| The President wasn't the only one to give a big speech within the past week. Rajiv Shah, who heads up USAID, gave one as well to mark the 50th anniversary of USAID. Since Obama mentioned "Feed the Future" in the State of the Union, I thought it would be wise to see what Shah said about it as well.
Feed the Future is an initiative started by the Obama administration to help poor countries produce more food. Supposedly, the focus is on small farmers and women. I have had a rather difficult time getting my hands on the specific information I am interested in, which is: what is USAID actually doing to help? Which types of agricultural practices are being promoted? Is our "help" actually helping? And that's where I've had a hard time finding answers.
From this speech and the Q&A that follows (you can read excerpts that deal with agriculture below), you can see that USAID has been pushing nitrogen fertilizer on poor African farmers, they are working hand in hand with the World Bank as well as corporations (they frequently mention public-private partnerships although this speech does not mention who the partnerships are with), and the quote I found most informative is: "what we're trying to do is create kind of commercially viable agriculture sectors in these countries." In other words, they are not merely trying to help farmers grow enough to eat, they want to help farmers grow enough to sell. Also noted in the speech is a big announcement of a new "private sector partnership" that will be revealed this week. |
From Shah's speech:
Instead of merely providing food aid in times of emergency, we are helping countries develop their own agricultural sectors so they can feed themselves. We launched Feed the Future, bringing together resources across the federal government and engaging in deeper partnerships to extend the impact of our work.
We are now leveraging more investment from countries themselves and from other donors towards this purpose. Firms ranging from General Mills to local African seed companies are all doing more. As a result, in just five out of our 20 focus countries, we believe we can help nearly 6.5 million small farmers, mostly poor and mostly women, grow enough food to feed themselves, their families, and break the grip of hunger and poverty for tens of millions of people. This is smarter and this is less costly than dealing with the food riots, famines and failed states that are caused when people do not have access to food.
Additionally, he said:
In Afghanistan, we're helping to improve agricultural yields in the Argandab Valley, stabilizing a region in which hour military suffered casualties to secure. As a result, farmers shipped the first agricultural exports out of Kandahar export in 40 years.
Later, during Q&A, he said:
And I've said this before - a USAID administrator coined the term "green revolution." And in 1968 or '69 - I'm not sure of the exact year - the single largest line-item in our budget was fertilizer support for India because everybody thought hundreds of millions of people would starve to death.
We again are today reading newspaper articles about a food-price spike that will cause famine, will cause food riots and will cause tens of millions of people to go hungry if prices continue to rise. And we need to reinvest in agricultural development. This administration has been deeply focused on this. The president mentioned this effort in his inaugural address. The secretary has hosted the process of developing the program.
We now need to implement it well. That will require, I think, legislation and will require real support so that that effort can become a signature initiative for the way America engages proactively and cost-effectively on development issues around the world.
This answer, which was a call for more money for USAID, was followed up with another question: Should the money go to USAID or to the World Bank? Shah answered:
The answer to that is, we're looking for ways to get leverage and impact.
So you know, I am a very strong supporter of funding for the World Bank trust fund, which we worked to help set up. We think when you put resources in that multilateral vehicle, it generates leverage by attracting resources from other partners. And it becomes something that African leaders and other leaders around the world can sort of focus on, develop plans, submit them to the fund - achieve a level of excellence in that process that will then benefit all of the bilateral partners.
So I think in Feed the Future, a major funding priority is that fund and making that work at the levels we've talked about as an administration. We're also, of course, very focused on the bilateral assistance program, which will effectively be implemented by USAID working in partnership with USDA and a number of other federal agencies that have unique capabilities.
And ultimately, I think this is an area also where you'll see tremendous private-sector investment. In just a week, I'll announce a set of really, I think, important - and I hope you will think impressive - private-sector partnerships. Because at the end of the day, what we're trying to do is create kind of commercially viable agriculture sectors in these countries to eliminate the fact that every time prices do spike a little bit, it creates a lot of unrest and a lot of human suffering. |
