Global Food for Thought

Commentary - Neglect Reversed, Now Keep the Focus

By Roger Thurow

Too poor, too remote, too insignificant.  That was the unofficial mantra behind the neglect of smallholder farmers in Africa for the past four decades.  It was recited by the farmers’ own governments, by rich world governments, by development institutions large and small, by the private sector.  It has left Africa’s farmers far behind those in the rest of the world.  It has left them unable to feed their own families throughout the year.  It has given rise to that horrible oxymoron “hungry farmers.”

Hopefully, that mantra – and the mindset it fronted – was junked forever this weekend and the neglect reversed.  At the Chicago Council’s Symposium on Food and Nutrition Security and at the G8 summit at Camp David, the smallholder farmers were put on center stage – although few were actually in attendance – and showered with attention.  The powerful and the rich trained their focus on the hungriest and the poorest.  Their overwhelming consensus was that the smallholder farmers of Africa – most of whom are women -- are indispensable in the great global challenge of doubling food production by 2050 to meet the demands of a population that is growing in both size and prosperity.

Finally, the potential and performance of Africa’s smallholder farmers – as I chronicle in The Last Hunger Season -- was recognized and saluted and embraced.  Well done.

Outrage and Inspire - Roger Thurow - Fighting the Injustice of Hunger

President Barack Obama issued an “all hands on deck” command to combat chronic hunger and malnutrition, which he said was “an outrage and an affront to who we are.”

Speaking at the Chicago Council’s Symposium on Global Agriculture and Food Security, the president said the G8 – while dealing with global problems like job creation, the struggling Eurozone, and sustaining economic recovery – would also “focus on the injustice of hunger, and the need for long-term food security.”

He said the G8 leaders would open another front in the fight: a New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition. It is an alliance that will foster partnerships between governments from the rich world and the poor, donor countries and the private sector.

Governments, President Obama said, will agree to take the lead in building on the plans designed by developing countries to improve their agriculture. Donor countries will agree to more closely align their assistance to further these plans. And the private sector will agree to make concrete and continuing commitments to boost their investments.

Roger Thurow - Outrage and Inspire - A Transformational Day

The Chicago Council Symposium on Global Agriculture and Food Security opened with a jolt of urgency and possibility.

“The transformational day begins,” proclaimed Dan Glickman, co-chair of the Council’s Global Agricultural Development Initiative and former secretary of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The Symposium, bringing together leaders from governments around the world and multinational corporations, is setting the tone for this weekend’s G8 summit at Camp David.  Glickman said the G8’s deliberations on will be “critical in determining food and nutrition security of future generations.”

Michael Froman, assistant to President Obama and deputy national security advisor for international economic affairs, said a focus on nutrition security will be a central G8 theme.

Roger Thurow - Outrage and Inspire - "Three Little Words, Three Little Letters"

THREE LITTLE WORDS, THREE LITTLE LETTERS

For many Moms, their biggest wish on Mother’s Day is to hear those special three little words from their children: I Love You.

For the mothers and women farmers of Africa, they also dearly wish to hear three little letters: A-N-D.

And.  It’s a tiny word, perhaps the most common of all conjunctions.  But in rural Africa, it is so often missing from the ambitions of mothers.

It is the goal of mothers everywhere to provide their children with proper daily nourishment and to educate them as best as possible.  In the U.S. and other rich precincts of the world, the AND in that sentence is taken for granted. 

But for many smallholder farmers in Africa, that three-letter word is nowhere to be found.  Instead, they are stuck with an even tinier word: OR.  Feed my children OR send them to school.  Often, they can do one OR the other.  Often, they can’t do either.

I saw the impact of that missing conjunction in January 2011, as I was beginning the reporting for my new book, The Last Hunger Season.  Leonida Wanyama, one of the smallholder farmers in western Kenya I would be following throughout the year, told me with great pride how she had tripled her harvest from previous years when she finally had access to the essential elements of farming: better seed, micro-doses of fertilizer and financing to pay for it.  She had reaped a bumper harvest, 10 bags of maize compared to only three the year before.  She believed it would be enough to conquer the hunger season, to feed her family all through the year until the next harvest.

Roger Thurow - Outrage and Inspire - "No Food, No Peace"

NO FOOD, NO PEACE

You can’t build peace on empty stomachs.

Norman Borlaug, the father of the Green Revolution, was fond of saying that.  He may not have been the first to formulate that philosophy, but he certainly was one of its most ardent purveyors.  He said it to politicians and economists and journalists and students.  And he said it to generals and their lieutenants as well.

It would be a good slogan for this month of May, packed as it is with crucial international summits.

The clamor is rising for the G8 leaders to accelerate their action to attack hunger and malnutrition and secure the global food chain for future generations when they meet in two weeks at Camp David.  And it should also be directed at the NATO leaders who will be gathering in Chicago later that same weekend.

For the heads of state of the leading industrial nations, increasing agricultural development in poorer countries is of paramount economic importance.  It is vital if the world is to meet one of its greatest challenges: doubling food production by 2050 to meet the demands of a global population that is growing in size and prosperity.  It will contribute to more stable commodity prices.  And it would confront one of our great moral failings: every night, one person in seven goes to bed hungry, and tens of millions of children are in danger of life-long physical and mental stunting because of lack of proper nutrition.

Roger Thurow - Outrage and Inspire - "Keep It Up"

KEEP IT UP

Good work, now keep going.

That is the message to the U.S. government – both the administration and Congress – from the 2012 Progress Report on American Leadership in Global Agricultural Development released today by The Chicago Council on Global Affairs.

The report applauds the emergence of bipartisan support for food security and agricultural development, particularly during a time of nasty partisan sniping and budget slashing.  This has indeed put the U.S. at the front of international efforts to end hunger and poverty and strengthen the global food chain.  But, up front in the report, there is also this ominous exhortation:

“Without continued support, the strong efforts made thus far – many of which are already showing great promise – will have been tragically wasted.”

Allow me to add italics and bold emphasis to one of those words: tragically.  It is an important reminder of what is at stake at next month’s Camp David G8 meeting, where the leaders of the world’s largest industrial countries need to reinforce their expiring promises to conquer global hunger through agricultural development.  President Obama forged that international commitment three years ago when he also launched his own Feed the Future initiative.

Roger Thurow - Outrage and Inspire - "Food Aid's Evolution: Landing a One-Two Punch Against Hunger"

FOOD AID’S EVOLUTION:

LANDING A ONE-TWO PUNCH AGAINST HUNGER

As the rainy season arrived and the planting began in East Africa at the end of March, drought and hunger continued to creep across West Africa.  The African Paradox of feast and famine was forming again.

The U.S. response of food aid was quick off the mark, as it often is.  But this time there appeared to be a greater nimbleness, illustrating the evolving shift in the way the U.S. delivers its food aid.

The World Food Program announced that it had received more than $100 million through the U.S. Agency for International Development to provide urgent food assistance to some 9 million people across the Sahel, from Mauritania to Chad.  Of that contribution, $28 million was in cash to purchase food from African farmers and to support programs in which the impacted population receives vouchers to buy their food on local markets rather than getting handouts of food from a distant land.  The U.S. donation also included an initial consignment of nearly 7,500 metric tons of food allocated from stocks pre-positioned in strategic locations in or near Africa, which would reduce the delivery time from four months to four weeks.  Additional food supplies would be shipped from the U.S. to arrive in August when the hunger is expected to be at its peak.

Allan Jury, the WFP’s director of U.S. relations, hailed Washington’s “multi-pronged approach” to the crisis in the Sahel. 

Roger Thurow - Outrage and Inspire - "African Farmers: Surviving or Thriving? "

African Farmers: Surviving or Thriving?

It is one of Africa's cruelest ironies that as the planting season begins, as it is now across much of the continent, so does the hunger season. The food stocks from the previous harvest are running low and it will be several months before the next harvest comes in. Whatever food remains in the household is rationed: portions shrink, meals are skipped, malnutrition rises.

We have all seen the pictures of children and adults starving during famine. They are horrific and heartbreaking. While these epic hunger emergencies are becoming less frequent and less severe, thanks to initiatives like safety net programmes and more responsive food aid systems, the global hunger crisis still rages. It is a chronic crisis, a hunger that grinds on day after day, largely hidden, rarely making an appearance on our television screens. It is the hunger season that has no end.

In this crisis, nearly one billion people go to bed hungry every night, lacking the nutrition to lead full, active lives. That's about 15% of the world's population. And tens of millions of them are children who have such poor nutrition that they can't grow properly - physically or mentally - and enter their teenage years severely stunted and unable to achieve their potential.

Roger Thurow - Outrage and Inspire - "The Return of the Budget Slashers"

THE RETURN OF THE BUDGET SLASHERS

Here we go again.

No sooner, it seems, did agriculture development spending fairly well survive the budget slashing for 2011 and 2012 then it is under attack again in the 2013 deliberations.  The House yesterday, working along party lines, passed a budget plan which nakedly proposes to kill the Obama administration’s Feed the Future initiative.

The plan, crafted by the House budget committee chaired by Paul Ryan, includes a paragraph titled “Eliminate Feed the Future.”  It says:

“Initiated by the Obama administration in 2009, Feed the Future aims to end global food insecurity through investments in nutrition and agriculture abroad.  While addressing the issues of poverty and malnutrition around the globe is important, the U.S. Government’s fiscal condition does not permit the expansion of U.S. foreign assistance initiatives, especially ones that overlap with existing programs.  The United States currently has two other major food aid programs: Food for Peace (the primary food aid account) and the McGovern-Dole International Food for Education and Child Nutrition Program.  Both of these aid programs address global food insecurity in the world’s poorest countries, including through agricultural development efforts.  This budget reflects a need to consolidate our food air programs in order to eliminate associated costs with mission redundancy.”

This is wrong on so many levels, factually, logically, morally.

Roger Thurow - Outrage and Inspire - "Developments at the Development Bank"

DEVELOPMENTS AT THE DEVELOPMENT BANK

I’m surprised that “surprise” is a word being used to describe President Obama’s nomination of Jim Yong Kim to head the World Bank.  Surprise, perhaps, over the specific name, because Dr. Kim hadn’t figured prominently in the speculation of who would replace current World Bank president Robert Zoellick.

But there should be no surprise over the intention of the nomination: to select someone who has been deeply and passionately immersed in development and poverty reduction efforts to run the world’s largest poverty-reduction institution.  In fact, it makes all the sense in the world.

As President Obama said today as he nominated Dr. Kim, “The leader of the World Bank should have a deep understanding of both the role that development plays in the world and the importance of creating conditions where assistance is no longer needed.  It’s time for a development professional to lead the world’s largest development agency.”

Past leaders of the World Bank have been economists and trade specialists and defense experts and diplomats. Now comes Dr. Kim (traditionally, Washington selects the president of the World Bank, while the Europeans name the head of the International Monetary Fund).  A Korean-American, he is a global health expert who co-founded Partners in Health, a nonprofit that provides health care for the poor in some of the most wretched places on earth.  Most recently the president of Dartmouth College, Dr. Kim is also a former director of the department of HIV/AIDS at the World Health Organization.