputy
secretary, consistent with the decentralized, participatory,
flexible, and innovative approach to food security, or must it
be modified?
Also, how will U.S. food security funding for country- and
region-led investments mesh with other bilateral and
multilateral food security initiatives, such as the initiatives
by the U.N., IFAD, and the World Bank?
Equally important questions remain at the country level.
How will U.S. teams be built at the country and regional
levels? Will the White House and NSA and the State Department
designate USAID to lead, with the Ambassador, U.S. Government
interagency implementation of the Food Security Initiative?
What are the appropriate roles for nonlead agencies in
individual countries and regions, which, nevertheless, have a
significant and important presence? What role should MCC and
USDA play at the country and regional level?
And, finally, Mr. Chair, my final point: Successful
implementation of this country-led Food Security Initiative can
lead the way toward larger foreign assistance reforms. The
demand-driven, Food Security Initiative can be employed to test
and demonstrate the benefits of broader foreign assistance
reforms.
There are three critical areas for replicating this
approach: First, developing new approaches to strategic
planning for country- and regional-level assistance; second,
establishing a collaborative learning environment that engages
host country governments, communities, and other implementing
partners, bilateral and multilateral partners included, as well
as other U.S.-funded organizations; testing the functionality
of new partnership and ownership models as State and USAID move
to lead both the whole-of-government approach to food security,
undertake a broadly consultative process in country and with
regional organizations, and expand outreach to international
donors and multilateral organizations. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Howard
follows:]Julie Howard deg.
Mr. Payne. Thank you very much. Reverend Beckmann?
STATEMENT OF REVEREND DAVID BECKMANN, PRESIDENT, BREAD FOR THE
WORLD
Rev. Beckmann. Chairman Payne, Ranking Member Smith,
members of the committee, I really appreciate your holding this
hearing. I appreciated your opening remarks and am grateful for
the invitation to speak.
Bread for the World is a collective Christian voice that
urges our nation's decision-makers to end hunger in our country
and around the world. We are part of the Road Map to End Hunger
Coalition, and I am co-chair of the Modernizing Foreign
Assistance Network.
We strongly support the administration's Global Hunger and
Food Security Initiative. I am struck that, in our conversation
this morning, there is a lot of agreement between what the two
of you said and what the witnesses have said, and there is a
considerable consensus about what needs to be done to reduce
hunger and food insecurity in the world, and the
administration's consultation draft incorporates a lot of the
things that we have talked about here.
I appreciate that they have actually started to provide
leadership. It is not just about U.S. Government money but
about getting the governments of the world, foundations, civil
society, corporations, to focus together on reducing hunger and
food insecurity mainly by investing in agriculture in poor
countries.
I think the consultation draft is good in many respects. It
is grounded in country consultations, so it would be responsive
to what local people need, and it would get the actors working
together. I think it is right to focus on agriculture, helping
people be productive, but it also is comprehensive and includes
nutrition and other elements that are important to reducing
hunger, and what it says about using the multilaterals also
makes a lot of sense.
I have three suggestions. One is that the consultation
draft says it, but I think it is important that child
undernutrition be the primary indicator of whether this thing
works. So the focus is on agriculture, cut you can have
different kinds of agricultural development, and if we focus on
whether fewer kids are undernourished, that will tend to pull
the whole thing in the direction of the kind of agriculture
that will reduce hunger and also complementary programs of
rural development and nutrition that will reduce hunger.
Undernutrition among children is particularly deadly, and
it is also relatively easy to monitor, so that can be used.
When we are talking about this 3 years from now, we should
judge our success by whether there are fewer undernourished
kids.
Second, I think the initiative should include the
development of organizations that speak for hungry people, so
as we move toward these country consultations, it is especially
important that somebody engage and strengthen organizations--
farmers' organizations, women's organizations, religious
organizations--that include and speak for hungry people so that
they are ready to pull this whole thing down toward
responsiveness to the people we want to reach, and then also,
internationally, the best network we have of those kinds of
organizations is called the International Alliance Against
Hunger, but it is laughably weak, and that kind of
international network of organizations that speak for hungry
people also needs to be strengthened as part of this global
initiative.
Finally, as Dr. Howard said, the administration of this
initiative should be designed in a way that contributes to the
broader reform of foreign assistance and, specifically, the
emergence of a strong, 21st century, U.S. development agency.
Chairman Berman and members of this committee have played a
leadership role in getting a process of reform in our foreign
assistance started. All of us know that our foreign aid
programs could be more effective. What has happened is a
scattering of foreign aid programs across the government, a
complexity of objectives, lots of earmarks. As a result, as Dr.
Howard said, we are not very responsive to local situations and
local ideas. So everybody knows we ought to make it better,
especially if we are going to put more money into it.
Now, the Senate, the White House, the State Department are
all working on foreign aid reform, as is the Foreign Affairs
Committee. So we cannot wait to work on the global hunger
problem until that process is done, but the Global Hunger
Initiative should be administered in a way that contributes to
more effective U.S. foreign assistance generally.
I hope that the Foreign Affairs Committee will proceed with
its work to make our foreign aid program more effective, and I
would plead that making foreign aid more effective, this ought
to be something on which Republicans and Democrats can work
together. It will be a better outcome, it will be a more
durable outcome, if the two parties can work together on this,
making our aid programs more effective.
Then, as the administration proceeds to implement this
Global Hunger Initiative, it seems to me that the vision of
where we want to go with foreign assistance reform suggests a
strong role for USAID. So the Secretary needs to appoint an
administrator of USAID, and, in USAID, I think that is where
the coordination function should be, to work with the rest of
government on this initiative.
The Secretary should continue to speak out and put wind
behind the sails of this initiative, but if she does that, and
if we build up a capacity for this initiative within USAID,
then we are moving toward a 21st century, capable, transparent,
transformed agency that can work on agriculture, nutrition, and
a range of issues that are important to hungry people around
the world and to our own country.
So I think what the administration has started is really
good. I think we ought to keep our eyes on what is happening to
undernourished kids. That is how we should judge our success.
We should strengthen organizations around the world that speak
up for hungry people, and the administration of this initiative
should be set up in a way that contributes to a strong U.S.
development agency.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Beckmann
follows:]David Beckmann deg.
Mr. Payne. Thank you. Mr. Leach?
STATEMENT OF MR. RICHARD LEACH, SENIOR ADVISOR, PUBLIC POLICY,
FRIENDS OF THE WORLD FOOD PROGRAM
Mr. Leach. Mr. Chairman, I thank you very much for your
continuing commitment to addressing hunger and Ranking Member
Smith by traveling the world, looking at some of the problems,
holding these hearings. It has been critically important.
I was thinking, coming up here today, that we meet today
with great concern and great optimism, concern for all of the
reasons that you have mentioned: The increasing number of
people suffering from hunger around the world.
For the first time in many decades, we are actually not
moving forward in terms of decreasing the percent of the
overall population that is being removed from the ranks of the
hungry. But, you know, in so many of the hearings, so many of
the discussions, so many of the speeches in years past about
the issue of hunger, there has been discussion about what we
know. We know how to address this problem, and it has been said
that the only issue is political will, and I do think that now
we actually have the political will to address this problem and
address it comprehensively, and, for that, I think we have a
lot of optimism.
From the President's statements and his inaugural address
to Secretary Clinton's convening of this interagency group that
is truly moving the issue forward, I think it is a new day for
all of us in the effort to address global hunger.
I want to just focus my comments on the comprehensive
approach. There has been a number of organizations--Dr.
Beckmann mentioned the Roadmap Coalition that we are a member
of and really salute the incredible NGO community that has come
together in this effort over the last 12 months.
The comprehensive approach highlighted in the
administration's recent document seems to be consistent with
the elements of the Roadmap work, also consistent with the
Global Food Security Act, and the Roadmap legislation, and all
of these focus on four key pillars that are critical, we think,
to addressing this problem comprehensively, and that includes
emergency response, safety nets, nutrition, and agriculture
development. All address a different element of the problem,
and all, we believe, are critical if we are going to address
this comprehensively.
As you know, the emergency response efforts save lives.
They are to help people who are facing a crisis, whether it be
from national disaster or civil conflict. Based on current
trends, we, unfortunately, expect the number of people who will
need emergency assistance to remain at about 100 million people
per year.
The United States Government has consistently, over the
decades, played the leadership role in addressing those
afflicted by these emergency situations, and we are confident
and hopeful that will continue.
We fully support all of the recommendations that have
focused on increasing flexibility and enhancing the
effectiveness of our emergency response, which includes both
commodity and cash resources. We have some ideas about ways to
make maybe some creative approaches there as well, in terms of
our food aid program, that perhaps we can entertain.
The second is the safety net programs, as was mentioned.
These help mitigate the impacts of societal shocks on those on
the margin. In many respects, it is to help those on the edge
not fall over the edge, and it is critical that we help
countries create their own safety net systems, not merely
provide temporary assistance when the crisis occurs but help
countries create their own systems similar to our own food
stamp programs.
Third are the nutrition programs that were also mentioned,
which are critically important, especially for vulnerable
populations like pregnant, lactating women; children between
zero and five but especially zero to two, where if they do not
have the proper nutrition, they will not develop, either
cognitively or physically, in the degree that they should.
Similarly, there are other populations, like those who are
afflicted by AIDS, who need proper nutrition to be able to, in
essence, take the antiretrovirals.
The fourth category, as has been mentioned, is the
agriculture development. Such a large percent of the population
of the world, those who suffer from poverty, are involved in
agriculture. This will help ensure that we can raise the level
of the economics of that population.
In summary, a comprehensive strategy that combines
emergency assistance to help those who require immediate
assistance, safety net programs to ensure those on the edge do
not fall over the edge, nutrition programs to ensure that
specific vulnerable populations have the opportunity to grow
and develop properly, and the agricultural development efforts
to develop long-term means to break the cycle of poverty are
all critical to address the full spectrum of food insecurity,
both acute, chronic, urban, and rural.
Hunger takes many forms. By integrating each of these
categories, we will ensure that the initiative reaches all of
those in need. We are concerned that without taking action on
all four pillars that we will not comprehensively address this
problem.
I also want to just add my comments in support for what has
been said about the critical importance of integrating gender
into this strategy and also Dave Beckmann's comments about the
importance of having nutritional indicators and other very
clear, transparent indicators where we can assess progress and
make revisions, if necessary.
One comment about the United States Congress, and that is,
as you all know, the jurisdiction for the issue of hunger falls
within the jurisdiction of a lot of different committees, both
authorizing and appropriations committees. So any of your
efforts to determine how best to coordinate among all of these
committees could help ensure the effectiveness and success of
this initiative.
As we move from the planning to implementation phase, there
are going to be a lot of critical issues for us all to grapple
with, and with what we have seen from this administration in
terms of their commitment, I feel very confident that we will,
in fact, successfully address these issues.
In closing, I just wanted to mention something that
everyone in this room knows, and that is, as we talk about the
data and the statistics and the numbers, that they represent
real people, and, walking in here today, I was reminded of a
situation in a particular African country where I saw this
little boy leaning against a tree. He had been placed there by
someone because he was too weak to stand, he was too weak even
to fight the flies from his face, and it reminded me that that
is the face of hunger. That is what we are here to try and
grapple with.
The other side of the coin is I remember going to a school-
feeding program in Malawi where the bright smiles on the faces
of these children, when we got there, they sang to us, and they
asked us to thank the American people for our support, through
the McGovern-Dole program, for that school-feeding program, and
those children are really the hope for tomorrow, and I feel
quite confident, with the focus of this committee, with the
members here, with this administration, that the face of
tomorrow's children will be the children singing in the school-
feeding programs, not the malnourished boy leaning against a
tree. Thank you so much.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Leach
follows:]Richard Leach deg.
Mr. Payne. Let me thank this panel for a very compassionate
and very thorough testimony. I might see whether our member,
Dr. Boozman, whether he would like to make an opening
statement. Okay. We will wait until we have questioning.
You might notice a number of members not present. There is
an unveiling, a ``rollout,'' I guess they are calling it, of
the health bill right now, so I would be interested myself to
see what it is, but let me thank those members who are here.
I just might mention, too, that I do know of the importance
that Secretary Clinton has put on the whole question of this
food security and who, early on in her administration, held a
meeting at her office with Secretary Vilsack from the
Agriculture Department, which I think was probably one of the
first meetings of that nature early in the administration.
So there is certainly a real interest in tying USDA with
the Secretary of State, and I had the privilege also of being
invited to her recent August trip to seven countries that she
took in Africa, and Secretary Vilsack also came to Kenya, where
he, with Secretary Clinton, visited a Kenyan agriculture
research institute and met with Kenyan women farmers and met
with Kenyan scientists, and so I do know that there is a
tremendous amount of interest, and so we are hoping to see this
implementation of the new policy.
Let me ask you, Dr. Melito, since you have been following
this issue for so long, and I appreciate the work that you have
done and your reports; however, as we are all, you know,
concerned about the fact that currently USAID does not have an
administrator, and the position is still vacant, I wonder if,
in your opinion, the USAID has the capacity to carry out the
administration's food security program, or do you think that
that task will be shared throughout different agencies, and the
fact that the post is still open that there, in your opinion,
will be a restructuring of USAID. If you would like to comment.
Mr. Melito. I will begin by the answer, but I am sure my
colleagues will have other things to say.
The USAID has been an active part of the effort to create a
strategy, and that is vital. USAID's expertise in development
and in the area of ag. needs to be part of the discussion.
We, in our meetings with USAID, have been pleased to hear
the importance they are placing on creating the strategy. We
are a little concerned that they have yet to really understand
how they are going to report out on this. Their current
thinking on reporting, we think, is more narrowly based on what
they have been doing and not how it works with the rest of the
government.
We think, as the administration creates a strategy, how
USAID's efforts, USDA's efforts, and MCC's efforts work
together, I think, is going to be a vital part of the success
of the strategy. USAID is the key development agency of the
U.S. Government, and they need to be a key player in this
effort.
Dr. Gayle. I would just add, I think, clearly, it is
important for us to have a strong development agency, and it is
important for us to continue to build the strength of USAID.
There have been efforts already to rebuild the staff within
USAID. They are hiring more people and improving their ability
to undertake their mission. The President, as well as the
Secretary of State, have both said that they want a strong
USAID and one that development, along with diplomacy and
defense, are seen as equal pillars for our overall national
security effort.
So I think there is a real intention to build the strength
of USAID, and, as Reverend Beckmann said, this initiative, done
well, can actually be part of strengthening USAID, and so, with
all of the agreement that we have around how important this
issue of food security is, this can be a really important way
for us to strengthen USAID.
We have also said that this needs to be a whole-of-
government strategy, so it is not that USAID needs to be the
only organization involved. Clearly, the USDA has to take a
part, with the focus on nutrition and child health and maternal
health. HHS and agencies within Health need to be a part of
this.
So this is really an initiative that will need to take a
whole-of-government approach, but USAID, as the lead
development agency, can be key to this, and this can also be
key to helping to reinforce and continue to strengthen and
build USAID.
Ms. Howard. I agree, and I just want to add to that, yes,
all of the agencies--USAID and other agencies--have a very
important role to play in this Food Security Initiative, but I
cannot overestimate enough the importance of having a
coordinator, both in Washington and at the country and regional
levels.
We work quite closely with the African diplomatic community
here, and I often think about one of my colleagues there, who
said to me, ``You know, Julie, it is so difficult here for us
to figure out the U.S. foreign assistance mechanism. There are
multiple agencies,'' and he says, ``On the ground, why am I the
one who has to be the mediator between USAID and MCC? In my
country, they often do not know what the other is doing.''
So I fear that that is the situation that we are faced with
now. If there is not a very strong signal as, you know, this is
the agency that is in charge. I am not belittling, not
demeaning any of the other contributions, but someone has to be
the focal point.
I think Dr. Gayle is correct that USAID's capacity is
increasing, it needs to continue to increase, but I think we
cannot really delay much longer in establishing a firm focal
point.
Rev. Beckmann. I think this problem needs to be fixed with
legislation, so the administration has inherited a fragmented
foreign-assistance structure. At Bread for the World, we helped
create the MCC, we lobbied for PEPFAR, so, you know, we
understand that a lot of people were involved in this, but we
come to a point where, over the last 10 years, we have doubled
development assistance. President Obama wants to double foreign
assistance again, so we are spending more money, and the way we
have done that during the Bush administration was to create an
MCA, to create a PEPFAR.
I got a chance to visit Mozambique recently. USAID, MCA,
and PEPFAR all have offices in Mozambique. My sense, from
talking to staff in those agencies, is they do not have a very
clear idea what each other is doing. They all have their own
administrative procedures, so the ministers of this very poor,
good government have to jump through three sets of hoops, see
three sets of officials, and then there is a scattering, 60
offices altogether, of the U.S. Government foreign aid
programs.
So when I was up in Northern Mozambique, it turned out that
the USDA had a forestry project up in Northern Mozambique.
So the administration is saying, ``We have got urgent
problems. We cannot wait to fix this broader structural problem
before we get started on this Food Security Initiative.'' So we
need a clear guidance, I think, a strong, implementing role for
USAID is part of that, some kind of coordination structure is
part of it, but then it comes back to this subcommittee and the
full committee.
It is Congress that, together with the President, need to
develop a clear, clean set of objectives and structures for our
foreign aid program. It is not just in this area but in other
areas. We are not using the taxpayer dollars as well as we
should. I think we ought to put more dollars into it, but we
really need this committee to work with the Senate and the
President and the Secretary of State to fix foreign aid for
this and for a bunch of other reasons.
Mr. Payne. Yes?
Mr. Leach. Just briefly, two comments. One is, in a
positive sense, the administration, in developing the documents
they presented, have, in fact, brought together all of the key
agencies. So the consultative document that we have all been
looking at was drafted by someone from USDA, USAID, and MCC. So
they are working that process.
The other point is, with regard to in country, I agree,
this could be an opportunity to help enhance collaboration, and
we feel strongly that the U.S. Ambassador in these particular
countries needs to say, ``This is a priority,'' because,
otherwise, the stove piping will not decrease. You have heard
the comments from Jim McGovern, where he says he is out and
sees, you know, the folks from USAID who want to travel with
him to go look at the McGovern-Dole program because they have
never seen it because the USDA administered the program.
So with the U.S. Ambassador making this a priority, as the
Secretary and the President have, we can start to deal with
some of these issues immediately at the country level.
Mr. Payne. Just real quickly before my time expires
totally, there is a consultative process, I understand, that is
going on right now in the administration. I wonder if any of
your private organizations are involved in it, and how have
they been coming along, just quickly, or what is going on?
Rev. Beckmann. All of us have been involved in it. They
have done a great job of reaching out. I think they have also
come over to talk to Members of Congress. They are very clear
about their desire to work with Congress on this, but they have
consulted with all of our organizations. Also, they have
brought in foundations and corporations, and they went to
Africa and talked with African leaders.
They had this big meeting that Secretary Clinton co-chaired
with Secretary General Ban Ki-moon in which 99 governments
talked about what ways that they are going to contribute in
broad alignment to strengthen agriculture and reduce hunger in
poor countries. So that process of consultation; it has been
good in terms of developing a good plan. I think the
consultation draft is very good, partly because they have
listened, but it has also mobilized other governments,
including African governments, governments in developing
countries, other G-8 governments, and it has mobilized civil
society foundations, companies. A number of U.S. agribusiness
companies are much more interested in doing business in poor
countries than they were several years ago.
So I think the administration has done a good job of
bringing them into the discussion and talking about how we can
all--nobody is going to take orders from anybody, but how can
all of those efforts work in broad alignment to reduce hunger
and food insecurity?
Dr. Gayle. If I could add, I would agree that there has
been a very good consultative process up to this point. It is
going to be important that it continues to be a consultative
process all along because while we have a great, broad outline,
it is in the implementation and the details of the
implementation that it is going to continue to be critical to
have all players at the table to make sure that we do what is
in the best interest of a long-term solution to this.
Just also, as Reverend Beckmann mentioned the private
sector, I think it is important that we keep the private
sector, who has a huge role in agricultural productivity in the
countries which we are talking about, also engaged in this
process.
Mr. Payne. Great, and we really appreciate all that you are
contributing--private organizations--and we are looking forward
to Ms. Mills' meeting with members of our committee, where she
will be summing up what has happened up to now, and we look
forward to meeting with her in the near future. Mr. Smith?
Mr. Smith. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Let me thank our very distinguished witnesses for your
testimony but, more importantly, for the work that you do on
behalf of those who are suffering the cruelest poverty of all,
and that is going hungry. You are doing outstanding work, and I
think your insights today helped this committee, and this is a
bipartisan issue. I have worked along with Tony Hall since I
have been in Congress, for 29 years, on hunger issues, and
there has never been any separation between the chairman and I
on these issues.
When I chaired this committee, and we did not have time
limits then either on questions, we always worked, I think,
hand in glove, and I think the chairman should be commended for
his work relative to PEPFAR that he insisted that there be
focus on nutrition. You cannot take your meds, you cannot take
your retrovirals, you cannot get well, relatively speaking, if
you are HIV positive, if you are undernourished or starving.
So this is a very important hearing. It keeps that focus
and keeps the subcommittee pushing hard on the hunger issue.
Let me ask a number of questions. I will lay it out, and
those who would like to answer, please do so.
Let me, first of all, ask, with regards to the actual
amounts of money; Dr. Melito, you spoke about the pledged
amounts. All of us always talk about pledges versus the money
that you actually end up with in hand, whether or not there is
just a reprogramming or a reattribution of funding.
What is really ``new funding''? And you even pointed out
that it is a doubling of last year's budget request, what was
actually appropriated versus what actually gets in, whether or
not you really believe we are seeing a real breakthrough in new
money, not just from the United States but from the other donor
nations.
You also pointed out, Dr. Melito, that 10 countries had net
the goal of 10 percent. My question would be, is that an
accurate barometer, the 10 percent? I know it is hard to come
up with barometers as to what is really needed or not, but 10
percent of one budget is not 10 percent of another, and I would
note that the Comprehensive African Agriculture Development
program said only eight, so have some countries slid in the
meantime? That was in June when they put out those numbers.
On the infrastructure issue, President Kikwete was here
from Tanzania just a few weeks ago, and I had a very fine
meeting with him. He is an outstanding leader. In every meeting
he had here in Washington, and he thanked President Bush for
his work in this country. He also thanked President Obama, but
he talked about the importance of having that local control,
and we have learned that with the states that when it comes to
incubators and innovation and using money very wisely and
prudently, local control is so important. All of you, or some
of you, might want to speak to the very important issue of
local control of those funds so that we are not directing it
from Washington or from U.N. Headquarters or anywhere else.
Also, on the issue of infrastructure, I was in DR Congo a
couple of years ago, and farmers told me that they could grow
all that they could possibly want but cannot get it to market:
Roads and bridges. The Millennium Challenge Account saw a
decrease last year, much of that attributable to the Senate,
but that money is so important. What good is it to grow it if
you cannot get it to the market? Highways here, and the
infrastructure of those highways have made it all important as
to why we have our robust economy here. It is one of the
linchpins.
On microfinance, some of you might want to touch on the
issue of microfinance. I have worked on that my entire
congressional career, as well as wrote two laws on it. I
believe passionately in microfinance, but we need to do more
for the rural farmer and for infrastructure systems. While
microfinance will not build roads and bridges, it can help
create a transportation, a FedEx, or something of that nature,
that can get the food to market on a small scale and then build
it up to a larger scale.
Let me ask you, Reverend Beckmann and others who might want
to answer, faith based; does the strategy adequately include
faith-based groups? I know it is tough to say it because you
are a part of it, and you also derive funding from the Federal
Government, but we need honest assessments. Are the faith-based
organizations being adequately funded, in your view, when it
comes to nutritional and food support, and can we do more?
It seems to me, and I have said this, and the chairman, I
think, and I have agreed on this as well, from PEPFAR to all of
the programs, the churches and the faith system in Africa
provide such added value to getting food to the hungry mouths,
so if you could touch on that.
And, finally, on the issue of security, a different kind of
security, military security, we have an Africa Command, as you
know, that has set up in Africa. We have had hearings on it
here, and we have tried to stay abreast of what they are doing,
and it seems to me that if you have war or the threat of war or
conflict or bandits, it is pretty hard to get food to hungry
people: The role that you think that security, in the
traditional sense, plays in ensuring that hungry people are no
longer hungry.
Mr. Melito. I think I will start. That is an
extraordinarily great list of questions. I think it covers a
lot of the areas that we all care about. I am going to touch on
two of them, and then I will move on.
First, on the budget issue, you raised an issue about a
possible double-counting, how you measure this. On the work
that my team is doing right now for Chairwoman DeLauro, we are
trying to get a handle on the U.S. Government's total budget on
food security, and it is much more difficult than you might
think.
We are working very closely with each of the agencies to
try to create clear definitions of what is an ``expenditure on
food security'' to try to get an understanding of what their
particular missions are. I think that is going to be an
important step in trying to create a baseline to then try to
understand how things have changed over time, and that report
is due early next year.
As far as the CAADP goal, I want to say both a positive and
a negative thing. On the positive side, we put eight countries
in 2007, and it is twice as many as the four countries in 2005.
However, this was a goal for 38 countries, and it is supposed
to be completed by 2008. So we have not gotten the 2008 data
yet, but it seems unlikely that we are going to reach the full
38 countries by 2008.
What is the right number? I do not know. They did commit to
10 percent, and, in a situation where one-third or more of your
population is undernourished, having it be 10 percent of your
expenditures does not seem to be out of hand, and success of
the initiative, as we move forward, is going to require active
participation by the host governments. They need to make sure,
whatever we do is in line with what they think is a priority,
and they need to be active participants, and one way for that
active participation is with their own budgets. Thank you.
Dr. Gayle. Maybe just a couple of comments. I would agree
with your comments on the issue of budget.
On the infrastructure, yes, local control is critically
important, and that is why I think each of us, in different
ways, addressed this issue of flexibility and why it is so
important that there be country-driven plans and that countries
have the flexibility to decide what their priorities are and to
match the different strategies with their own needs and to make
sure that the funds are used in a way that they think make the
biggest difference for the circumstances that they face.
Yet that said, that does not mean that all monies should be
directly transferred to governments because we also want to
make sure that the governments have the capability to be able
to administer and implement programs well. That is why
organizations like ours work with local communities, as well as
working with the governments, to strengthen their ability to be
able to manage programs as effectively as possible.
So it is that partnership, but making sure that the
decision-making really can be a country-led decision-making, so
I think that is critical.
You mentioned the issue of MCC and other sort of
infrastructure, like road infrastructure, and, again, I think,
in different ways, we have all touched on the importance of
making sure that there is coordination on the ground so that
roads are being built in the places that would best support
farmers' ability to get their crops to market.
So I think this issue of better coordination so that MCC
can do what it does well, USAID can do what it does well, USDA
can do what it does well, et cetera, and that we do it in a
coordinated way so that it can really have the comprehensive
pieces that you talked about, but, clearly, this issue of
infrastructure is critical.
Microfinance; our work in providing village savings-led
associations has been critical to the issue of food security,
the ability for people to save, to make loans within
communities, so that they can buy the best seed, so that they
can develop the kinds of agricultural businesses that allow
particularly women, small, holder farmer women, who oftentimes
do not have resources otherwise, microfinance can be a lifeline
to be able to contribute to a comprehensive approach to food
security.
So, yes, we believe that microfinance linked to some of
these activities can be a really important way of being an
engine for building food security and improving agricultural
productivity, and, again, particularly for women.
Finally, you mentioned the issue of overall security. We
know that food insecurity has led to things like riots in
countries, instability, and that if we do not take care of the
issue of food insecurity, it goes hand in hand with instability
and insecurity within countries as well.
That said, in issues of high conflict, the issues of
security are very intertwined, but it is important that we
recognize what the role of security forces is and what the
roles of long-term development and humanitarian assistance are
and that we do not blur those lines in ways that ultimately are
damaging to the efforts of either.
Ms. Howard. Just to take a couple of these questions, on
the 10-percent issue, I think it has been a very important
marker for many African governments. I think it has helped to
focus attention in Africa on the roots of the food security
issue.
I think if you look at the trends over the past several
years, the 10 percent is a barrier. Many countries are close to
that, so I think we definitely are seeing progress, some
setbacks perhaps in the last year because of the food-price
issue, but I think there are a couple of larger questions.
One is, you know, because so many countries are so
dependent on foreign assistance for a large part of their
budgets, their own flexibility in saying, are they going to
spend more on agriculture, also depends on the importance that
donors attach to that, so that is one thing.
The other thing that is a little troubling for us is that
the 10 percent, just like Mr. Melito said, we do not have a
clearly understood definition in our own U.S. Government of
what ``food security investments'' comprise. It is the same in
Africa. We know it is not just the Ministry of Agriculture
budget, but what part of transportation, what part of other
health ministries go into this?
So there is no clear agreed definition, and also, if you
look across the countries that have achieved the marker, I
think some of us do not feel comfortable that the investments
that are being made are necessarily the right ones that are
going to push those countries in the right direction.
So I think we, in the next phase, we really need to think
more clearly about a kind of peer-review mechanism, helping
NEPAT develop so we will have full confidence that not only is
the funding target being met but that the right things are
being invested, and I think that is very important, maybe
thinking about expanding the doing-business-indicator approach.
Just to comment on local control, I absolutely agree with
that. Having transparency, having local groups that are able to
participate in monitoring an evaluation of impact is really
critical to this because, definitely, it is the government, but
it is also the private sector, and it is also NGOs that need to
be involved in that process.
On infrastructure, I also could not agree with you more. In
our report, it shows we would not have had an increase in
agricultural investment over the last 4 years had it not been
for key MCC investments. USAID funding in 2005 to 2008 was just
flat. MCC was what drove it.
I think the next stage in this is looking at, how do we
make critical regional investments in infrastructure? Because
MCC, the way it is set up now, is not able to do that, yet we
know regional integration is critical, developing these
regional markets. How can we aid the investment of those?
Rev. Beckmann. I will focus just on the question that you
specifically addressed to me. I really appreciated your remarks
about hunger as a bipartisan issue. I know that that is shared
by all three of you, and I am deeply grateful for the
bipartisanship of Congress on this issue and what Tony Hall has
done with people like Mr. Smith, Mr. Boozman, Frank Wolf. It
keeps that tradition very much alive, that when it comes to
hungry kids, we can park some other debates at the door.
I just want to clarify that Bread for the World does not
have any money from the U.S. Government. We are an advocacy
organization, and we are financed by our members and the
churches, and because we are an advocacy organization, we
cannot get money from the U.S. Government to lobby the U.S.
Government.
So our focus is on what is good for hungry people. We do
not have any other motive.
I think, certainly, the whole food aid program, from the
very beginning, has given a very strong role to faith-based and
other community organizations, Catholic Relief Services, World
Vision, American Jewish World Service. I may be wrong, but I
think, in fact, the origins of CARE, it was partly people
wanted to establish a secular agency that could be part of that
administration of food assistance.
So from the very beginning, food aid has been a model of
engaging faith-based and other nongovernmental actors, and I
think also, more broadly, in agriculture nutrition assistance,
that U.S.-based, faith-based, and community organizations have
a lot of capacity and should be, and probably will be, part of
this initiative.
As we move forward, I think the place to focus first is,
how do we get programs that interact directly with poor
communities? So your point about more decision-making has to be
shifted to good governments in poor countries but also at the
community level. Those poor communities ought to have more of a
say. I mean, they are the actors.
They are going to do 90 percent of the work in the end, so
the money that is coming in from outside needs to work with
them and support good things that those local communities are
doing, and I think if we focus on how we are going to get some
of this money into programs that will interact with those local
poor communities, that is what is going to drive us, then, to
use CARE and Catholic Relief Services, and then also, in
country, to use the National Council of Churches, the
Conference of Bishops. Every African country has a Conference
of Bishops Office and a National Council of Churches. Most of
them have Islamic Councils. Often, they work together.
If we focus on how to get help in a way that the community
will get it and have a voice in it, those entities will get
involved, and I think we have a chance that the way the Food
Security Initiative of the administration has started, this
plan for country consultations, at least the language about how
they want those to go, give us a chance to involve the
religious community and other civil society actors in the
developing countries in formulating what should the Food
Security Initiative look like in Malawi, and if they are there
as the thing is planned, they will also be there as it is
implemented, and even more important--they are intermediaries--
what is most important is that poor communities, the people who
are doing 90 percent of the work to get out of hunger, that
they are reached and that they have a voice in how they are
reached and what happens in their community. That is the way to
make sure that this thing actually reduces hunger in the world.
Mr. Leach. It is good to be here. I remember, 20 years ago,
on the Select Committee on Hunger, we had the opportunity to
work together, so I really appreciate your continued dedication
to this issue.
Three quick points: One, with regard to the funding, we
have seen increases in the Fiscal Year 2010 budget and expect,
in the Fiscal Year 2011 budget, in emergency response in terms
of the annual appropriation. It will probably be about the same
amount that was provided in prior years if you add in the
emergency supplementals, but the annual appropriation is, in
the Title II budget, $500 million higher than it was in prior
years, and there are additional resources to add flexibility in
the emergency response that was put in the foreign operations.
About $300 million was suggested--I am not sure what the final
number will be--to allow for some cash resources in emergency
response.
Similarly, in the agriculture-development area, there is a
substantial amount of money, upwards of $1 billion, of new
resources, but I am really looking forward to Dr. Melito's work
because we have not been able to figure out where the safety
net of the nutrition money is. I mean, we spent a lot of time,
and we still do not know what is deg.the number is,
and a lot of groups have been doing a lot of work, and we are
still scratching our heads.
Just to add to Dr. Gale's comments about the national
security issue, she shared how the World Food program says that
when people are suffering from severe hunger, they do one of
three things: Either they move, they revolt, or they die. The
fact is that we have seen 30 to 40 countries experiencing
riots.
Dennis Blair, in testimony earlier in the year, said that
the financial crisis was the number one national security
threat to our country because of issues like this.
Just to add to Dr. Beckmann's comments about the local
planning, the local planning, which has been a key point to the
administration's principles, needs to ensure that the folks on
the ground--the NGOs, the multilaterals, the locals--are
involved in the process of mapping out the problems, looking at
what interventions, and coordinating, and that will ensure that
we are achieving some of the goals that you have referenced.
Mr. Payne. Thank you. To the co-chair, Dr. Boozman, who is
co-chair of the Malaria and Neglected Tropical Disease Caucus
and was so helpful getting then-First Lady Mrs. Bush and U.N.
Ambassador for Malaria Ray Chambers as we kicked off the
Malaria Caucus. I would like to ask you for your comments.
Mr. Boozman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and we certainly
appreciate your leadership in that regard.
I think we all agree that what we are doing is not working,
and we definitely need reform. You mentioned, Reverend
Beckmann, about you go into these places, and you see the
different offices and things. I think the reality is, to me,
the reason that we have gotten in that position is where you
have the PEPFAR and the Millennium Challenge Account, in
different areas is because different administrations have felt
those programs were important and have separated them off so
that the money does not get lost in the black hole if you go
the conventional way.
So I do not know. I mean, I am interested in what do we do
because that is the other side of it. When you start combining
things, when you do not have good accountability, it does seem
to be a black hole, and the things that you are trying to
accomplish that you feel like are very important, and certainly
those things were very important, the Millennium Challenge
Account, PEPFAR, and things, in responding to a crisis. So how
do you deal with that? I am just interested in what you guys
think we need to do.
The other thing--you could be thinking about this, too--is
that it seems like, in visiting with others that have been
around for a long time, and some of you all have been around
for a long time, the idea that we have moved, over the
decades--I know I was in Ghana, not being in Africa a lot, and
was in Ghana not too long ago, and they were lamenting the fact
that the seed varieties that they were using there were back at
the turn of the century; very, very primitive, very whatever.
Through the decades, it seems like we have moved from
instead of building up the agricultural program versus just
handing out food. Is that a correct statement?
So let us talk about, again, how do we unfragment? I think
we are fragmented for a reason. Like I say, you throw the money
where it was thrown. It is a black hole; there is no
accountability. How do we change?
Mr. Melito. I guess I will start. You highlighted an
important factor. In the last 10 or 15 years, the U.S.
Government has moved most of its resources into emergency, and
that was in line with a lot of the other donors.
In the mid-eighties, a lot of frustration developed over
the lack of success of the ag.-development efforts that had
been ongoing, bilateral programs by the World Bank and such,
and I think, as you move forward here, there is a lot of
enthusiasm and energy to bring resources back to that sector,
and I think that is vital, but I think it is also vital that we
do not make the same mistake, which was we did not really
devote the resources to monitoring and evaluation in the
eighties. We really did not, you know, put the investment in to
learn what was working and what was not working and then
leverage what is working to improve it.
So the consultation document does emphasize monitoring and
evaluation. That is key. I think that Congress needs to make
sure that it stays in and that the resources are devoted to
monitoring and evaluation.
Dr. Gayle. I think you are also asking more broadly about
our whole kind of foreign assistance industry, if you will, and
the reality that we fragmented it perhaps for a reason.
I think, as several of us have said, this effort, in many
ways, is an effort that can be a harbinger or kind of a cutting
edge for how we can do development better and our foreign
assistance overall in a better way, and I think one of the
things that we have lacked in the past is an overall
comprehensive plan. Where do we want to go with foreign
assistance? If we do not have a blueprint, if you will, some
sort of a comprehensive plan, just like this effort is talking
about, it is hard to hold an agency accountable. It is hard to
know what your impact measurements really are.
So I think, first and foremost, we have to have some sense
of where do we want to go with our foreign assistance? What do
we want to accomplish in development? Have a plan that then all
of the agencies can work off of, and there can be a much
greater and much more coordinated effort. Without that, the
natural tendency will be to say, ``Well, you know, if we are
not sure whether or not we are going to get any results, we
want to make sure this one particular effort works.''
So I think if we have an overall blueprint, some clear
goals laid out, and then measurable impacts to hold us
accountable for achieving those results, I think we really can
have a much more coordinated overall foreign assistance.
So, again, I think this kind of effort shows that there can
be a whole-of-government approach, that it clearly needs to be
coordinate and have a lead, but it is having that overarching
plan in mind and also having the willingness to look at this as
long term. Too often, our efforts have been short term. They
have been doing small projects that do not really have the kind
of impact that we want.
So we have to look at this in a much more comprehensive,
long-term way, recognizing that we have to have a way of
measuring our overall impact and that impact is the goal, not
just doing projects.
You talked about whether or not we have shifted in our
efforts from just giving aid out and giving food out to
actually building capacity, and I think we have, and I think we
need to do that more, but, again, as several of us said earlier
on, this is not a ``one size fits all.''
We still do need emergency aid, and we still will need to
provide food and food substances to people in emergency
situations, so we have to remember that that is going to be
important in some situations, all the while we are looking at
how do you build productivity, food security, and have a much
more long-term strategy. So we need both, but we definitely
want to make sure we are building the kind of capacity so that,
ultimately, communities and populations can feed themselves and
be sufficient in food and agricultural productivity.
Ms. Howard. I think we are at the beginning of this
changeover. I think, really, for the past two decades, we have
been focused more and more on emergency assistance. We are just
beginning to get back, creep back, into agriculture.
On the fragmentation-and-why issue, I think that is an
excellent point, and I agree with the previous comments about
tying that directly to monitoring and evaluation, but I think
we have some really important lessons from MCC in this regard
because I think MCC has really been kind of a model of both
consultation and what it means to put a plan together that has
very specific benchmarks, indicators, and what is expected at
the end of the day.
So I think really looking closely at that model as we go
forward with the Food Security Initiative that there will be
some added twists, or I hope there will be some added twists,
and that will be, how do we track not just the MCC impact or
USAID impact but the total impact of all U.S. Government
agencies, and then also relate that to other entities--
multilaterals, bilaterals--that are contributing to that.
I think that is what we really need. That is a tough
evaluation question to track, but I think that is where we are
all at right now. We need that kind of specificity.
Mr. Boozman. Thank you.
Rev. Beckmann. Thank you for the question. I also just want
to say, I think you have played a role with Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart
is in your district, I think, and Wal-Mart is doing a lot of
funding now on domestic hunger and in other ways, in their own
work force, they are addressing issues of poverty and hunger in
a way they did not do maybe 10 years ago.
So Mr. Smith mentioned hunger in America, and what you have
done with Wal-Mart, based in your own district, I think is
really important actually to reducing hunger in America, so I
want to start by thanking you for that.
On the broad question of how to get reform in foreign
assistance, I think what we need is, in a way that has not
happened for decades, for Congress and the President to agree,
first, what are we trying to do with foreign aid? We have now
got something like 30 goals, so there needs to be a grand
bargain in which Congress and the President agree on what are
the goals, and then what are the administrative arrangements to
achieve those goals because that has not been reauthorized? We
are still dealing with the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961.
So because there has not been a reauthorization, the way we
have set up, we keep adding things and earmark an agency, but
if Congress and the President could agree on the basic goals,
then there could also be an agreement on the administrative
arrangements and an accountability system so that Congress
knows it is not a black hole. You are giving authority to
somebody, and you want to know what the results are in terms of
the agreed goals.
Then also, if we would do that, we could make our
assistance program more responsive to local governments and
local people because they are really in a much better position
than anybody in Washington to know whether the thing is
working. If our assistance is responsive, then they are going
to be saying--they can see on the ground if the money is
working. So, broadly, that is the big hope.
Now, to get to that, I think doing something in the full
committee--there is H.R. 2139--some kind of amended form of
that maybe that would be acceptable to the minority. It is a
pretty unobjectionable bill. It would strengthen
accountability. That is the main new thing in it.
On the Senate side, on the 19th, the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee is marking up N.S. 1524, which is a
counterpart bill.
So I think it would really help this process of getting to
the grand bargain if those two bills were conferenced and maybe
passed so that Congress is saying to the President and the
Secretary of State, ``You are laying down some markers in terms
of strengthening USAID, better accountability,'' and then,
beyond that, then there is the process of reauthorizing the
Foreign Assistance Act, and I do not think that has got to be
done.
Now, in the meantime, the world cannot wait. There are a
lot of hungry people, and the Secretary and the President are
right that they have got to go ahead and deal with the problems
we face now with the laws we have got now.
Mr. Payne. Thank you, Reverend Beckmann and Mr. Leach, we
have a vote, and I do want to ask our Congresswoman Watson if
she would like to ask some questions. If you would yield, Dr.
Boozman.
Ms. Watson. Let me just make a statement, and then I will
leave to go to the floor.
Mr. Chairman, I want to thank you so much for this
hearing--it is so timely--on global food security. Yesterday,
one of our most noted senators was given the Congressional Gold
Medal, Ed Brooke, and the first thing he said is that,
together, we can change the world, and he pointed at all of the
leadership sitting behind him, and he said, ``If we are going
to change the world attitudes toward the United States, we must
address the famine, the starvation, and the needs of people who
call themselves our opposition.''
So I cannot think of a more timely subject to be dealing
with because we are facing a new worldwide food security
crisis. He understood that. He was 90 years' deg. old.
The changes in weather have caused droughts and hurricanes. I
come from California. I can tell you about a drought.
I can tell you about the fire that burned for 3 weeks
several weeks ago. I can tell you that where I am, in Southern
California, we are desert. The northern part of the State has
6,000 miles of delta. They have got the water; we do not, and
we suffer every day because of it, and hurricanes that resulted
in an increase in the number of the world's hungry.
The global economy crisis and soaring food prices have
concurrently reduced the ability of people to purchase a
minimum food supply. Because of these combined factors, hunger
is on the rise. In the last decade, and I am speaking to the
choir, I know, since the declaration of the Millennium
Development Goals, the number of food-insecure, hungry people
has increased.
We have not progressed toward the goal of cutting in half
the 2000 level of hungry people by 2015. Over 700 million
people globally are undernourished. A child dies every 6
seconds due to malnutrition-related causes. The U.S., along
with other nations, has made efforts to restore the human right
to nourishment, yet we are woefully falling short, and I
believe that those of you who have made constructive
suggestions, you understand this: How do we get there?
We want the world to know that we know the conditions they
are living in, and I am so reminded of what Senator Ed Brooke
said yesterday, that regardless of our parties, regardless of
our ideology, the only way we win is to consider the needs of
other countries, and I am not talking about getting out there
by ourselves but getting the European Union, NATO, our allies,
to come together and recognize how we win over our detractors.
So the U.S. will have to maintain a strong commitment to
providing emergency support, and assistance must also be
matched by equally strong investments in agriculture
development and attrition to address the underlying causes of
hunger, and the question becomes how we can best reform our
system, USAID, to address these underlying causes of hunger.
We must remember that food supplies a vital part of the
development, health, and stability of a nation, but developing
better farming practices in a region will not help a farmer get
his produce to market without a road, and lessons in nutrition
will remain unused if we do not help improve access to better
choices.
So, Mr. Chairman, I want to thank you for your overall
commitment, and I always kid him, if he is missing for Monday,
he has been in Africa, and I do not know if there is any one
member who has put himself on the line and knows the problems
throughout the world, mainly on the continent of Africa, and so
thank you so much for holding this hearing. I am going to rush
on down to the floor.
I was at the Health Access news conference, very well
attended, and we actually had people from various parts of our
country who were testifying on their condition and how our bill
will help improve their living standards, so thank you so much,
and I yield back the remainder of my time.
Mr. Payne. Thank you very much, and, as we do know, it is
extremely important that we take care of our needs here as we
try. We can do both, and we can do both better, and I do not
think we have to ever think we have to compete domestic issues
against international issues, and that has been settled years
ago.
Mr. Smith might have a short----
Mr. Smith. Yes, very brief. Again, thanks for the hearing.
It was a very good and important hearing.
I do want to welcome back Greg Simpkins, who served very
admirably and very effectively on this committee on our staff.
He is now vice president of policy and program development for
the Leon H. Sullivan Foundation.
Greg, great to see you again.
I would just point out again to our distinguished
witnesses, the MCC, the Presidential request for 2009 was
$2.225 billion. The appropriated amount was $875 million, a
little more than a third of the request.
In 2010, the House appropriated $1.4 billion; the Senate,
$950 million in infrastructure. Infrastructure is the key. It
is part of that continuum if we really want to mitigate hunger
and, hopefully, end it. So a very disturbing trend there, but,
again, this is an important hearing, and I look forward to
working with our panelists going forward and with the chairman.
Mr. Payne. Thank you very much, and I would also like to
thank the members who participated. We have a number of
unanswered questions. We could have gotten into GMOs, but not
enough time to talk about a number of the issues still there.
We are looking to make sure that the money--as you know, we
appropriated $48 billion for PEPFAR. We worked very closely
with President Bush and the appropriators. We have to see,
though, that now that we have it authorized, we have to be sure
that it becomes appropriated, and we are also pleased that
since that appropriations, the new administration has increased
the PEPFAR overall, $48 billion, by $4 billion, which is now
$52 billion, for HIV/AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis, and
another $11 billion that makes the total number $63 billion
that will include maternal and child health, neglected tropical
diseases, which there will be a new emphasis on, and also
developing health systems so that when, 5 years from now, we
are expecting not only people to be served better but also to
have health systems that individual countries can develop.
We heard one of the witnesses mention diplomacy,
USAID, deg. and AID and ?? deg.Defense, and
we did not get into that whole business about the
militarization for foreign assistance. They say the military
can do it better. That is because they get all of the money, so
they do it.
If we could somehow get the aid agencies to be able to
distribute, in my opinion, we would see better utilization. I
am not opposed to the fact that there are military people all
over the world, and the U.S. covers the entire world with some
kind of military operation, but I think we are perhaps better
on the right track now than what we heard initially, that we
want the aid agencies.
I also think that we just simply need to work on better
coordination. I hear people say, ``Well, we should, you know,
perhaps stop one of the programs, you know, Millennium
Challenge, and forget PEPFAR or do PEPFAR and not do another.''
I think what we simply need to do is to have a strong agency,
as has been mentioned, in the office of our Ambassador
somewhere in a country where these agencies would simply be
coordinated. It makes sense. Each of these programs, perhaps
some are obsolete, but many do a very specific service.
All we simply have to do is to coordinate it so that the
left hand knows what the right hand is doing, and I am sure
that we will be able to synchronize it so that we can, in the
long run, be able to modernize and, therefore, have additional
resources on the ground by virtue of saving of overhead and
better coordination.
So I think it is the smart thing to do, and I am sure that
the Secretary of State and the Obama administration will come
up with a good program, but, once again, let me thank all of
the witnesses. It was fantastic. We could have gone on, but, as
you know, the vote is on.
So I ask unanimous consent for members to have 5 days to
revise and extend their remarks. Without objection, so ordered,
and let me once again thank each of the witnesses for your
incredible work that you have done, and without your advocacy
out there, the work that we do up here would be much more
difficult. Thank you very much. The meeting stands adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 11:31 a.m., the committee was adjourned.]
A P P E N D I X
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