GOING TOGETHER
By Roger Thurow
There’s an old African saying: If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.
Opening the Chicago Council’s Symposium on Global Agriculture and Food Security, USAID administrator Rajiv Shah stressed the importance of partnerships in ending hunger through agriculture development.
“Agriculture depends,” he said, “on the strength of public and private institutions working and investing together, building new markets and supply chains, sustainably taking new initiatives to scale and improving global economic potential.”
He mentioned working with the World Food Program to increase the flexibility of U.S. emergency response by boosting procurement of locally grown food, expanding the use of community development funds and creating new cash voucher programs – instead of just sending over U.S.- grown food at higher costs. And he hailed the broad front forming to focus on nutrition programs – to improve the nutritious quality of food while increasing production.
Shah announced that the government was tripling its level of investment on research compared to 2008, to $120 million. He highlighted a program designed to bring universities, research labs and agribusiness together with the International Fertilizer Development Center to deliver the next generation of environmentally sensitive fertilizers so critical to replenishing depleted soils.
“That’s the kind of innovation,” he said, “that can help us improve agriculture productivity while maintaining environmental sustainability.”
American universities, Shah said, are critical partners of the Obama administration’s Feed the Future initiative. Universities, he noted, led the way in spreading the success of the Green Revolution in the 1960s and 1970s. Similarly, he said, universities can deploy their expertise in training, research and extension services to spur the agricultural transformation in Africa. He announced that the government has boosted assistance to universities to $72.2 million, an increase of two-thirds compared to 2008.
Public-private partnerships were also high on his list. He mentioned partnerships with Wal-Mart in Central America and with General Mills and Pepsico that are helping to create markets and production incentives for smallholder farmers.
And, of course, partnerships with African countries are at the core of Feed the Future. Shah highlighted work with Rwanda, Ghana and Tanzania, where agriculture development efforts are being focused in particular regions to boost production.
Later, Julie Howard, the deputy coordinator for development of Feed the Future, emphasized the country driven nature of Feed the Future projects, relying on the recipient countries to prioritize their agriculture development needs.
“Our efforts,” she said, “will be sustainable if our country partners lead the way.”
Taking a deep breath, Shah said, “It’s been a busy year.” But with food prices soaring and chronic hunger expanding – fueling proliferating political and social stability – the urgency increases to do more to reach the ultimate goal.
“We can,” Shah said, “end hunger as we know it in our lifetimes.”
That's interesting, thanks very much for posting! I noticed your article through Twitter.
Feed the Future, particularly from my perspective in Ghana, had so much potential with aims to redefine how USAID does business. Unfortunately, I feel so far FtF has taken a step in the wrong direction by failing to listen to ground realities. USAID has a flagship market development project in Ghana which was just about tipping the scale with positive traction, and now after 1.5 yrs into the game, is forced to re-organize, divest from high-impact work, only to focus on a geographic area north of the 8th parallel where traction is very low and agriculture transformation is unlikely given the few willing and able players, and more unlikely given the aid sector-driven market distortions for those players who do exist.
Seems like another classic story of top donor management being highly disconnected from field realities, particularly at the operational levels.
"Ending hunger" is a process, very likely a long process, and going for quick wins ends up in a loss in the end.
Posted by: Wayne Miranda | Tuesday, May 24, 2011 at 05:01 PM