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Please click here to view this week's edition of the Global Food for Thought news brief. If you have not signed up to receive Global Food for Thought by email, please do so by clicking here.
Be sure to check Congressional testimony from U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Thomas Vilsack describing their respective department's budget priorities and roles in implementing the Administration's Global Food Security Initiative.
GOING TOGETHER
WASHINGTON, DC – In the new initiative to end hunger through agriculture development, an old African proverb is lighting the way: If you want to go fast, go it alone. If you want to go far, go together.
For the Obama administration, which is leading the Global Hunger and Food Security Initiative, this means taking a “whole of government” approach, bringing the focus and resources of many agencies to the same task. For Africa, it means looking beyond national borders and thinking regionally.
This introduces a new set of challenges to an already daunting task: boosting food production on a continent that has entered the 21st Century hungrier and more malnourished than ever before. For the Obama administration, the “whole of government” effort will require avoiding the turf wars and budget jealousies legendary in this town. For Africa, where getting an individual country to work through development priorities is difficult enough, it will require working together with several countries to develop regional strategies. For donors, it will require new ways of dispensing aid, from bilaterally to regionally. And a new way of thinking: subsuming your own self-interests to work across agencies and across borders.
But to go far in ending hunger through agriculture development, it will be necessary to go together.
U.S. Secretaries Hillary Clinton and Tom Vilsack have participated in a high-paced, two-day flurry of Congressional hearings on their FY 2011 budget requests for the Departments of State and Agriculture, respectively.
Continue reading "Clinton, Vilsack Testify on FY 2011 Budget Requests " »
In a recent speech outlining new directions in U.S. relations with India, Assistant Secretary of State Robert Blake stated that India's Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, and U.S. President Barack Obama have acknowledged that the two countries' relationship should have a greater focus on working together to improve India's agriculture sector. Blake also noted that the Chicago Council on Global Affairs' Global Agricultural Development Initiative "has had a significant impact on food security policy around the world by putting the spotlight on global food security issues."
India's agriculture sector was also the focus of a front-page story in yesterday's Wall Street Journal. Today's Wall Street Journal featured another article on agriculture being the "key to growth" in India.
For more on the Obama administration's policy towards India vis-a-vis agriculture, please visit our Ag & Food Policy Library.
BEYOND THE EMERGENCY
Before the calamitous earthquake, Haiti was in the news for another tremor: the global food crisis of 2008.
Shortages of rice and the resulting high prices had poor Haitians foraging through dumps and eating concoctions called “mud pies,” mixtures of grain and dirt. That misery prompted the masses to take to the streets in protest, which led to a government shake-up.
Now, as emergency food aid rushes into the country to relieve the misery of people dislocated from the earthquake, it is time to also deal with Haiti’s chronic hunger and malnutrition.
The clamor is rising that the phrase “building back better” also needs to include Haiti’s agriculture system. The United Nations issued a “flash,” or emergency, appeal for $575 million to help rebuild the country after the earthquake. Fortunately, the world has responded with a flood of money. But the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization says its part of the appeal - $23 million to help revive Haiti’s food production – is being largely ignored. Only 8% has been funded.
Please click here to view this week's edition of the Global Food for Thought news brief.
Be sure to read Senior Fellow Roger Thurow's latest column, "Unity of Purpose," which calls for a united global effort to combat chronic hunger, and draws on recent statements from U.S. Senator Richard Lugar, Bill Gates, and Malawi President and African Union Chairman Bingu wa Mutharika, as well as the late Norman Borlaug.
Additionally, you should check out the Financial Times' new publication, This is Africa, which has an entire section devoted to food and agriculture issues. Finally, the journal Science released a special edition on food security this week. Science is making access to this special section FREE (non-subscribers require a simple registration).
If you have not signed up to receive Global Food for Thought by email, please do so by clicking here.
UNITY OF PURPOSE
Norman Borlaug, the father of the Green Revolution, stands as a monument to how one determined individual can make a huge difference in the fight against hunger. But he often stressed that it took an army of individuals, with a unity of purpose, to win the war.
“I cannot emphasize too strongly the fact that further progress depends on intelligent, integrated and persistent effort by government leaders, statesmen, tradesmen, scientists, educators and communication agencies,” Borlaug, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970, said while exhorting the world to carry on the agriculture revolution throughout the developing world.
Forty years later, Sen. Richard Lugar repeated those words as he concluded a speech on American foreign assistance and development aid. It is time once again, he said, to summon a unity of purpose in the war against hunger.
“We need to be unified around common purposes for which we can marshal the appropriate level of resources and variety of approaches,” Sen. Lugar told his audience at the Society for International Development two weeks ago. He called for a “focus on the big issues – food scarcity, poverty, disease, environmental degradation – that prevent economic growth in a large swath of the world’s countries.” Those objectives, he said, “require that strategies reflect the needs of the countries we are helping rather than the vagaries of our own budget process, which often allocates funds in response to lobbying pressures, media interest or political favoritism.”
Please click here to view this week's edition of the Global Food for Thought news brief.
Also, be sure to check our the Global Agricultural Development Initiative's analysis of President Obama's FY 2011 budget request to Congress, as well as Todd Moss' expert commentary on the budget's implications for U.S. foreign assistance policy.
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