Global Food for Thought

Commentary - Hanging on the Edge: The Daily Fiscal Cliff

HANGING ON THE EDGE: THE DAILY FISCAL CLIFF

By Roger Thurow

The smallholder farmers of Africa know all about fiscal cliffs.

“Everybody wants money,” Leonida Wanyama despaired as she neared the precipice of her own personal cliff during the hunger season. She had no food in the house and no money, either. Many forces were pushing her to the edge. Her children were being sent home from their classes by headmasters demanding that the school fees be paid. She was running up a tab at the local pharmacy, where she picked up malaria medication on the promise of future payment. She needed to pay off her credit for maize seeds and fertilizer. Most pressing of all was the daily need to scrounge up something to feed her family now that the food from her own harvest had run out. Every morning when she awoke after a fitful night tormented by worry, she felt the cliff was just beyond the door of her mud-and-sticks house.

Leonida and her neighbors in western Kenya have been peering into the abyss long before the phrase “fiscal cliff” became a buzzword in Washington. Zipporah Biketi, another farmer in western Kenya, told me about the daily battle to pull her children back from malnutrition. The children, she said, “don’t know the hardships that their parents pass through…They just want to eat.”

For a nation like the United States, burdened with debt and budget deficits – and this applies to all of Europe as well – falling over the cliff is a scary proposition. But for the billion or so people who exist on one or two dollars a day – like the smallholder farmers of Africa – it is a daily terror.

Enough Isn’t Enough: Why Food Security Matters to Me

Interview with Roger Thurow, Senior Fellow, The Chicago Council on Global Affairs
This post originally appeared on Feed the Future Blog.

The following is a guest blog by Roger Thurow, author, senior fellow for global agriculture and food policy at The Chicago Council on Global Affairs, and ONE Campaign fellow. We asked Thurow a few questions about food security.

Traditionally centered around a big meal to celebrate good harvests and time with family, Thanksgiving is also an opportunity to reflect on what we’re thankful for and our wishes for the future. At the top of our list is the hope for a future in which no one goes to bed hungry. What is yours?

Exactly the same: a world free of hunger. Some may dismiss that as an unrealistic goal, but ending hunger through agricultural development is within our grasp. We certainly have precedent on our side, for we have seen agricultural development work in so many countries. Be it here in the United States, or in Europe, or in India or China or Brazil. So we know it can be done: We have the science, the technology, the experience. We know the “way”, but what has been missing is the “will”.

At this Thanksgiving, I’m thankful that we are now seeing this “will” emerging in so many places. As we sit down to our traditional national feast—to celebrate our harvests and our abundance—this is the ideal time to commit to ending hunger no matter where it may be, whether here at home or in Africa or anywhere else in the world.

Even as we are seeing progress in our efforts against global poverty and undernutrition, we know there is still work to do and that we must remain focused. Why do you think this is important, and why do you think Americans should care about global hunger and food security?

This Week's Edition of the Global Food for Thought News Brief

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.

Photo of the Week

A farmer in Chwele, Kenya shells maize using a small metal device called a maize sheller. As she slides the sheller down the maize cob, the kernels separate from the cob. This makes it easier for farmers to dry and store their harvest. Credit: Dominic Ochola Photo courtesy of the One Acre Fund blog.

One Acre Fund is an NGO in Kenya, Rwanda, and Burundi that helps 130,000 smallholder farmers grow their own way out of poverty by providing a "market bundle" that includes education, finance, seed and fertilizer, and market access.

Roger Thurow - Outrage and Inspire - A Thanksgiving Tale: The Hungercloth

A THANKSGIVING TALE: THE HUNGERCLOTH

I often write and speak about the awful oxymoron, “Hungry Farmers.”  How can the smallholder farmers of Africa suffer through an annual hunger season when every morning they rise with one task: grow food for their families?

That these farmers should battle chronic hunger and malnutrition is absurd, obscene and shameful.

But there’s another awful oxymoron that deserves our attention, particularly as we near Thanksgiving and our season of feasts.  Hungry Americans.

How can anyone in this richest country on the planet, home of the mightiest farmers, breadbasket of the world, be hungry?

That millions of households here are deemed “food insecure” – unable, at some point in the year, to afford the next meal – is equally absurd, obscene and shameful.

Hunger at home and abroad are of the same cloth.  Yes, the depth of the hunger and malnutrition that I have seen in parts of Africa and elsewhere in the developing world is profoundly deeper than I have seen here.  Thanks to a sturdy social safety net, no one starves to death here, as far too many people do every day in the poorer precincts of the world.

But whether in Africa or America, I see the same pain, desperation, guilt and humiliation in the eyes of mothers and fathers.  How will I feed my family?  Where will the next meal come from?  And the same longing and despair in the eyes of the children.

This Week's Edition of the Global Food for Thought News Brief

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.

Commentary: A public-private partnership helps Haiti’s smallholder peanut farmers succeed

By James Rhoads

From my perspective as the agricultural development specialist for Meds & Food for Kids (MFK), a nonprofit manufacturer of peanut-based Ready-to-Use Foods in Cap-Haitien, Haiti, the goal of having a steady supply of locally-produced, aflatoxin-free peanuts is always at the forefront of my mind.

MFK is tied to 14 other factories, 12 in developing countries worldwide, through Nutriset’s PlumpyField network. We all share two main goals: 1) Treat and prevent childhood malnutrition through the manufacture of peanut-based Ready-to-Use Foods; 2) Promote nutritional autonomy throughout the network to reduce poverty in countries where rates of childhood malnutrition are high.
 
MFK has long embraced the value of expanding economic development to small-holder peanut farmers – knowing the potential impact this would have on improving the nutrition and health of children in their families. So, in 2006, to help resolve these problems of quantity and quality, MFK developed and continues to implement a strategic agricultural plan to reach the goal of sustainably using only locally sourced peanuts in the factory.

Farmer’s yields in Haiti have historically been half that of similar production systems in developing countries and 1/5 or less of the average yields per hectare in the United States. However, in 2012, yields have improved significantly – by 100% or more in some cases. These achievements resulted, in no small part, from a private-public partnership between MFK, Haiti's Ministry of Agriculture, and USAID's Peanut Collaborative Research Support Program (PCRSP), based at the University of Georgia. Over $300,000 worth of investments in peanut production and processing since 2006 yielded positive results that bear sharing with a wider audience. 

Roger Thurow - Outrage and Inspire - Forward with Feed the Future

FORWARD WITH FEED THE FUTURE

Forward with feeding the future!

Four more years, that’s what we got last night.  Four more years to solidify American leadership in ending hunger through agricultural development.  Four more years to make President Obama’s Feed the Future initiative a permanent part of American policy no matter the political makeup in Congress and the White House.  That was the President’s promise to the world’s poorest when he spoke at the Chicago Council’s Symposium on Global Agriculture and Food Security in May.

“We can unleash the change that reduces hunger and malnutrition,” President Obama proclaimed then.  “We can spark the kind of economic growth that lifts people and nations out of poverty.  This is the new commitment that we’re making, and I pledge to you today that this will remain a priority as long as I am the United States president.”

He continued: “We’ll stay focused on clear goals: boosting farmers’ incomes and over the next decade helping 50 million men, women and children lift themselves out of poverty.”

We must hold him to it.

It will take great resolve and plenty of clamor-raising.  For forward also lies the fiscal cliff.  Budget cuts to corral the rampaging deficit will be necessary.  And that will mean increasing pressure to whack away at foreign aid and investments in development.  The White House will need to rouse a strong defense to protect Feed the Future.

This Week's Edition of the Global Food for Thought News Brief

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.

Commentary - Going Local with PPPs for Smallholders

By David B. McGinty

This blog is part of a series organized by The Chicago Council’s Global Agriculture Development Initiative and InterAction to highlight the importance of public-private partnerships in agricultural development. This commentary is cross-posted with InterAction’s blog.  

Complex agricultural development challenges cannot be solved by working in isolation. Whether public-private partnerships (PPPs) are intended to upgrade a value chain or facilitate access to capital, PPPs are a significant tool for enhancing private sector investments in agriculture and food security. PPPs designed to improve the livelihoods of smallholders (“inclusive PPPs”) may present additional challenges in capacity, infrastructure, incentives, cost and time. Inclusive PPPs involve a more intensive collaborative governance model that strategically incentivizes the local public sector, along with local and transnational businesses, to invest and take ownership of solutions that have positive development impacts for smallholders and vulnerable producers. Key international stakeholders have acknowledged a common agenda to utilize PPPs more effectively as tools for greater agricultural and food security development—from NGOs’ development and advocacy actions to USAID in its Feed the Future strategy to public and private leaders who stepped up at the 4^th High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness to deepen their role in development cooperation.

Agriculture and food security programs are best designed through a consultative process with host country governments to decide their needs, priorities and development strategies. Similarly, inclusive PPPs should be strategically designed with the goal of local ownership. As Charlotte Hebebrand stated: “Developing country ownership of PPPs is essential.”  Ownership of inclusive PPPs requires that host countries recognize the value of partnering with the private sector and have the capacity to take ownership (e.g., in designing, negotiating and managing inclusive PPPs). Development projects focused on large or urban infrastructure projects often result in host country governments designing or leading in the PPP process. However, projects targeting smallholders often do not result in locally-led PPPs despite best attempts by NGOs and others to ensure a locally led planning process and host government inclusion in partnership scoping or implementation.