[Senate Hearing 106-909]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 106-909
INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL FEEDING INITIATIVES
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
COMMITTEE ON AGRICULTURE,
NUTRITION, AND FORESTRY
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED SIXTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
ON
INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL FEEDING INITIATIVES
__________
JULY 27, 2000
__________
Printed for the use of the
Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry
U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
70-293 WASHINGTON : 2001
_______________________________________________________________________
For sale by the U.S. Government Printing Office
Superintendent of Documents, Congressional Sales Office, Washington, DC
20402
COMMITTEE ON AGRICULTURE, NUTRITION, AND FORESTRY
RICHARD G. LUGAR, Indiana, Chairman
JESSE HELMS, North Carolina TOM HARKIN, Iowa
THAD COCHRAN, Mississippi PATRICK J. LEAHY, Vermont
MITCH McCONNELL, Kentucky KENT CONRAD, North Dakota
PAUL COVERDELL, Georgia THOMAS A. DASCHLE, South Dakota
PAT ROBERTS, Kansas MAX BAUCUS, Montana
PETER G. FITZGERALD, Illinois J. ROBERT KERREY, Nebraska
CHARLES E. GRASSLEY, Iowa TIM JOHNSON, South Dakota
LARRY E. CRAIG, Idaho BLANCHE L. LINCOLN, Arkansas
RICK SANTORUM, Pennsylvania
Keith Luse, Staff Director
David L. Johnson, Chief Counsel
Robert E. Sturm, Chief Clerk
Mark Halverson, Staff Director for the Minority
(ii)
C O N T E N T S
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Page
Hearing:
Thursday, July 27, 2000, International School Feeding Initiatives 1
Appendix:
Thursday, July 27, 2000.......................................... 53
Document(s) submitted for the record:
Thursday, July 27, 2000.......................................... 117
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Thursday, July 27, 2000
STATEMENTS PRESENTED BY SENATORS
Lugar, Hon. Richard G, a U.S. Senator from Indiana, Chairman,
Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry.............. 1
Cochran, Hon. Thad, a U.S. Senator from Mississippi.............. 30
Harkin, Tom, A U.S. Senator from Iowa, Ranking Member, Committee
on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry........................ 8
Leahy, Hon. Patrick J., a U.S. Senator from Vermont.............. 10
Daschle, Tom, a U.S. Senator from South Dakota................... 9
Johnson, Hon. Tim, a U.S. Senator from South Dakota.............. 2
Durbin, Hon. Richard J. U.S. Senator from Illinois............... 13
McGovern, Hon. James P., A U.S. Representative from Massachusetts 15
Dole, Hon. Bob, Former Senator, from the State of Kansas......... 6
McGovern, Hon. George, Ambassador, Food and Agriculture
Organization of the United Nations, Former Senator, from the
State of South Dakota.......................................... 4
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WITNESSES
PANEL I
Bertini, Catherine, Executive Director, World Food Program, Rome,
Italy.......................................................... 22
Glickman, Dan, Secretary, U.S. Department of Agriculture,
Washington, DC................................................. 19
PANEL II
Brookins, Carole, Chairman & CEO, World Perspectives, Inc.,
Washington, DC................................................. 42
Hackett, Ken, Executive Director, Catholic Relief Services,
Baltimore MD................................................... 38
Levinger, Dr. Beryl, Senior Director, Educational Development
Center and Distinguished Professor, Monterey Institute of
International Studies, Monterey, CA............................ 34
Levinson, Ellen, Executive Director,, Coalition for Food Aid,
Washington, DC................................................. 40
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APPENDIX
Prepared Statements:
Lugar, Hon. Richard G........................................ 54
Dole, Hon. Bob............................................... 56
Durbin, Hon. Richard J....................................... 58
McGovern, Hon. James, P...................................... 63
McGovern, Hon. George........................................ 71
Bertini, Catherine........................................... 81
Brookins, Carole............................................. 112
Glickman, Dan................................................ 74
Hackett, Kenneth............................................. 96
Levinger, Beryl.............................................. 89
Levinson, Ellen S............................................ 105
Document(s) submitted for the record:
Proprietary Concept Paper: Food For Education And Economic
Development, submitted by Carole Brookins.................. 118
INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL FEEDING INITIATIVES
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THURSDAY, JULY 27, 2000
U.S. Senate,
Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry,
Washington, DC.
The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 9:02 a.m., in
room 216, Hart Senate Office Building, Hon. Richard G. Lugar,
(Chairman of the Committee, presiding.
Present or submitting a statement: Senators Lugar, Cochran,
Harkin, Leahy, Daschle, and Johnson.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. RICHARD G. LUGAR, A U.S. SENATOR FROM
INDIANA, CHAIRMAN, COMMITTEE ON AGRICULTURE, NUTRITION, AND
FORESTRY
The Chairman. This hearing of the Senate Agriculture
Committee is called to order. We welcome all to this important
hearing this morning. We convene to hear testimony on important
proposals to implement a school feeding program in developing
countries. Ambassador George McGovern and Senator Robert Dole
have worked in recent months to promote a proposed initiative
in which the United States, in tandem with other countries,
would work with recipient governments and communities to
establish a preschool and school feeding program.
In our country, our national school lunch program feeds 27-
million-children each day to maximize physical and mental
development. As Ambassador McGovern has pointed out,
approximately 300-million-children in the world go hungry each
day. He has proposed an initiative based upon experiences with
the United States program and carried out internationally to
help address this issue.
Given the magnitude of the challenge, the proposal would
necessarily command a tremendous amount of resources. The
proposal forward by Ambassador McGovern and Senator Dole calls
for an investment, once fully implemented, of approximately $3
billion, shared between the United States and other donor
nations each year. Of this $3 billion total, approximately $750
million would be the United States share.
Clearly identifying and securing the funding for such an
initiative is one the principal factors we will need to explore
today in considering the proposal. This past weekend, at the G-
8 Summit in Okinawa, President Clinton proposed a $300 million
initiative to improve school performance in developing nations.
That program would use the Commodity Credit Corporation's
surplus commodity purchase authority to implement school
feeding programs in recipient nations. A number of questions
need to be addressed to move these proposals now from paper to
implementation, and one of the most important factors is to
determine the necessary infrastructure that must be in place in
a potential recipient country in order to carry the program out
effectively.
What sort of governmental, agricultural, and educational
groundwork must be present? How does the program guard against
fraud and abuse, ensuring that the resources committed are used
as intended? Likewise, we are eager to learn more about exactly
how the initiative would be carried out? Would it be simply a
donation of commodities, or will additional funds be required?
How does the program translate a commodity donation, as
suggested by the President, to actual implementation of a
school feeding program on the ground in individual places?
Does the World Food Program assume primary responsibility,
as suggested by Ambassador McGovern? And what is the role of
the private voluntary organizational structure? What is the
role of the private sector, the agriculture community? Clearly,
these and other questions will be addressed today and in other
fora as we take a look at this ambitious proposal.
We are pleased to have a very distinguished group of
witnesses before the Committee today, led off by Ambassador
George McGovern and Senator Bob Dole, both former colleagues
and, more importantly, former members of this committee. And
following this testimony, we will hear from Senator Richard
Durbin, Congressman Jim McGovern, who have been leaders in
their various chambers in promoting this concept.
Secretary Glickman will appear with Ms. Bertini, and then a
whole host of people that I shall not enumerate now but will
introduce fully at the time of their appearances.
We welcome our colleagues George McGovern and Bob Dole. We
appreciate so much your leadership in so many ways, and in this
particular initiative, we are eager to hear from you.
[The prepared statement of Chairman Lugar can be found in
the appendix on page 54.]
I will ask, first of all, if Senator Johnson has any
opening comment, and after his comment we will proceed to the
witnesses.
STATEMENT OF HON. TIM JOHNSON, A U.S. SENATOR FROM SOUTH DAKOTA
Senator Johnson. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank
you for holding this timely and very important hearing. Senator
Daschle wanted very badly to be here, but some obligations
dealing with Governor Miller, our newest colleague to the
Senate, this morning has got him involved in that. But I
appreciate the opportunity to participate in this hearing to
listen to the proposals for an international school lunch
program being proposed by Ambassador George McGovern and
Senator Bob Dole, as you note, both former members of this
committee.
But I am particularly pleased and honored to have an
opportunity to welcome Ambassador McGovern to the hearing this
morning. Ambassador McGovern has served our State of South
Dakota and the Nation at every level, from his time as a bomber
pilot in World War II to his role as an educator at Dakota
Wesleyan University, to his service in the House of
Representatives, on President Kennedy's administration as
Director of Food for Peace, as a Member of the U.S. Senate and
a nominee for President, and currently as Ambassador to the
Food and Agriculture Organization, FAO, of the United Nations.
I am pleased and proud to think of George McGovern as a
mentor, a confidant, an advisor, and, most importantly, a
friend.
Throughout all of his long and distinguished career of
public service, Ambassador McGovern has always had food and
nutrition in dealing with hunger at the very top of his
priorities. This proposal to provide school lunches to hungry
children across the entire globe, especially in parts of Asia,
Africa, Latin America, and Eastern Europe, I think is
extraordinary. Utilizing organizations such as United Nations,
private voluntary organizations, and other food assistance
agencies, we have an opportunity to play a role in delivering a
universal school lunch program, building on what has been a
remarkably successful program in the United States.
We have 300-million-hungry-school-aged children in these
places throughout the world, and of that total, an unfortunate
number of 130-million-school-aged kids are currently not even
attending school. So this program I think is an innovative,
exciting proposal. I am pleased that the Clinton administration
has picked up on it with a significant pilot project proposal
of their own, and I look forward to the testimony today from
Senator Dole and Ambassador McGovern, as well as Secretary
Glickman and the rest of the panels that you have organized for
this hearing today.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Thank you very much, Senator Johnson.
Let me just outline the structure of the hearing for a
minute. As has been mentioned, we will be having an important
event, the swearing-in of a new Senator on the floor at about
11:00 a.m., with a roll call vote following that swearing-in
and statement by incoming Senator Miller. I hope that there are
not interruptions before that point, but we have important
business to do, so I am going to ask each of the witnesses to
try to summarize their comments in 5-minutes. The Chair will be
liberal in recognizing that may not be possible, and these are
important facts we need to have before us. We will ask Senators
to likewise confine their questioning to 5-minutes given the
spillover that inevitably happens when somebody asks a question
in the fourth minute and there is an extensive answer. But in
that way, perhaps we will move ahead so that we can give at
least a good audience to each of our witnesses.
I just want to say on a personal note that it is a real
pleasure to have Bob Dole here. I asked Bob Dole, after I was
elected to the Senate, for his help in getting on this
committee, and as always, he was very helpful. And when it
finally came down, as a matter of fact, to a trade with the
late Senator John Heinz, who accepted Banking, I got
Agriculture as the low man on the totem pole at the end of the
table. As I pointed out, and Bob and George will recognize
this, at one end of the table was Herman Talmadge and Jim
Eastland, often in a pillar of smoke that surrounded both of
them, and they conducted the business. Occasionally, when Bob
came in, he was senior enough to interject a thought, but in
essence, a lot was going on at the other end of the table. Pat
Leahy and I were at the far ends.
George McGovern and Hubert Humphrey were both members of
our committee, and, of course, this indicates the importance of
the Committee, likewise the importance that people saw in their
work in agriculture as they moved on to national leadership and
as leaders of their respective parties. So we are honored that
both are here.
I will ask Ambassador McGovern to testify first, to be
followed by Senator Dole, and then questions of the two of you.
Ambassador McGovern?
STATEMENT OF HON. GEORGE MCGOVERN, AMBASSADOR, FOOD AND
AGRICULTURE ORGANIZATION OF THE UNITED NATIONS, AND FORMER U.S.
SENATOR FROM SOUTH DAKOTA
Ambassador McGovern. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I
am not going to read my statement, but I would like to hand it
in.
The Chairman. It will be made a part of the record, and
that will be true of all the statements today so that each one
of you will know that.
Ambassador McGovern. Thank you very much.
I might say, Mr. Chairman, in connection with your comment
about lobbying my friend, Senator Dole, to get on this
committee, when I arrived here in 1962, I lobbied every
Democratic Member of the Senate to get on this committee, and I
noticed some of them smiled about my appeal. I discovered later
that of the eight new Senators who came here that year, I was
the only one who requested Agriculture, and three people on the
Committee requested to get off.
[Laughter.]
Ambassador McGovern. But I want to say that I have always
regarded it as the most important committee on which I served
during 18-years in the Senate. I was here on this committee
from the first day I arrived until the day I left, not entirely
a voluntary departure on my part, but I enjoyed it all. I think
it is a great committee. It embraces some of the most essential
concerns in our national life. And I am especially pleased to
be here with my long-time friend and colleague, Bob Dole. He
and I formed a bipartisan coalition when we were in the Senate
on matters that related to agriculture or related to food and
nutrition. And I think it is fair to say we led the way during
the decade of the 1970s in reforming and expanding the Food
Stamp program, the school lunch and school breakfast programs,
the WIC program, developing guidelines for the American people.
The reason we were so successful in that effort was not
only the content of the legislation that we pushed, but because
we did have a strong bipartisan base that embraced every member
of this committee and many other members of the Senate.
We have also both been Presidential contenders, and if Vice
President Gore and Governor Bush show any signs of slippage, we
are ready to take over again.
[Laughter.]
The Chairman. This is reassuring.
Ambassador McGovern. But today we want to talk about a
different vision. We virtually ended hunger in the United
States in the 1970s. There have been some slippage in that, as
you know, Mr. Chairman, in the 1980s and 1990s, and that in my
opinion ought to be corrected. It is embarrassing to me that we
have 31-million-Americans yet who don't have enough to eat. I
don't say that they are at the point of starvation, as is the
case with people abroad, but they don't have enough to eat, and
we need to correct that as we move forward on this
international scene.
Basically, what we are proposing--and we know this can't be
done overnight--is that the United States take the lead in the
United Nations agencies, most of which are located in Rome, as
far as this issue is concerned, to feed every day every school
child in the world, and hopefully through a WIC-type program,
do the same thing for preschool children and their pregnant and
nursing low-income mothers.
We think this is important because dollar for dollar it
would probably do more to raise conditions of life for people
in Third World countries than any other single thing we can do.
The Secretary of the Treasury, Mr. Summers, has said that
educating girls is the most important thing you can do in the
developing world dollar for dollar, and the best way to get
those girls into school, as it is with the boys, is to
establish a daily school lunch or school breakfast program.
What happens when such a program is started is that in a
comparatively short time, school enrollments double, academic
performance rises dramatically, and where you can measure it,
athletic performance improves. The overall health and capacity
to be an effective citizen improves when children have enough
to eat.
You mentioned, Mr. Chairman, that of the 300-million-needy-
school-aged boys and girls, 130 million of them don't go to
school at all. They are destined for a life of illiteracy. Most
of those are girls, those 130 million that are not in school,
and that is because of the favoritism towards boys and
discrimination against girls and women that exists in so much
of the Third World. But as the World Food Program can testify--
and we are going to hear from Catherine Bertini later on, the
brilliant American director of the World Food Program--they
have discovered that parents urge both boys and girls to go to
school if they can benefit from a school lunch. It takes off
some of the pressure on the food budget at home. It enables
boys and girls to become literature and knowledgeable. And, in
general, it is a very helpful investment.
One other point I wanted to make before I yield to Senator
Dole, Mr. Chairman, is that this program, like so many
humanitarian programs, also has a self-interest component as
far as the United States is concerned, and that is what it does
for American farm markets. Right now almost every farm crop is
in surplus. This program, as we envision it, and as the
President outlined it in Okinawa a few days ago, would call on
the Secretary of Agriculture to purchase farm produce that is
in surplus; that could range everywhere from Kansas wheat and
Iowa and South Dakota corn, to Indiana livestock and hogs, to
citrus fruits, cranberries, nuts, anything that is in surplus.
It would have the effect of bolstering those markets and
thereby bolstering farm income.
In a sense, a large part of this program would probably be
financed by the additional income of farmers who would be
paying more taxes in terms of the overall impact of the
program.
I think that is about all I need to say, Mr. Chairman, and
I want to say on behalf of Senator Dole that all those years
that we worked together in the Senate, I came to see a very
remarkable public servant. He was the first person I called on
this program after I got the idea in Rome. He said: Of course,
I will go along with it if it is fiscally sound and we can
figure out a satisfactory way to finance it, I will be there.
Governor Bush, whom I mentioned a while ago, has talked
about compassionate conservatives. This is one right here--
Senator Dole. He is a model of it, and I am pleased to yield to
him at this time.
[The prepared statement of Ambassador McGovern can be found
in the appendix on page 71.]
The Chairman. You are a great team.
Senator Dole. I am pleased to yield to the distinguished
Democratic leader.
The Chairman. We are delighted the leader is here, and I
will ask Senator Dole to testify, and if you would like to make
a comment, then that would be great.
Senator Dole. Do you want to go first?
Senator Daschle. No, Bob. I would rather hear you.
STATEMENT OF HON. BOB DOLE, FORMER U.S. SENATOR FROM KANSAS
Senator Dole. I will follow the advice of the Chairman--I
know you have a very busy morning, and a very busy today and
tomorrow, I guess--and ask that my statement be made part of
the record.
I want to also indicate, I think the Chairman in his
statement fully understands some of the problems and some of
the challenges and some of the questions that need to be
answered, and certainly Ambassador McGovern and I are here with
a program, but we understand that it has to be paid for. And I
think in fairness to the Committee, obviously, we would want to
work with the Committee or anybody we can work with to
determine how that can be done. And certainly you will hear
later from Catherine Bertini. This is a bipartisan program. She
served in the Bush administration and now is Director of the
World Food Program, has done an excellent job. You will hear
from others, and we will go back to, you know, Public Law 480,
which started in the Eisenhower administration. So there are
many reasons why we ought to be working together and why this
should not be, certainly is not and never should be a partisan
issue.
I don't think they could have any better champion than
George McGovern. He gives me credit for helping him over the
last 30-years in many food programs, and I did every time I
could. But I must say I realized how pressing the problem was
when Ambassador McGovern had field hearings all across America.
And we could see the poverty in America, and we could see the
young people going without food, without one meal a day. And
that certainly alerted me and I think alerted about every other
member of the Committee and some members, like Senator
Hollings, who is not on the Committee, to action. And it was
truly bipartisan and has been over the years.
I think during that time, as I recall, I think some people
questioned our motives, that we don't really believe this, that
we are doing this because he is from South Dakota and I am from
Kansas, and if we feed all these people, it makes the prices go
up for farmers. I mean, some people did question our motives.
I never looked at it that way, and I can't remember any
farmer every stopping me and saying, boy, I am glad you are
voting for all those programs that make the price of my product
go up. I don't think that ever happened.
But there are a number of reasons that this should be done
if we can work it out, and I commend the administration for the
$300 million pilot program, and I think that will give us a
good start.
But Ambassador McGovern is an expert in this. He is at the
Food and Agriculture Organization now. He has done an
outstanding job. He has dedicated his life to helping others,
and this is just one other indication. And if I can play some
small role in this effort, I would be happy to do that.
I would point out just one thing. I think everybody has the
facts. We are talking about the impact on 300-million-children,
and obviously, when anybody has a problem in the world, they
look to the United States first. And our generosity knows no
bounds. The American people, the Congress, we are spending the
people's money, but I think when we can establish the need for
a program and structure it in a way that is totally responsible
and answers some of the questions raised by Chairman Lugar,
then we are off to a good start.
So I am here in support of the concept. I am not certain we
have a program yet, but the concept to me makes a great deal of
sense, particularly, as Ambassador McGovern talked about, the
girls. There is discrimination in some of the Third World
countries when it comes to females, and they don't even have
the chance to learn to read or write because they don't go to
school. And as he pointed out, the facts indicate that just one
meal a day would double the participation of the number of
young people going to school in some of these countries. So
that in itself, the fact that they go there for the meal, but
they also have the education, I think would have a worldwide
impact.
So we are here together. We belong to this fraternity that,
unfortunately, not many people want to join. We both lost a
Presidential race, but we haven't lost our spirit and we
haven't lost what I hope is our diligence in looking at issues
and looking at problems.
Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Senator Dole can be foundin the
appendix on page 56.]
The Chairman. Well, we are grateful that both of you are
here with us, and we mentioned early on the purpose of having
this hearing, although it is late in the session, just to try
to bring some framework for the proposal so that those who are
involved in authorization, appropriations, and the
administration can put at least a fine point on this and move
things ahead.
I want to recognize the distinguished Ranking Member and
then the Democrat leader, in that order, for comments or
questions they may have. Senator Harkin?
STATEMENT OF HON. TOM HARKIN, A U.S. SENATOR FROM IOWA, RANKING
MEMBER, COMMITTEE ON AGRICULTURE, NUTRITION, AND FORESTRY
Senator Harkin. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I
apologize for being a little late. I want to thank you for
holding this hearing on an issue or an idea that you wonder why
we didn't do it before. It is one of things that come up and
you say, Why didn't we think of this before?
We have had the food. We have the surpluses. The need is
there. There are private voluntary organizations and others
that are in place that I think could handle this, and you
wonder why this hasn't really been a part of our multilateral
negotiations with some of the G-8 countries. I am told that you
mentioned in your remarks about what just happened in Okinawa.
So, to use a well-worn cliche, this is an idea whose time has
come.
I want to thank our former colleagues Senator Dole and
Ambassador McGovern for their leadership in this area, as it
has been their leadership going back for many years on feeding
programs, everything from WIC programs to school lunch, to
school breakfast, to meals for the elderly. These two men
sitting in front of us have provided the leadership for many
years, and I applaud you both for that.
The only thing I think about when I think of this
international school lunch program that we are talking about, I
hadn't really thought about it in its contextual framework, but
I have been doing a lot of work in the last few years on the
issue of child labor. And I have traveled to a number of
countries to look at child labor and what it takes to get these
kids out of these places and get them into schools. And one
place where we had a great success was in Bangladesh, and that
was with the International Program for the Elimination of Child
Labor under the ILO, the U.S. Government, the Bangladesh
Government. They were successful in getting about 8,000 or
9,000 kids, mostly girls, out of factories and into--well, what
they called school. We might not call it a school. A little
one-room place with a dirt floor, but at least they had a
teacher, they had materials, and they were learning to read and
write.
And it is interesting that when I was there--this is about
a year and a half ago--one of the big problems was the lack of
any food during the day. And they had a real need for that, and
maybe the kids would bring a piece of fruit or something with
them in the morning. And I never even thought about this as
being a part of the program, but I saw it as a real problem for
them in terms of getting a meal to these kids. And the person
in charge of these schools in Dhaka said to me that, gee, if we
just had some way of getting food to these kids, this would
really help bring them more into school.
So I see what you are talking about as also a way of
reducing the instance of child labor around the world, because
it will get these kids and it will get the families now--see,
we gave the families some money to help offset the loss of the
kids' wages. But if you did that and coupled that with a
nutritious meal, one that would provide them with their minimum
daily intake of vitamins and minerals, just think what that
would do to encourage families to get their kids out of the
workplace and into schools.
So I see it maybe from a new vantage point here that I
hadn't thought about before, and that is, what this would do to
help reduce the incidence of child labor around the world.
Again, I want to thank you both for your leadership in this
area, and I look forward to doing what we can to help promote
this idea and get it moving. We should have done it yesterday.
Thank you both.
The Chairman. Thank you, Senator Harkin.
Senator Daschle.
STATEMENT OF HON. TOM DASCHLE, A U.S. SENATOR FROM SOUTH DAKOTA
Senator Daschle. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I apologize for
being late. I had to host a breakfast meeting this morning for
our newest Senator, who will be sworn in today, Zell Miller.
And I am sorry to have missed George's testimony, but I read it
before, and I compliment both of you on your testimony this
morning.
Having heard Bob Dole remind us that we have two former
Presidential nominees before us today, I think it is evidence,
again, of the extraordinary leadership these two men have shown
this country in so many ways, but especially on the issue of
food and nutrition. These two overcame partisan bickering way
back when it existed when they were here and addressed the
skeptics and said we can have a school lunch program and we can
have a WIC program, and they proved to the country and to the
world that WIC and school lunch works. And they did it
overcoming objections within their own parties and all the
bitterness that comes sometimes with partisanship. They did it.
They are here to tell us that they feel in the heart of
hearts that they can extend this concept now internationally,
and I applaud them for their willingness to once again in this
Presidential period where, again, the acrimony is evidence,
that they would be here on a bipartisan basis once again to
show us the kind of leadership that they have shown us on so
many occasions means a lot to me personally. And I thank Bob
Dole and I thank George McGovern.
Stephen Ambrose is writing another book, and I am glad he
is writing it. He is writing about George McGovern's them way,
way back after bombing on 39 missions, turning right around
virtually the next day and dropping food on those same
locations that he bombed the day before. I am not sure when the
book is going to come out, but it goes to the heart of what
George McGovern is all about.
George McGovern has been working on food issues all of his
lifetime, from dropping food in places where they were bombed
to becoming Food for Peace Director, now working at the United
Nations, writing books. ``Ending World Hunger in Our Time'' is
a book that is about to come out, which simply says we can do
it in our lifetime by the year 2030.
And so I have had many luxuries and many wonderful
experiences and many things that I will look back on with great
pride, none of which will be more important to me than the fact
that I have had the opportunity to serve with Bob Dole and
George McGovern. And so I am grateful to them for showing us
the way again on a bipartisan way to provide us the kind of
real blueprint for ending world hunger.
George pointed out in his testimony that there are 300-
million-school-aged-kids around the country that don't have the
luxury of school lunch today. That is more than exist in this
entire country, more kids than there are people. I can't think
of a better marriage than taking the food we have got to the
kids who need it and doing something that we have already
demonstrated, and probably the biggest lab test ever to be
shown here in this country, a lab test that says when you
provide kids with a school lunch program it works. They learn.
They become students; they become active participants in
society. It works. It is one of the best investments we can
make. So I am grateful to them, and I am very, very pleased to
have had the opportunity to be here today as they present their
testimony, and I thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Thank you, Senator Daschle.
Senator Leahy.
STATEMENT OF HON. PATRICK J. LEAHY, A U.S. SENATOR FROM VERMONT
Senator Leahy. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. You know how much I
love this committee. It was the first assignment I requested
when I was elected to the U.S. Senate, and I have had the
privilege of serving on it for more than 25-years, and much of
that time with you, Mr. Chairman. And I have had the privilege
of being both Ranking Member and Chairman of this committee.
But I mention that long service because I remember--and I
believe it was my very first meeting--Hubert Humphrey took me
aside and he said, ``Patrick''--I can see Bob and George
smiling. You can almost hear him. He said, ``Patrick,'' he
says, ``we do a lot more than dairy farms on this committee, I
want you to know.'' And I said, ``Well, yes, Sir, I understand
that.'' I mean, I was 34-years-old, and I was getting the full
Hubert Humphrey treatment. And he said, ``We do a lot for
hungry people, and you just do whatever George McGovern and Bob
Dole tell you to, and you will be all right.''
[Laughter.]
Senator Leahy. And I have been doing that for 25-years, and
I have been all right on this one, Mr. Chairman.
But I remember that because I can think of so many times
that both of you would put together the coalition necessary to
move through everything from WIC to expansion of the School
Lunch Program to all the different major feeding programs,
Public Law 480, all the rest, and do it in a way that
conservatives and liberals and moderates could join together.
Hubert was right. The two of you had that soul of it. In
fact, when I became Chairman of the Committee, the first
meeting I did, I put the word ``nutrition'' back in there. And,
Bob, you may well recall at that meeting I mentioned both you
and George and what you have done.
This international school lunch initiative, what a
tremendous thing and how much it can help millions of children
worldwide. And the partnership we have here, Dan Glickman, the
Secretary, and Ambassador McGovern. I see my friend Cathy
Bertini, whom I have admired and worked with all these years,
the World Food Program; Senator Dole has such enormous
credibility on the Hill with both parties and the American Food
Service Association, Marshall Mats and all the rest.
I think of the strong partnerships with PVOs that can be
done, Save the Children, Catholic Relief. I see representatives
of Bread for the World here, others who have worked so long on
all of this. And I know that the American School Food Service
Association [ASFSA] has been working with nutrition leaders
from other countries through its going global program. In fact,
Cathy and Marshall, I think you had a number of delegates from
other countries at the National School Lunch Convention this
summer.
So these are moral issues. They are not Democrat or
Republican issues. They are really moral issues. Hunger is a
moral issue, especially for a country like ours that can easily
feed a quarter of a billion people and have food left over to
export all over the world. It becomes a moral issue.
I look at this chart here that shows every corner of the
world has undernourished children and families. So it is not
just childhood hunger. It is about education, which is critical
to reducing poverty and reaching poor countries alike. If you
don't do that, you are not going to have democracy. And if you
don't have democracy, we are going to continue to be fighting
these wars that leave people devastated.
Victor Hugo said that no army can withstand the strength of
an idea whose time has come. Well, the time has come for this
global school feeding initiative. I think you are going to find
some heavy, heavy support on the Hill, and I think it is going
to reflect the kind of things that Ambassador McGovern and
Senator Dole have done to make us all proud.
I would ask that my whole statement and the statement from
the G-8 issued in Okinawa be part of the record, Mr. Chairman.
And I applaud you because I can't think of a nutrition bill
that I have been involved with that you and Senator Harkin have
joined in, and, of course, Senator Daschle from his very first
days here in the Senate on this committee have helped us on
that. We have got half of South Dakota here with Tim Johnson
and Tom.
[Laughter.]
Senator Leahy. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Well, thank you very much, Senator Leahy.
Before you came in, I pointed out how remote the two of us were
from Herman Talmadge and Jim Eastland as we sat at the ends of
the table.
Senator Leahy. No cigar smoke.
The Chairman. We have confirmed that, but, likewise, I
appreciate the testimony of our colleagues. You are an
inspiration to our bipartisan instincts on this committee. And
I know that Senator Harkin and Senator Leahy and Senator
Daschle and Senator Johnson will be wonderful allies. I look
forward to trying to frame, as I stated in my opening
statement, something that gets us into legislation or into an
actual proposal, and that is the purpose of our coming here
today, to bring this down to the ground. And you have given us
a marvelous start.
Before I ask for any more questions of you, do either one
of you have statements stimulated by what you have heard from
this panel?
Senator Dole. With all these fine statements, I am thinking
about gearing up for the year 2004.
[Laughter.]
Senator Dole. I could use all these things in my brochure,
too.
Senator Leahy. You have got a good ticket right there.
Senator Dole. George might be my running mate.
The Chairman. Ambassador McGovern?
Ambassador McGovern. You are better at picking a Vice
Presidential----
[Laughter.]
Mr. Chairman, I want to express my thanks for what has been
an overwhelming response from the Committee. It doesn't really
surprise me because I think this is the kind of an idea that
will have a broad base of support in the Congress.
There were just a couple of points I wanted to add. I heard
that at the American Food Service Association annual convention
in St. Louis last week that a number of foreign countries were
there, including Japan and others, to find out how you set up a
model school lunch program. They gave us the tribute of being a
country that has a model school lunch program. I think it is
quite remarkable. Marshall Mats, who has been referred to here
earlier and is so well informed on these issues, told me about
this, and I think that is important for us to keep in mind,
that the eyes of the world are upon us. And there isn't
anything in my opinion the United States can do on the world
scene that would put us in better stead in the eyes of other
countries than to move ahead on feeding hungry children.
One other point. I neglected to say that when we look at
these 130-million-children are not in school, most of them
girls, the World Food Program has done some studies in half a
dozen different Third World countries, and they have found that
these illiterate girls have on the average of six children
apiece, whereas girls that have gone to school delay marriage
and practice a little greater measure of family responsibility.
They have on the average of 2.9 children, more than cut in
half, the birth rate. So to those experts who believe that to
get on top of the world hunger problem we need to do more on
the population explosion, as it has been called, the best way
you can do that is by educating girls.
This school lunch idea that Senator Dole and I are
proposing will do precisely that. It will bring the girls into
school. The mothers and fathers will see to it, whether they
have boys or girls or both, that they get to school if they can
get a nutritious meal. Senator Harkin referred to this problem
that he saw in Bangladesh. It is similar all across Asia,
Africa, Latin America, large parts of Eastern Europe, including
Russia.
So to whatever extent we bring youngsters into school,
especially the girls, we will have the best results in terms of
restraining population growth.
The Chairman. Well, we thank you both very, very much.
Senator Harkin. Mr. Chairman?
The Chairman. Senator Harkin?
Senator Harkin. A point of personal privilege before they
leave.
The Chairman. Of course.
Senator Harkin. And this has not to do with hunger or
nutrition, but this week marked the tenth anniversary of the
Americans with Disabilities Act, and we have had some great
celebrations over the last couple of days. Thousands of people
with disabilities and their families have been here in
Washington. And I just again wanted to say thank you to Senator
Dole for his strong leadership 10-years-ago in helping us get
through the Americans with Disabilities Act when he was
Majority Leader in the Senate and, again, Bob, for your strong
support over the last 10-years in making sure it wasn't chipped
away at. You were missed at a lot of the celebrations. I know
you were in another State celebrating. That is what I heard.
Senator Dole. I was in Columbus, Ohio. They had a big
celebration yesterday noon. It was really fantastic.
Senator Harkin. I heard you were there, but I just want you
to know that at all the celebrations here, with all these
thousands of people with disabilities, you were mentioned often
and praised highly, and well deserved. Thank you.
[Applause.]
Ambassador McGovern. Mr. Chairman, could I just add 10-
seconds here?
The Chairman. Yes, of course.
Ambassador McGovern. A key person in all of this will be
the Secretary of Agriculture. He is the man that is going to
have to decide what products are purchased and in what
quantities. I think we are very fortunate to have Dan Glickman
as Secretary of Agriculture. He has done a wonderful job, and I
think he will with this program.
The Chairman. We concur with that. Thank you very much for
that tribute.
The Chair would like to call now our colleagues Senator
Durbin and Senator McGovern to the table.
Gentlemen, I would just mention, because others have come
in since I started the hearing, that we would ask you to try to
summarize your comments in 5-minutes, and your full statements
will be made a part of the record, and we will ask Senators to
try to confine their questions to 5-minutes because of the busy
program on the Senate floor that will be involved in all of
this.
Senator Durbin.
STATEMENT OF HON. RICHARD J. DURBIN, A U.S. SENATOR FROM
ILLINOIS
Senator Durbin. Mr. Chairman, thank you for this hearing,
and, Senator Harkin and Senator Johnson, thank you for joining
in on this important day. To think that we would have two
giants of the Senate and of our Nation, Senator Bob Dole and
Ambassador George McGovern, come here and make this suggestion
today is an indication, I think, of the value of this concept.
And I don't need to sell it to any member of this committee
because each of you in your own way has contributed in your
public service toward this very value that we are exalting
today in the suggestion of this international school lunch
program.
I can tell you that when we had a luncheon just a few weeks
ago in the Senate dining room with Senators Dole and McGovern,
representatives from Senator Lugar and Senator Harkin,
Congressman McGovern, Congressman Tony Hall, and Secretary
Glickman, there wasn't a person who walked in that dining room
that didn't stop cold in their tracks and say, What are those
folks doing together? And the fact is that we have come
together on a bipartisan basis with an exciting concept to
address some real-world problems. Three-hundred-million-
children in the world who get up in the morning hungry and go
to bed at night hungry, that is more than the population of the
United States; 130 million of these children do not go to
school. If we can help feed these children and bring them to
school, as Ambassador McGovern has said, it will have a
dramatic impact not only on their lives but on the world.
Last January, I went to Sub-Saharan Africa and visited
South Africa and Kenya and Uganda. I went there to study food
issues and issues of microcredit. I was overwhelmed by the AIDS
epidemic. That is the overarching concern on that continent and
will be soon throughout the Third World. This program addresses
real-world concerns.
I met a lady in Uganda named Mary Nalongo Nassozzi. This is
a 63-year-old-widow. All of her children have died from AIDS.
She has created an orphanage in her home for her 16
grandchildren who are now living with her. Her backyard is
covered with stones and crosses to symbolize the children she
has lost to this epidemic.
We can't build enough orphanages to take care of 10-
million-AIDS-orphans in Sub-Saharan Africa. But we can help
people like Mary Nalongo who want to extend their family and
bring in their children, their grandchildren, their nephews and
their nieces. This program will help them because it gives, at
10-cents a meal, a child enough nutrition to go through the
better part of a day. That is a terrific investment, not only
in the future of those families but in the future of this
planet. And for my friends from Illinois or Indiana or Iowa or
South Dakota, and I am sure Vermont as well, we can say to them
that we are going to take the surplus of our bounty, a surplus
which is depressing farm prices, and invest it in people. I
think that will make a big difference in the world that we live
in.
I just want to close--and I want to thank you for your help
in this--by saying that today I will be introducing legislation
which I invite you all to join me on, which is an effort to
build on what the President suggested at the G-8 conference. I
talked to John Podesta before that conference, and I have been
in communication with the White House, and I am glad that they
have endorsed the basic concept that we are discussing. But
this program has to be available in the years when we may not
have surpluses to continue it. And the idea that I have
suggested is that money that is now in the EEP account that is
not being used could be used partially for this type of feeding
program so that we will have a source that we can turn to
regularly.
I hope you will consider this legislation and join me in
reallocating unspent EEP money to school feeding and other food
aid problems. When I look at all of the things that we disagree
on, on Capitol Hill, all of the bipartisan wrangling that goes
on, it is such a breath of fresh air to walk into this room and
see such a strong bipartisan sentiment in support of what is a
fundamentally sound concept that will make this a better world.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
[The prepared statement of Senator Durbin can be found in
the appendix on page 58.]
The Chairman. Well, thank you very much, Senator Durbin,
for your leadership in this.
Congressman McGovern.
STATEMENT OF HON. JAMES P. MCGOVERN, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM
MASSACHUSETTS
Congressman McGovern. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want
to thank you and the members of this committee for giving me an
opportunity to testify before you this morning. Your years of
service and leadership both on agriculture issues and on
foreign aid and humanitarian issues are admired not only by
your colleagues in the U.S. Senate but by many of us in the
United States House of Representatives. By holding the first
hearing to explore the importance of a universal school lunch
and WIC-type program, this committee once again demonstrates
that leadership, and I am very, very grateful.
In the House, I am happy to report a bipartisan movement is
growing in support of this initiative. Congresswoman Jo Ann
Emerson and Marcy Kaptur and Congressman Tony Hall and I
recently sent a bipartisan letter to President Clinton, signed
by 70 Members of the Congress, urging him to take leadership
within the international community on this proposal. And I am
attaching a copy of that letter testimony and ask that it be
part of the record of this hearing.
The Chairman. It will be part of the record.
Congressman McGovern. I also request that a letter from the
National Farmers Union outlining their support for this
initiative be entered into the record and a letter I just
received from Jim O'Shaughnessy, the vice president and general
counsel of Ocean Spray, be made part of the record. We grow a
lot of cranberries in Massachusetts, so this is very, very
important to Massachusetts.
I also want to join in commending the leadership of
Senators McGovern, Dole, and Durbin as well as Secretary of
Agriculture Glickman on this issue. It is really extraordinary
that this coalition has come together. And I probably should
say, since a number of people have asked me about whether I am
related to George McGovern, I wish I were. I worked for him as
an intern in the Senate and we are ideological soul mates, but
we are not related. He is one of my dearest friends.
A lady came up to me when I walked in here and said that
she has been a long-time and consistent supporter of my
father's, and I said to her----
[Laughter.]
Congressman McGovern. I said I appreciate that, my father
owns a liquor store in Worcester, Massachusetts. We appreciate
all your business.
[Laughter.]
Help put me through college.
Mr. Chairman, I don't want to repeat what has already been
expressed so eloquently and passionately by Ambassador
McGovern, Dole, and Durbin. So I will not reiterate the many
facts and statistics cited in support of this global school
feeding proposal. Instead, I would like to just take a couple
of minutes to state why I support this proposal and what I feel
we in Congress need to do to ensure its success.
Mr. Chairman, I believe the world moves on simple ideas.
The simple idea we are discussing this morning is also a big
idea. It is even more compelling in its potential to move us
closer to achieving many of our most important foreign policy
goals: reducing hunger, increasing and enhancing education in
developing countries, increasing education for girls, reducing
child labor, increasing opportunities for orphans of war or
disease, such as HIV/AIDS orphans, decreasing population, and
decreasing pressure on food resources and on the environment.
Clearly, our own prosperity, now and in the future, depends
in large part upon the stability and economic development of
Asia, Africa, Latin America, and Eastern Europe. This proposal
calls for substantial investment. But in the words of the
National Farmers Union, and I quote, ``The benefits to those
less fortunate than ourselves will be profound, while our own
investment will ultimately be returned many times over. The
international nutrition assistance program is morally,
politically and economically correct for this Nation and all
others who seek to improve mankind.''
I believe, Mr. Chairman, this simple idea might prove to be
the catalyst to a modern-day Marshall Plan for economic
development in the developing countries, an international
effort in which our farmers, our nonprofit development
organizations, and our foreign assistance play a significant
role.
To be successful, such an effort must be multilateral and
ensure that these programs become self-sustaining. However,
this initiative, like so many others before it, could also
fail, and it could fail because we in Congress fail to provide
sufficient funding. It could fail because we fail to make a
commitment of at least 10-years to secure its success. It could
fail because we fail to integrate this proposal into other
domestic and foreign policy priorities. And it could fail if we
decide to rob Peter to pay Paul, taking money from existing
foreign aid programs and undermining our overall development
strategy.
We need to understand from the beginning that we must fully
fund this program, both its food and its education components.
And we need to understand from the beginning that we are in
this for the long haul. We need to understand from the
beginning that support for this program requires, and, in fact,
it demands increasing U.S. aid for programs that strengthen
education, that promote local agriculture, and provide debt
relief.
Mr. Chairman, I know the politics of this project are not
simple, but just as Senators McGovern and Dole built a
bipartisan consensus in the past, I believe we can do the same
now. We don't need to reinvent the wheel to implement this
program. So much is already in place to move ahead on this
initiative. We already have a history of funding food aid and
food education programs. We already have successful
partnerships with U.S. NGOs to carry out these programs abroad
and at the community level. We also have established relations
with international hunger and education agencies, including the
Food Aid Convention, the World Food Program, UNICEF, and the
United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization.
We already have a successful history of collaborating with
our farmers to provide food aid, and we already have proven
mechanisms to prevent destabilizing domestic or international
markets.
And, quite frankly, Mr. Chairman, I would rather pay our
farmers to produce than watch them destroy their crops or pay
them not to produce at all.
I would like to add, in conclusion, that as we commit
ourselves to reducing hunger and expanding education for
children throughout the developing world, we must also commit
ourselves to eliminating hunger here at home. If we fully fund
existing domestic hunger programs, if we pass legislation such
as the Hunger Relief Act, then we can make sure that no adult
and no child in America goes hungry.
Mr. Chairman, if we fail to take action on these
initiatives now during a time of unprecedented prosperity, then
when will we? I believe we can and we must eliminate hunger
here at home and, at a minimum, reducing hunger among children
around the world. And I believe we can and we must expand our
efforts to bring the children of the world into the classroom.
And we need to make that commitment now, and I hope that you
and members of your committee will lead the way.
Senator Durbin has legislation, and we will be happy to
work with this committee to draft legislation that could serve
as the underpinning for this program now and in the future, and
I thank you for the opportunity to be here.
[The prepared statement of Congressman McGovern can be
found in the appendix on page 63.]
The Chairman. Well, we thank you very much for your
testimony. Let me just say apropos of the comment that Senator
Dole and Ambassador McGovern were making about the late Hubert
Humphrey. This committee does lots of things. Sometimes we are
accused of dealing in foreign policy, energy policy, all sorts
of policy, and so we don't lack ambition. But our thought here
today is to try--and our next witness is the Secretary; Ms.
Bertini will probably draw a finer point on this--specifically
what kind of an outline or framework, even given all the NGOs,
the other people that are doing things like this around the
world, how we frame this in a way that our colleagues can
understand it and our constituents can understand it. And both
of you will be very important in that quest because we will
have to finally explain to the Budget Committee, and one reason
why we are having the hearing now, even though we are in the
waning stages, perhaps, of this Congress, is that the Budget
Committee will be meeting pretty early in the next one, you
know, maybe long before all of us gear up with our new
committee assignments, whether it is authorization or
appropriations. So we will need to have some idea of what the
ambitions are there.
This year, for example, this committee asked Senator
Domenici to try to set aside money which we thought would be
required for farmers' income in this country as opposed to
having an emergency at the end of the trail and really to plug
that money in. One of the problems with the Hunger Relief Act
is that money was not plugged in. We are sort of dealing
outside the box there, and we want to be inside the box if we
are serious about this proposal, as we are.
So I am trying to get anecdotal information from people
like our colleague Senator Frist, who has been in Sudan, parts
that have not been seen by any other public servant, as well as
other places in Africa. All of you have traveled extensively
there and know the infrastructure problems in a single country
of having anything that approaches the model that has been
suggested in terms of our school lunches and the audit trail of
how the food got there and who got it and who politically
appropriated it for what purpose.
So all of this is a part of the hearing process, but a part
of our learning process on this committee and with our
colleagues in the House and Senate.
Senator Durbin. Mr. Chairman, may I respond to that very
quickly?
The Chairman. Yes, of course.
Senator Durbin. I would just say I totally concur, as I am
sure Congressman McGovern does. I think the American people are
caring and compassionate, but they don't want to think that
they are shoveling money down a rat hole, that it is going into
some sort of an expenditure that isn't accountable, that it
doesn't really help people around the world. And I think that
is part of our responsibility, too, not only to have the right
humanitarian concern, not only for our farmers but for people
overseas, but to say to the taxpayers of this country this is
going to be done in a way that you will be proud of it.
The Chairman. Yes, and that they can follow and applaud.
Senator Johnson?
Senator Johnson. I think given the time constraints that we
have--I appreciate the insights that Senator Durbin and
Congressman McGovern have afforded us here this morning on what
I think ought to be a very high priority for our Nation. I know
Secretary Glickman is here, and I know that we have an
obligation on the floor, and so I will withhold questions that
I otherwise would ask.
The Chairman. Thank you very much.
Senator Leahy?
Senator Leahy. I have nothing further to add. Thank you,
Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Thank you very much for coming. We appreciate
it.
The Chair would like to recognize now the Honorable Dan
Glickman, Secretary of the Department of Agriculture, and the
Honorable Catherine Bertini, executive director of the World
Food Program.
Secretary Glickman, it is always a privilege for this
committee to have you before us. We look forward to these
meetings, and especially on this subject today on which you
have already given leadership in your career as a Member of the
House of Representatives and as Secretary of Agriculture.
Ms. Bertini, we are delighted that you are here again. You
have added grace and wisdom to our hearings on many occasions,
and we look forward to this one.
Secretary Glickman, would you proceed?
STATEMENT OF HON. DAN GLICKMAN, SECRETARY, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF
AGRICULTURE, WASHINGTON, DC.
Secretary Glickman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Senator
Johnson, Senator Leahy. It is an honor to be here. I watched
with a certain degree of nostalgia the witnesses, Ambassador
McGovern and Senator Dole, both of whom we have all known for
so long. I recall my old days in Kansas when periodically I
used to spar with Senator Dole, but at the same time recognized
it was all political, never personal. And what great leaders
both of them are and how an idea germinates from those two
people can take hold and maybe change the world. So I thought
that it was a particularly poignant moment.
I want to thank Cathy Bertini, who has done an outstanding
job at the World Food Program. She, of course, at one point in
her life worked at the United States Department of Agriculture
in a senior position, so she has got a great perspective.
I also want to recognize the team who are here at USDA: Gus
Schumacher, Richard Fritz, Mary Chambliss, and others. They are
the ones who will run these programs, and they are, at least
from the Government's perspective, working with the PVO
community and the World Food Program, and so their input is
going to be very critical in making sure that these programs
are run very well.
Let me just say a couple things. The FAO has just come out
with a study which indicates that world hunger is continuing
despite increased food supplies. Even in 15-years, there could
still be about 600-million-people suffering from chronic
undernourishment, the FAO said, and that is in a recent FAO
study. So, you know, the problems remain, in certain parts of
the world are unabated.
Last year, the United States provided 10-million-metric-
tons of food aid, a record high. Just last week, I announced a
350,000-metric-ton donation to Africa worth about $145 million.
The total donations for Africa this year are about 1-million-
metric-tons of food. So, you know, we are trying to do what we
can to get food to that part of the world.
Tomorrow night I leave for an 8-day trip for Africa, my
first trip ever to Africa. I have been to South Africa but
never into the areas dealing with hunger. I am going to go to
Nigeria, to Kenya, and South Africa with a USDA team largely to
focus on food aid, food assistance, together with other
economic and trade relationships with Africa, between Africa
and the United States. I think it is an extremely important
time to be there, to be on the ground looking at these issues.
I am not going to repeat all the objectives which you have
heard about this program other than to state that they are
overall attempting to improve democratic participation through
an enhanced and improved economy and everything that that
relates to in the parts of the world that have been suffering.
I would make a couple of comments. What is USDA's role in
all of this? We will have several roles in managing this
initiative.
First, the funding will come from the Commodity Credit
Corporation under the oversight of this committee.
Second, FAS, the Foreign Agriculture Service, and USDA
staff will administer, including monitoring and evaluating the
program, building on their extensive experience in food
assistance. And that is where we are very lucky to have the
team of Fritz and Chambliss and others who have great,
extensive, long-term experience in food assistance.
Third of all, the Farm Service Agency, which, of course,
manages our farm programs, will purchase the needed commodities
to assure their delivery to the recipient countries.
And, fourth, we will pool our resources at both USDA and
around the Government to support this initiative. For example,
the Food and Nutrition Service, that is the part of USDA that
manages the National School Lunch Program. They also manage the
Women, Infant and Children Program, all the feeding programs.
Their expertise is very great in terms of how you establish
these kinds of programs, and, again, working with the Agency
for International Development, who are already on the ground
operating some sorts of programs like these. Their expertise
will be critical as well, and I am sure there are other
Government agencies involved.
You will have significant roles in both the PVO community
and the World Food Program. Cathy will talk about that, but we
anticipate the World Food Program will expand on its programs
to work with host governments and private voluntary
organizations to support the countries' efforts to improve
nutrition in schools.
The World Food Program will receive agricultural
commodities from the United States and feed them to needy
school children. They will also serve as a central point
between the U.S. and other donors.
The PVO community, which is critical in making these
programs work, we will have an extensive relationship. USDA
will accept proposals from the private voluntary community to
participate. The PVOs may choose to work directly with the USDA
on a country program or as partners with USDA or as partners
with the World Food Program as well. This thing has a great
degree of flexibility, but recognizing that it is people on the
ground in these countries who will ultimately decide how it is
done and whether it will work or not.
This initiative is a pilot program, a cooperative effort
between the World Food Program and PVO communities. We estimate
$300 million is the beginning for the commodities and for the
transporting of those commodities.
It will be coordinated through the existing Food Assistance
Policy Council, which is chaired by USDA. We will use the
authority of the Commodity Credit Corporation Charter Act to
purchase surplus commodities and the authority of 416(b) which
provides for overseas donations.
The commodities most suitable for the initiative? Well,
this could change in the future, but clearly, soybeans, corn,
wheat, rice, nonfat dry milk would be among the major
commodities. But as you--it was talked about before. I was also
at the American Food School Service convention and met with
some people from overseas. They are interested in a lot of
things beyond just the commodities. They are interested in the
techniques of cooking, of heating, of chilling, of
transporting, and of actually doing the logistics of putting
food packages together, which we could also help them as well.
Countries will be chosen based on their need, their
contribution of resources, their commitment to expand access to
basic education, their current infrastructure and ability to
deliver food to schools, their commitment to assuming
responsibility for operating the program within a reasonable
time frame, and their endeavor towards democratic
transformation as well. I mean, there are a lot of pieces that
go into this. It is not just a food assistance program, as you
can see. It is a development assistance program with a heavy
education component to it.
We will be careful not to displace commercial sales. That
is something that Congress has, you know, warned us on before.
There will be, however, a monetization aspect of this. Some of
the commodities, as we do in most of our food assistance, may
be monetized, may be sold to fund other food on the ground and
administrative costs. This is something that we will have to
carefully develop as part of the proposals. We do this in
various parts of the world, and it has worked out very
successfully.
The proceeds from the sales could also be used to manage
the programs, could be used to buy local foodstuffs that may be
more appropriate for local tastes, or for the school meals
program or buying equipment, paying storage, this kind of
thing. It is very interesting. As a result of this discussion,
I had a conversation with the head of the Export-Import Bank
who told me they have the ability to finance longer-term
purchases of services or equipment, even at low levels--you
don't have to buy multi-billion-dollar things--that might be of
assistance to foreign governments as they enter into these
programs: storage, heating, chilling, all those kinds of
things.
So this is a program that may give us kind of a catalyst to
try to develop more of a feeding infrastructure in some of
these countries as well.
Let me just close by again thanking the PVO community. I
met with them yesterday, all the organizations that you can
imagine. Working with the World Food Programs, they are the
ones to make sure that these programs work and that we try to
deal with the incredible chronic problems of hunger in the
developing nations.
Finally, let me just say something else, too, because I was
watching Dole and McGovern here and thinking to myself--and I
think you are in this same role, Mr. Chairman, as well. The
U.S. has been the leader since the Second World War in
virtually every humanitarian assistance project in the world.
We are at the forefront. Others follow. Some argue we are not
doing as much now as we should, and I happen to think that we
could be doing more. But we are basically the intellectual and
moral, spiritual leader of trying to help the rest of the world
bring itself up to greater levels of economic and basic
subsistence and beyond that.
This project personalizes a lot of our food assistance a
little more. It is not intended to replace the general level of
food assistance we are providing. But what it does is it gives
a little tie to people's lives, that the food assistance will
be tied to something else that will affect their lives
profoundly, and that is, the ability to become educated, and
tying those two things together can have a profound effect on
the future of their lives as well as democracy in their
countries.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
[The prepared statement of Secretary Glickman can be found
in the appendix on page 74.]
The Chairman. Well, thank you very much, Mr. Secretary.
Ms. Bertini.
STATEMENT OF CATHERINE BERTINI, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, WORLD FOOD
PROGRAM, ROME ITALY
Ms. Bertini. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. It is very
exciting to be here today on a day that I think we will look
back to know as the kick-off for a program that can not only
make a difference in millions of lives but save millions of
lives and help millions of people in developing countries, help
their communities and their countries become strong
economically, and that certainly will be a great tribute to
this program, to the grand idea of someone who thinks very big,
Ambassador McGovern, and to the strong bipartisan support from
people who know about nutrition issues and how important child
nutrition is, that being you, Mr. Chairman, and the members of
the Committee who have been so supportive of these issues in
the past, and the strong jump-start from this administration
who have come forward to say we are ready, here we are with a
very significant initial contribution to the program. So,
Secretary Glickman, thank you for that, and I think all people
involved have helped to make this strong, quick, and
bipartisan. And that certainly, as has been pointed out, is the
tradition of this committee, and fortunately for the nutrition
programs, both domestic and international, a tradition for the
support of hungry children in the United States and
malnourished children throughout the world.
The concept, as Senator Dole said, of school feeding for
all is a very exciting concept, and it is one where we can make
a very, very serious difference. And, you know, when we think
about the history and some of the success in the United States,
I think back to the school breakfast program during my time at
USDA and the research that was done at the time which showed
that children who had access to breakfast at school showed less
absenteeism, less tardiness. They paid more attention in class.
They got higher test scores. And this was as a result primarily
of the fact that they had breakfast at school.
If we take that basic concept and expand it throughout the
world, we are talking about the idea that children who, when
they come to school, have some kind of food, that this will
make a huge difference in the areas I just described, but also
even in getting children to school. And we have seen this, as
Senator McGovern said before, we have seen this over and over
again in our programs. When we put in a school feeding program
where there hasn't been one before, we almost routinely see at
least 100-percent increase in the number of children who are
going to school. And in places where the girls are much less
likely to go to school, it is usually an even higher increase
in the number of girls who go to school. And this is very
significant for the reasons that have been pointed out before.
I must say also that Secretary-General Kofi Annan has
recently announced an initiative for girls education worldwide,
and he did this at the Education for All Conference in Dakar,
where he said we must all band together to do more to get more
girls in school, because it probably is the single most
important development input that we could make to affect the
rest of the country over the long term. So that aspect of this
program is absolutely significant.
We have seen so many success stories, not just in getting
children to school but in developing an infrastructure in a
country where one has not existed before. And I would like to
cite in that case the small country of Bhutan, where recently I
met with an official from that government who was about 45-
years-old, and he told me that he had gone to school and he was
now able to participate in the workings of his country, but his
sister, only 5-years older than he, had not. And the reason, he
said, was ``because the World Food Program came in in between
my sister's school years and my school years and provided
school feeding in the schools. And since we live in a
mountainous area where it is difficult to get to the school,
parents weren't going to send their children unless they were
going to be able to eat. So I have an education, but the people
just 5-years older than me have not.''
That is the kind of difference I think school feeding can
make, and over and over again those are the kinds of stories
that we hear.
When we talk about this vision that Ambassador McGovern
created, I think we talk about three aspects of it. First is
the advocacy, that it is important for every child to have a
meal at school, that is something that we all must be
advocating worldwide. It is something that is not necessarily
needing to be funded because it could be countries that could
well afford to do it but may not appreciate all the reasons why
this is important. So, first, to me, we are talking about
advocacy.
Second, we are talking about providing technical assistance
because, again, some countries may have the resources or some
of the resources, but they don't have the right technical
skills. And there is a great wealth of technical resources, as
has been pointed out already, here in the United States and
also, I should say, in other countries where school feeding are
strong programs.
But to give an example, the people at the Food and
Nutrition Service, they have been running school lunch and
breakfast programs for years and years, yes, in the United
States where everything is not necessarily replicable to a
developing country, but their expertise could be extremely
useful to the World Food Program, to the NGOs, and ultimately
to other countries as well.
The expertise of an organization like the ASFSA, who has
been mentioned several places here before, we have talked to
members and the leadership of ASFSA about this program and the
prospect of using some of their people who have been experts in
setting up school lunch programs in their own communities to be
able to share that expertise elsewhere.
And I can point to a seminar that the World Food Program
held last December in Colombia where we invited all the
Ministers of Education of South American countries, and almost
all countries were represented. Most countries do have school
feeding in South America. And we also invited experts, Spanish-
speaking experts, from ASFSA, and what happened was a new
understanding of some of the kind of things that networking and
expertise from other countries such as the U.S. could bring.
And as a result, the countries who were at the meeting in South
America are now aggressively organizing the ways in which they
can network among themselves and with the expertise available
from the U.S. These are some of the kinds of things I think
could be extremely useful as we continue down this road.
Then, finally, of course, the major piece of this whole
idea is the provision of food assistance and technical
expertise to help countries to be able to put in school feeding
projects. And I think that when we proceed in this way, we have
to be careful in order to be sure that countries meet, for
instance, the objectives that Secretary Glickman outlined, but
we also have to follow up to ensure that the countries will
make a commitment to running these programs over the long term
themselves, because if they do not, it is not necessarily
effective for us to go in with an open-ended program but,
rather, we need to be organizing with countries a time-limited
program and find an agreement with the countries up front that
they will take over managing this program after a certain
amount of years, and with that understanding it could proceed.
We have found that when we do talk about these countries,
we, again, talk about several different kinds of countries:
OECD countries who we hope will be contributors, but who also
we should talk with about their own programs and whether or not
there is any need to look at them; relatively well off
developing countries who would receive just only perhaps a
small amount of technical assistance; middle-income countries
where we would be talking about the prospect of food
commodities, technical assistance, perhaps equipment; and then
lower-income countries where, of course, the needs are far
greater for all aspects of the school feeding program.
We do have to demand accountability. We have to build that
into the system from the beginning where we--we, the World Food
Program, the PVOs, whomever--can be accountable to the donor,
the U.S. Government, for how the food is distributed and who
receives it and the process in which it is managed.
If I can say also, when we look at the World Food Program,
it has been mentioned many times today, I know you know WFP
well, but in my formal testimony that you will have in the
record, we talk about the number of people WFP served, for
instance, last year 89-million-people. Over 11 million were
children in school. In over 50 countries we were serving
children in school. We, of course, have a large logistics base
so that base has been very important because we have been able
to move food and other commodities for our sister UN agencies
as well as NGOs and, of course, the food provided through our
own program.
We work with about 1,200 nongovernmental organizations
throughout the world, and we have very close partnerships with
major American PVOs, many of whom we have a memorandum of
understanding outlining how the two of us--or each of us can
work together in order to try to support the work done in
developing countries by our teams.
We have the advantage, as was mentioned before by the
Secretary, of working with other donors through the board of
WFP. Our board is made up of 36 member governments, including
the United States, and they approve the development and the
refugee projects in which we are involved.
We have had great flexibility in the tonnages that have
come forward to WFP over the years, and we have been able to
shift our program accordingly when we have a lot of food 1-year
that we didn't have the year before, or, conversely,
unfortunately, some years when we don't have enough, and we
have been able to make those changes accordingly.
Accountability is a very important issue for us, this issue
that you mentioned, Mr. Chairman, and we put a high priority on
it. In fact, I established the office of an inspector general
about 5-years ago who is very aggressive in terms of ensuring
that our food and other resources go to where it is intended to
go.
We would hope in this initiative to work with other
partners in addition to the PVO community, in particular UNESCO
from whom we get educational advice and expertise; UNICEF, who
is very involved with programs for children throughout the
world; and the United Nations University nutrition experts who
have already offered to provide help, as well as technical
expertise, as I mentioned, from other entities as well.
I would be glad to go into more detail on these issues, but
I want to close by saying, again, how exciting this prospect
is, that we are actually at the beginning of launching a
program where every child in the world could have food at
school. It will make a major impact on the number of children
in school and on their well-being and economic development of
all of the countries of the world.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Bertini can be found in the
appendix on page 81.]
The Chairman. Well, I thank both of you for very detailed
statements, and your presentations will be made a full part of
the record, the text as well as your oral testimony.
Let me just start, Secretary Glickman, by mentioning that
on pages 4 and 5 of your testimony, you mention that in the
United States the program will be coordinated through the
existing interagency Food Assistance Policy Council, which is
chaired by USDA but includes representatives from USAID, the
Department of State, the Office of Management and Budget--OMB.
This group has a very important responsibility because in a
way, just to get to the nitty-gritty of the problem, you are
going to be discussing which countries are the most likely
candidates. So right off the bat, some decisions that are
rather fateful, at least, are going to be made by this group,
and the criteria that you have listed on page 5 are their need
but also their contribution of resources, their commitment to
expanding access to basic education.
So at this point now we move sort of beyond the nutrition
situation to a very important policy commitment. Of course,
Senator McGovern earlier on and both of you have talked about
the girls coming into these schools and the basic changes
really in the life of those countries could come from that. But
that is a very important criteria which perhaps will be acceded
to by other countries happily, maybe some resistance, I don't
know.
But, second, you move beyond that to the program has to
have a reasonable time frame, which is true, because
essentially these programs in terms of our policies, our
appropriations and decisionmaking, are sort of year by year. We
need to know, somebody who has some hope of making this work in
a year or two or three, as the case may be, their current
infrastructure, including ability to deliver food to schools,
which in some cases may be very sparse, these resources. And
yet at the same time, on the one hand, of course, we are trying
to help them stimulate the boosting of those resources, maybe
through some of these PVOs or other organizations even
providing some of this infrastructure, as well as the technical
assistance that you mentioned even with the Japanese, the
thought of how do you package the food, how do you cook the
food. Technically, how do you provide, as we heard from other
hearings, the food safety aspect so that we do not have a very
severe problem in which we are perpetrators or create problems
in another country?
Then you added also beyond your text, Secretary Glickman,
the idea of democracy or sort of their general outlook toward
how people are treated, human rights, which is another criteria
or set of criteria beyond that. So I see some heavy lifting by
this policy group right at the outset, and I am wondering just
from your first cut at this problem, let's say that we try to
formulate a resolution, a piece of legislation or something
that gives you some support. You can do a lot of this, perhaps,
administratively and so that would be helpful, of course. But
to the extent that you can't, how do you suspect you are going
to go about determining, for example, in year one or even year
one and two, how many countries, how many make the cut with all
of these criteria. And then as we take a look at that
situation, we come back into this overall theme that Senators
McGovern and Dole brought forward, namely, 300-million-children
in the world. But as Ms. Bertini has pointed out in her
testimony, with 50 countries being served now by the World Food
Program, 11-million-children, as I recall her testimony, that
is a good number and a lot of countries already. So we have
some experience with this, but obviously 11 is not 300 and I am
sort of curious as we begin to frame this issue what increments
we move in or do you envision--someone said a 10-year plan, but
if so, what does it look like in, say, years one, two, three.
Then, finally, just to add to your burden of answering this
question, Ms. Bertini has said there are 50 countries involved
in some sort of feeding of 11-million-children, 89-million-
people all together, I guess. But who does this international
diplomacy of inviting others to help or negotiating really the
allocation of who does what?
Now, obviously, in a program of this sort, we would have
confidence in the Congress; you would have confidence in USDA,
if USDA were doing it. You would have some accountability all
the way through the process, and we could ask you to come to
the Committee, ask Ms. Bertini to come, and say how did it work
out, and you can report this.
But now you have 36 countries, 50 countries, whatever the
groupings that you have mentioned, Ms. Bertini, in this. You
are over in Rome. Obviously, the American taxpayer would say
what are the other countries doing. So, on the one hand, why,
we want to make sure everybody is doing their fair share, but
then when you come to accountability, that is, who actually is
doing this.
Now, in other fora, we get into problems like Kosovo, for
example, presently where it is not clear, given four zones, or
maybe even a fifth involving the Russians, and the UN, but the
UN, poverty stricken for resources most of the time. Who does
what in this proposition, and particularly if it is to be a
sustained situation that goes through several Congresses,
several administrations, with some credibility all the way
through?
This is a heavy load for one question, but these are the
sorts of things that we want to grapple with because this is
going to change the situation from something that is a
remarkable idea to something that might happen in some form
that we would recognize.
Secretary Glickman. That is a fair amount of challenges you
have just given me. Let me just make a couple of comments. One
is that I think we can do much of this administratively, but I
personally believe that legislation will ultimately be
necessary to create a model to give this any long-term legs.
Just simple things, for example, like Cathy mentioned how the
Food Nutrition Services run school lunch programs and related
things, but I am not sure they have a lot of legal authority to
go help people around the world set up their lunch programs.
And so I can think of many things in which you would need
to provide some resources, for example, in the transportation
side that you cannot do right now. There are a variety of
things that I think would have to be dealt with legislatively
if you want to make this program a real success.
Second of all, you know, the President did bring this idea
forward in the G-8 in Okinawa, and he talked with those folks
who were there, and there was a general interest in what he
talked about. He talked with Tony Blair, the Japanese, and
others, particularly about this effort and how this could not
be a unilateral United States effort, although we have probably
more experience than anybody else in the world running this
kind of a program.
The third I would say is that some of these issues have
been raised ever since we started food assistance programs. We,
of course, have an interagency task force that disposes of
millions of tons of surplus food every year in the
international arena, so we have an infrastructure which we
currently do to do that already. And a lot of the same
questions you asked are relevant to--for example, all the
assistance to Russia, which was extremely complicated,
oversight, accountability, how was the money spent, how are
proceeds monetized, all those kinds of things are things that
we have been doing with respect to those other food donation
issues. Generally speaking, it is a multidisciplinary effort in
the Government, but, by and large, USDA has taken the
leadership role in putting these things together, which we
would expect we would continue to do because most of the
funding would come out of the Commodity Credit Corporation
account.
Richard Fritz runs the Commodity Credit Corporation and has
great experience in this area. I think it would be worthwhile
to hear his perspective on this.
The Chairman. Mr. Fritz?
Mr. Fritz. Thank you, Senator. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Basically, we can run this program with existing authority;
however, I think it could run better and smoother if we could
change some of the parameters of the number of programs that we
have to work in, including providing some international
authorities for groups like the Food and Nutrition Service of
USDA.
I think the Secretary has laid it out well on how the Food
Assistance Policy Council works. The official members are those
that you mentioned, but very often other parts of the U.S.
Government come and attend those meetings and have their inputs
from a variety of views.
This is certainly a work in process. We had one meeting
with the PVOs yesterday. We will continue those meetings in
August. We are meeting with the staff of your committee, and we
will be looking at countries basically on what they can
provide. Obviously, those that are well-off will have shorter
graduation time periods than those who are less well-off and
can provide the infrastructure necessary to deliver a preschool
and school feeding program.
So we have a lot of work to do ahead of us, and we will be
working with you and the community to make sure that this is a
successful program.
The Chairman. Well, I appreciate both of your responses. It
just occurs to me--and it is appropriate that Senator Cochran
is here because he is the Chairman of the Appropriation
Committee for Agriculture. At some point, let's say you handle
it all in-house and you suggested legislation might be useful
for longevity of this program, but maybe you would say for the
first year we have got to get this thing off the ground.
Now, this has to appear somewhere probably in your budget
submission, whether it is $750 million or a more modest sum.
And then this raises some questions of competing interest in
the USDA budget which are not inconsequential. You face these
all the time. Here is something probably over and beyond
anything you have requested before from the Department, and
that comes up pretty soon. I mentioned the Budget Committee
starting right off the bat in January, and Senator Cochran and
his group coming right after them as the appropriators.
So the reason I am raising these questions now is that the
time frame of this doesn't exactly fit. We have national
elections going on. We have an interim period. We have Congress
being sworn in, committees and all the rest of it, and a new
administration, either Mr. Gore or Mr. Bush, who may or may not
share all of what we have been thinking about today, but could
maybe be brought up to speed by some of us.
So I am sort of requesting some idea of the money that is
going to be required, anticipating that even though there is
enthusiasm in this room for what we are doing here, we have
hearings every day of groups that come here. We had sugar
people yesterday, for example.
Secretary Glickman. I have heard of that issue.
The Chairman. A very different sort of meeting.
[Laughter.]
And it was just as large a crowd. But we will have others,
all of whom have requirements.
Now, what I am also suggesting probably is that the
construct that both of you have committed of some legislation
that makes this a permanent entity or some rules of the road,
if we are to have some hope of this being a multi-year thing is
probably required. Without getting into a lot of stories that
are totally not related, but in a way, the School Lunch Program
comes to mind here in this country.
You know, in 1995 and 1996, there was a movement that was
fairly substantial to change the character of the American
school lunch program. One was on the books, and it said it was
universal, it applies to all 50 States. A child in the United
States is a child in the United States, not in Indiana or Ohio
or what have you. There were other Members of Congress with
very strong motivation and idealism who said in a Federal
system Ohio ought to run its own program and have criteria, or
Illinois, or what have you.
Now, I took the position--and ultimately that was the one
that prevailed because I would not sign the conference report
and, therefore, the change couldn't be made--that we would have
a universal program, that a child was defenseless, could not
move from State to State to take advantage of who had a program
here or didn't somewhere else.
But if we had not had a framework that was there already of
a universal program, we might have been in some trouble.
Administratively, whoever was Secretary of Agriculture then, or
whoever, might have decided let's try a pilot project or let's
try something else. And this is what I anticipate with this
program. If there are not pretty good criteria as to who is
selected, who runs it, all the way through, that may be amended
by other Congresses. But at least there is a structure there
that was not something being handled day by day even by people
as competent as yourselves at USDA.
So that is just sort of an editorial comment, but a concern
that I hope that you share.
Secretary Glickman. I do. And let me just say this: You
know, I think that we can start this program administratively
through the surplus removal authority under the Commodity
Credit Corporation Charter Act. We would have to get an
allocation, an apportionment in the Office of Management and
Budget to do it. But anything longer term will really require,
if not a legislative solution, some sort of approval process
from the Congress. And in addition to that, we probably can't
run this program over the long term very effectively without
additional infrastructure ourselves.
For example, we tripled food aid donations last year with
actually less staff than we had 5-years-ago, 10-years-ago, 15-
years-ago. And if the United States is going to assert its role
in trying to deal with these humanitarian issues in the world,
you have got to have the domestic infrastructure to deal with
it. And, quite frankly, it is real thing right now.
So if our ideas aren't met with a way to accomplish these
objectives, it is not going to be very successful. I agree with
you there.
The Chairman. And it is a remarkable idea, as everybody has
commented, because in terms of our own humanitarian interests,
but likewise our own foreign policy, if the infrastructure is
done right, if we are thoughtful about the cooking, the
packaging, how you do a model school lunch program around the
world, this is an extraordinary American influence that comes
into the grassroots of all sorts of places.
Secretary Glickman. If I just might, not so much a point of
personal privilege, I am not going to do what Senator Harkin
did, but Mr. Schumacher was in Indonesia, and I would just like
to have him tell you just briefly what we have done with milk
product there in the schools and how it affects people's lives.
And it is the U.S. that is doing it. It is largely done through
some PVOs, I think.
Mr. Schumacher. Very briefly, Senator, I was out there a
few months ago. With 6,000 tons of reconstituted milk powder
that we donated, they are now feeding 600,000 children every
day. We are going to be doing 60-million-little-cartons of milk
that cost 10-cents each, UHT, and it has worked very, very
well.
In addition, we are providing rice to school children who,
because of the crisis, dropped out of school because they have
to go to work, regarding Senator Harkin's concerns. And the
rice is provided through the school teachers to bring those
school children back into school; 900,000 children are
benefiting from that program. And this is the product of
American dairy farmers and American rice farmers, and it is
working very well.
The World Food Program is very active in the rice. In the
inner city, we were in garbage dumps that people are picking
rags, and the local private voluntary organizations from local
universities were brought in by Cathy's people, blue hats, and
they are energizing people who are little bit better off to
help people who are a little bit worse off. It is working very
well. I think American farmers should be proud of that.
The Chairman. Well, that is remarkable testimony. It just
occurs to me that members of this committee, probably even a
broader group, need to have at least a map of the world or some
matrix to know really the things we are doing now to sort of
fill in that background. Listening to all of this, I am sure we
all understand the poverty of our own knowledge about what
America is doing.
Senator Cochran.
STATEMENT OF HON. THAD COCHRAN, A U.S. SENATOR FROM MISSISSIPPI
Senator Cochran. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much. I am
glad to have a chance to come over and find out what this is
all about. I looked at the notebook that my staff members had
prepared in preparation for this hearing, and I was interested
to see that not only was Ambassador George McGovern going to be
here this morning and Senator Bob Dole and other colleagues,
Richard Durbin and others, but Catherine Bertini, whom I have
respected and known for a good many years in her capacity as
Director of the World Food Program--I also remember when she
was in the administration here and had responsibilities for
food programs--and Secretary Glickman and others.
I read through some of the statements while trying to catch
up a little bit because I was late getting here, and I noticed
that Ellen Levinson has some interesting comments to make on
this subject, too. We have assembled some impressive experts in
this area, people who care about not only feeding the hungry
around the world, but who have had personal experience in doing
just that. I came over to congratulate them, and to let them
know that I am interested in this idea. It sounds like
something we should seriously consider, and I am confident that
under the leadership of Chairman Dick Lugar we will seriously
consider this proposal.
One observation that I have comes from the statement that
Catherine Bertini submitted, and that is that the World Food
Program is the right organization to take responsibility of the
overall management of this program. The challenge is to help
countries launch and sustain the programs that are national in
scope and only those governments can do this. That is something
that I think we need to realize, that we can pass a bill here
and we are going to have a lot of work to do to follow up and
make it work, and a lot of that is going to have to do with how
successful we are at getting other governments involved.
Individual school feeding projects can help specific
communities, but they will not be enough to reach the goal of
providing food to school children around the world. So, we need
to be cognizant of the caveats that are sprinkled through here,
too, in some of these statements, and to recognize that what we
are hearing proposed is a one-year pilot program, as I
understand it, and $300 million was the President's suggestion.
That is something that I believe we should keep in mind.
So I am here to learn more about how we do it and what the
trade-offs are what the effects would be on other programs. We
usually take surplus commodities held by the Commodity Credit
Corporation to make donations. We may or may not have the
surplus commodities in years to come that we do right now. So
there are a lot of considerations, but I am glad to be here to
lend my support to the effort to find a way to achieve some of
these goals, and I hope we can do that.
The Chairman. Thank you very much, Senator Cochran. I would
just mention that the $300 million the President talked about
at Okinawa was certainly an important idea. The idea that
Senator McGovern and Senator Dole presented and that has been
amplified by Secretary Glickman is obviously a much more
ambitious idea. It is with regard to children all over the
world and for some period of time. This is why I have been
interrogating the Secretary about the selection of who and
which countries, what order.
Let me just ask one more question along that line.
President Clinton visited, as you pointed out, with Prime
Minister Blair and with others, but sort of at what level does
our Government really get solid commitments from our friends
from other countries who are part of that G-8 group who have
the wherewithal to be serious about this type of thing?
Some of this can occur over in your shop, Ms. Bertini, and
you visit with these people all the time, and they make
commitments and they are helpful. But this is a very ambitious
idea if it is taken really to the full extent, which probably
requires some heavy lifting close to the top, if not the
President of the United States himself, with others who have a
long-term view also and who may say we sort of share this
vision.
So this is what I am wondering, even at this working level
of this interagency committee, you make some selections of who
seems to pass muster. For example, when the group gets together
and you discuss universality of educational opportunity,
democratic tendencies, which, on a scale of 1 to 10, may be
somewhere--this becomes even more complex with world leaders
trying to decide what we do at this point. If you had, for
instance, Prime Minister Putin in the conversation, he might
have a different set of ideas as to who is worthy, and he might
be right. In other words, it may be in our interest to be
involved in some countries that are sort of suspect on a number
of these areas but have a lot of hungry children and have a
need, we believe, for an American presence or a need for others
who may come into their economies.
We talk about this all the time on the China trade issue,
that we are going to influence a country by having business
people but also journalists, missionaries, everybody in the
country, the engagement of the whole situation might change
minds and hearts. But that is also a very big set of
circumstances, and this is why I--I don't mean to hop on pages
4 and 5, but when you get into the selection of countries and
who sustains this and the time frame and their ideals, that is
a complex set of questions in terms of our international
diplomacy.
Secretary Glickman. Well, I think perhaps Cathy may want to
comment on this, too, but let me just quickly state that the
President made this a priority in Okinawa. There was a
significant interest there. It is true, however, that this
initiative cannot be sustained unless there are other folks
involved, and it can't just be the United States only, although
we do provide I guess between 30- and 50-percent generally of--
--
Ms. Bertini. Fifty-percent the last 3-years.
Secretary Glickman. Fifty-percent the last 3-years of the
receipts of the World Food Program. So we are a big player
here.
But I think this again points out why you have to have the
PVOs. The non-governmental organizations working with and
cooperatively with the World Food Program have got to be in a
position to help us direct where these things are going,
because I would hate to see a central decision made by the U.S.
Government with respect to each one of these projects, you
know. I think we need to set up the thematic organization that
needs to be accountable, but ultimately it is on the ground
that is going to decide where it is going to be most effective.
The Chairman. Ms. Bertini?
Ms. Bertini. Yes, thank you, Mr. Chairman. It will need to
be a simple list of what are the criteria in terms of what
countries should be involved, but I think perhaps an example,
maybe a stark example, is Afghanistan. If girls can't go to
school, clearly they are not committed to education for all;
therefore, it would be assumed that would not be a country
where we would propose that we would have a program here.
However, there might be a program where there would be a
commitment to education for all, but still very few girls in
school. In that case, I think we would have to put some sort of
an agreement together with the Government that we will come,
but the girls' enrollment has to increase by a certain amount
each time or else we can't continue over the long term. So I
think those are some of the kind of issues that we have to work
out together.
If I could address a couple other issues you mentioned,
first of all, on the broader scale, if we are to be in an
advocacy role, and, in fact, if we are to promote this idea
that every child should eat at school, there are really two
ways to go.
One, it could be a totally American project and proposal,
managed totally by USDA working with the PVOs, WFP, whomever it
chooses to work with. The plus side of that is that then USDA
could manage every part of it. The negative part of that is
that no other countries will really particularly want to
participate in something that is strictly and totally a
bilateral American project.
The other side, of course, if it is multilateral, which is
the way that I think it is being discussed, then we have to
discuss certain things. Certainly advocacy, getting other
countries involved, requires the involvement of an
international or multilateral institution, and that is, I
think, a key place where WFP can come in working with USDA. The
management in terms of the program in each country then is more
or could be more flexible.
When we talk about this over the long term, there are
several--in terms of the importance of congressional
involvement and leadership and decisionmaking here, there are
several points that the Secretary has made. One is if we are to
use the expertise of the domestic folks, then there may need to
be some legislative changes to allow that. Another is that
currently when USDA gives us, or AID, for that matter, gives
funding to us or to PVOs, they can pay for the internal
transportation cost in poor countries if they give us funding
for emergencies, but not funding for development. And now if we
are trying to get a school feeding program up in some of the
poorest countries in the world, they don't have the funds
available to provide the transportation. So that is something
that also could be looked at. And I don't believe that requires
additional funding because it could come out of the total
package, whatever the total package is, if I am not mistaken.
A third issue that I think the PVOs are probably best
suited to answer is the issue about the process, and the
process of the Policy Council and how it works. And my guess is
that the PVOs would have some good thoughts about ways to
streamline that process while still having the oversight
responsibility at USDA.
So those are some of the technical things that we can see
at least early on, and then on the longer term, of course, the
commitment over the long term for food, because assuming that
this is a successful launch, I am sure everyone is interested
in providing the wherewithal to continue the program, because
1-year of a school feeding program is almost nothing at all. It
is really long term.
The Chairman. I thank you for those clarifications.
Clearly, as you pointed out, in the poorest of the poor the
ability to get a program, to interact with us or with other
countries is limited, and yet those are countries that we are
going to have to be thoughtful about.
The other point I want to make is that out of this
committee we have already passed legislation which would say
our country cannot have a sanction with regard to food. But
that has not passed two Houses of the Congress, and as a matter
of fact, there are disputes about using food as a sanction, as
a weapon, within our own Congress, our own Government. So that
is something we will have to resolve in due course, but it does
get into this international diplomatic aspect.
I appreciate your coming. Let me just say before I recess
the hearing--which I am going to do because we will have the
swearing in of Senator Miller at 11 o'clock, and obviously
Senators will want to be there for that very important
ceremony. That will be followed, as I understand, by a roll
call vote on a cloture petition, and then I will be back, and
maybe other Senators with me, for four very important
witnesses. So I apologize to those witnesses and to all of you
who have been faithful in viewing this hearing, but we will
have to try to work with our colleagues on the floor for a few
moments, and I hope people understand.
We thank you both very much for coming.
[Recess.]
This hearing is called to order again, and the Chair would
like to call the panelists: Dr. Beryl Levinger, Senior
Director, Educational Development Center, and Distinguished
Professor, Monterey Institute of International Studies; Ken
Hackett, Executive Director of Catholic Relief Services; Ellen
Levinson, Executive Director of the Coalition for Food Aid; and
Carole Brookins, Chairman and CEO of World Perspectives,
Incorporated.
We thank you very much for your patience, but we have had a
remarkable ceremony, greeted a new colleague, heard his maiden
speech, which is a tribute to our departed colleague. And the
roll call vote has occurred, and now we are back in business,
and we appreciate so much your staying with the hearing, and
those in the audience who likewise share our enthusiasm for
this.
I am going to call upon you in the order that I first
mentioned you, first of all, Dr. Levinger.
STATEMENT OF BERYL LEVINGER, SENIOR DIRECTOR, EDUCATIONAL
DEVELOPMENT CENTER, AND DISTINGUISHED PROFESSOR, MONTEREY
INSTITUTE OF INTERNATIONAL STUDIES, MONTEREY, CA.
Dr. Levinger. Good morning, Mr. Chairman and colleagues.
Thank you for inviting me to share my views this morning on the
world school feeding initiative. Before I begin my testimony,
just let me say a few words of introduction about myself.
As Chairman Lugar has already mentioned, I work with
Educational Development Center, but what is relevant about my
career actually is that I have worked in the area of
international education and poverty alleviation for more than
30-years and have provided short-term and long-term technical
assistance to more than 70-countries in the area of education,
health, and nutrition. And in the last 15-years, I have
authored three major books that are particularly relevant to my
testimony today: a comprehensive review of international school
feeding programs published by USAID; a book published by UNDP
on the relationship between health, nutrition, and learning
outcomes; and then, finally, a review of factors that
contribute to human capacity development, also published by
UNDP.
I would like to take this opportunity to share with you, if
I might, what I have learned in the course of this academic
work and on-site technical assistance in terms of what
difference school feeding might or might not make. And I am
going to focus my remarks first of all on situations of extreme
poverty, and I would like to begin by addressing the area of
learning outcomes.
There is a substantial body of research to support the
following assertion: The level of a student's cognitive
performance is, in part, a function of the adequacy of his or
her diet. The importance of this research is that it
establishes a theoretical and empirical framework for a major
claim made by the supporters of the initiative, namely, that
when such programs provide malnourished participants with an
adequate diet, learning can be reasonably anticipated--learning
in the form of cognitive development, to be sure.
Unfortunately, this assertion is only partly correct, and
we need a caveat to make that assertion fully correct. Let me
share with you what that caveat is, namely, again, meaningful
learning and meaningful cognitive development will occur only
when a facilitative learning environment is present to
complement the food that a child receives. Food alone just
doesn't do it. And we know that because for generations upon
generations we have been saying man does not live by bread
alone.
In the late 1960s and in the early 1970s, it was assumed by
many researchers that the brain changes produced by
malnutrition led directly to an impairment of learning which
was often irreversible. Well, great news. In recent decades,
this position has been abandoned and, in fact, reversed.
Currently, the most widely accepted hypothesis is that
malnutrition exerts its major influence on behavioral
competencies through dysfunctional changes in attention span,
responsiveness, motivation, and emotionality rather than
through a more direct impairment of the child's ability to
learn. This situation implies hopeful prospects for the
reversibility of the effects that occur when a child is hungry
or malnourished. But what it also says to us is that we need to
create facilitative learning environments so that teachers, for
example, can provide feedback and encouragement while engaging
children in stimulating learning tasks. In most developing
countries, this entails investments in teacher training, texts,
and other learning materials.
The truth today is that most schooling in the developing
world is far from facilitative. Children sit in severely
overcrowded classrooms, or outdoors, with poorly trained
teachers, and spend countless hours repeating meaningless
phrases in a language they often do not understand. They have
no books, no blackboard, and frequently, no desks or chairs.
We are all too familiar with the results of this
environment. Millions of children never enroll in school
throughout Africa and Asia, and millions more drop out before
completing the first four grades of primary.
For those who do attend, little learning takes place. In
one recent study in Ghana, a study that was sponsored by USAID,
fewer than 3-percent of all sixth graders had achieved basic
literacy and math skills as stipulated by the curriculum. That
is fewer than 3-percent on a test that was designed so that the
average pass grade should have been 90-percent.
Similar results have been noted in other African countries
that have undertaken the rather daunting task of measuring
student mastery of curriculum objectives. In an environment of
such extreme educational impoverishment, school feeding may get
more children to come to school, although, as I will show in a
moment, this assumption is questionable; but it is doubtful
that feeding alone will get them to learn more. Why? Because
the educational environment in which the feeding is going to
occur allows very little learning to take place.
In my written testimony, I have cited two studies. In one,
food alone was offered to children, and in the other, feeding
was accompanied by an enriched learning environment.
Sustainable long-term academic performance gains were only
observed in the educationally enriched setting.
In summary, then, the proposed initiative needs to include
provisions for a portion of the commodities to be monetized,
preferably over a 3-year period. Funds obtained through
monetization should be used by PVOs to engage parents as
partners in the educational enterprise, to train teachers in
active learning methods, to create motivational textbooks and
other learning materials that are cognitively stimulating, to
improve sanitation so that schools are not major disease
vectors, and to create classroom learning environments that are
conducive to learning. I don't mean that these things should be
carried on maybe by somebody else at some future time to be
negotiated. What I am saying is that these components need to
be intimately integrated at the outset, at the design phase,
into a school feeding program.
Let me just say a few words, if I might, on another
assumption that has been made, which is the question of school
feeding in relation to attendance and enrollment. Many studies
have explored this relationship, and it is interesting that the
most positive relationships are generally found in the least
rigorous, most impressionistic studies. When control groups
have been used, when retrospective attendance data consulting
records has been used, we get findings that are far more
ambiguous.
I should also note in passing that PVOs have taken the lead
in performing the most ambitious--in terms of methodological
techniques--studies.
In general, we find that where parental perceptions of
school quality are very low and poverty is extreme, feeding
cannot overcome the factors that lead parents to keep their
children, particularly their daughters, at home. However, if
families live at the border of the terrain that separates
extreme poverty from marginal self-sufficiency and if the
quality of schooling is at least sufficient so as not to dampen
or even destroy demand, then and only then can feeding bring
children, especially girls, to school.
Once again, though, the quality of schooling is critical in
terms of school feeding impact, and, once again, I might add,
there is a critical role for PVOs to play in improving
educational quality through the partial monetization of
commodities, not for in-country transportation, not to buy the
equipment with which to cook or prepare the food or to store
the food but, rather, to actually improve the schooling that is
attached to the feeding.
Finally, allow me to comment on how school feeding programs
influence nutritional status and hunger, the third area of
expected program benefit. There is little evidence to support
nutritional status change as a result of school feeding, and
there are many reasons for this. Parents often provide one less
meal at home so that the food received in school is not
additive in terms of a child's dietary intake. Programs are
often too irregular in terms of the percentage of days in the
school year where food is actually served for logistical
reasons, for management reasons; and, therefore, when we
realize that a child to be well nourished has to eat 365-days-
a-year, the school feeding program simply doesn't offer enough
of a difference.
In conclusion, I would like to offer a few additional
observations relative to the proposed initiative.
Number one, host governments are expected to significantly
contribute to the cost of the program over time. Is there a
hidden trade-off between adequately paid teachers, quality
textbooks, sufficient classrooms, parental outreach, and the
costs of a feeding program? I believe there is, and it is not
one that I for one would be willing to make. I do not believe
that food alone can lead to improvements in learning,
attendance, and enrollment in those countries where poverty is
rampant and school is nothing more than meaningless repetition
of phrases in chaotic conditions.
School lunch programs did work in the U.S. precisely
because the quality of education in our schools was high enough
so that the lunch was that extra added factor that made all the
difference in the world.
When you think about the costs of the proposed initiative
and the fact that governments are going to be picking up those
costs, I think we also have to take a moment to do some stock
taking. Typically, in developing countries, the budget that is
spent on learning--that is to say, expenses other than school
construction, recurrent costs--is something on the order of $5
to $10 per year per child. What would it cost to do school
feeding when a country is to assume that responsibility?
Probably something at least on the order of $5 to $10 a year
per child at a minimum, and probably quite a bit more. How
could this be sustainable when countries are already taxing
their budgets to the extent generally of 22- to 25-percent, and
they can't even get textbooks and teachers into classrooms?
U.S. PVOs must play a major role in implementing the
proposed initiative. This is my second concluding point. Such
organizations as CRS, CARE, and Save the Children already have
major education initiatives underway that are designed to
introduce the qualitative elements so necessary if parents are
to enroll their children in school. Make no mistake about it.
In study after study, we see that parental perception about
school quality is often the key factor in determining whether
and for how long a child is to attend.
Third, monetization with at least a 3-year window for
spending monetized funds is necessary in order to introduce the
education quality elements that are required to transform a
school feeding program into a potent intervention. We must not
mistake food for education or food-aided education with food
for learning. This is where children actually learn and where
presence in a schoolhouse truly contributes to overall
development goals. Food for learning must be our vision, and to
enact it we must build strong, productive linkages between the
consumption of a meal and everything else that occurs during a
typical school day.
PVOs have an important role to play in the transformation
of school feeding programs into food for learning, and I hope
that the proposed initiative entails specific provision for
their participation as well as for their monetization of
commodities so that the needed investments in quality can be
made. Only then will feeding lead to meaningful societal
transformation.
Mr. Chairman, thank you for this opportunity to testify,
and I will be glad to answer any questions you might have.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Levinger can be found in the
appendix on page 89.]
The Chairman. Thank you very much, Doctor.
Mr. Hackett.
STATEMENT OF KENNETH HACKETT, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, CATHOLIC
RELIEF SERVICES, BALTIMORE, MD.
Mr. Hackett. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I really
appreciate this opportunity to testify on behalf of the
Catholic Relief Services, which is the official relief and
development agency of the U.S. Catholic community. I am also
here on behalf of a group of American private voluntary
organizations that have a very long history in the management
of U.S. foreign food assistance. We as a group deeply
appreciate the efforts of Ambassador McGovern and Senator Dole,
the administration, and others who have dramatically raised the
profile on this important topic.
The global school feeding initiative is founded, it seems,
on the most laudable of American humanitarian principles: our
concern for and solidarity with the poor overseas. CRS and the
other PVOs have experience in managing U.S. Government-funded
school feeding programs since the very inception of those
programs in the 1950s, and I would like to take an opportunity
to discuss the lessons we have learned in our implementation of
those programs. Our comments are intended to enhance what is an
already commendable initiative and strengthen it so that it
will have a lasting impact on those it is designed to assist.
I just returned on Sunday from Zimbabwe where I spent a few
days meeting with my staff from 14 countries in East and
Southern Africa. And I have to pick up on what Senator Durbin
said about the AIDS crisis. It is having a tremendous impact
demographically and on the very fabric of society. And it is
initiatives like this one that may contribute to an improvement
of the lives of those people who are being so dramatically
affected by the HIV/AIDS pandemic throughout Africa and other
parts of the world. So we look at it in a very positive way.
We have learned over the years in managing food-assisted
education programs in schools and at the community level that
any program designed to improve access and impact on primary
education must be broader than simply school feeding, as Dr.
Levinger said. In fact, there is a great coincidence between
most of what she said and what I have to say here, so I will
shorten it because you have heard it and we agree with it.
We must involve communities directly in such programs. Such
programs must be multi-faceted, multi-year, and be
comprehensive in their approach. And to truly impact on
learning and academic achievement, food must be complemented by
other interventions. In our programs, we have activities with
the development of PTAs, and other types of involvement of
parents directly in schools. In addition, we have programs for
micronutrient supplements, vitamin A and things like that. But
then you also have to deal with the teachers and the management
of the school. The learning environment in its totality, as Dr.
Levinger said, is most important.
We believe that food can be an important resource, but it
alone is not sufficient to improve educational achievement.
Improving educational quality and coverage in economically
impoverished communities calls for a long-term and reliable
commitment in policy and multi-year resources. The provision of
food for only short periods of time does not allow time for
systems and standards and relationships to be sufficiently
established and would jeopardize, if they were only run for
short periods of time, any impact.
Resources allocated for the program must be in addition, we
feel, to the current levels of U.S. Government food assistance.
Not to do so takes away from ongoing programs that successfully
address the needs of some groups of people. And as has been
said--and we were very happy to hear Secretary Glickman's
testimony--complementary dollar funds are also essential for
success. To be most effective, this program must be targeted to
the neediest communities in the neediest countries, and only in
the context where food is an appropriate intervention.
The American private voluntary community has experience, it
has capacity, and it is interested in this concept. You may be
aware that over the last decade the engagement of that
community in education programs has diminished--diminished
significantly. This is due in part to shifting public
assistance priorities, increasingly burdensome and costly
management requirements, and lack of financial commitments to
accompany available food assistance. We would like to increase
our engagement, and as I say, we are heartened by what the
Secretary had to say about how the program should be designed.
But to do so, I propose that a global agreement be established
between the administrative agencies of the U.S. Government--if
that be USDA, so be it--and the PVOs, the American PVOs, to
identify, develop, and carry out effective programs of food and
other resources. Such an agreement would help to address the
increasingly burdensome regulations and costs that the American
PVO community have encountered in operating food assistance
programs.
The American PVOs, such as CRS, should have direct access
to food and cash resources in a manner similar to what has been
evolved with the UN agencies. This would heighten the interest
in the involvement of American PVOs and their constituents. The
American PVO involvement is important, we believe, for two
reasons:
First and foremost, we have extensive experience in
implementing school feeding and other types of programs. We
have community contacts, not just national government contacts.
We have built up trust, and we have existing programs.
Second, we believe and understand U.S. official
humanitarian foreign assistance to be essentially an expression
of American solidarity, and we see American PVOs as the best
expression of American solidarity.
The global school feeding initiative and the subsequent
momentum it has generated in Congress and in the administration
are positive signs of general concern for the poor and the
sense of responsibility for those in need. We would like to
harness the good will and the energy evident in the initiative
to have a real impact on improving the quality of education for
children in the developing world.
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Hackett can be found in the
appendix on page 96.]
The Chairman. Thank you very much, Mr. Hackett.
Ms. Levinson.
STATEMENT OF ELLEN S. LEVINSON, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, COALITION
FOR FOOD AID, WASHINGTON, DC.
Ms. Levinson. Thank you. My name is Ellen Levinson, Mr.
Chairman. I am government relations adviser at the firm
Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft. Today I am here on behalf of the
Coalition for Food Aid, which is comprised of private voluntary
organizations with whom you are familiar who do international
work. In particular, I will focus my oral remarks, because I
hope that my written statement can be submitted for the
record----
The Chairman. It will be completely recorded.
Ms. Levinson. I want to focus on some of the issues that
you have been asking regarding this large-scale global food for
education initiative.
First of all, how would it be implemented or how could it
be? It is something that takes planning, but there is a desire
to get a kick-start this year. We have surpluses in the United
States, and I think that the President's announcement reflects
the need and desire in the agriculture community to get some of
these surpluses off the market today and to use them
constructively overseas. I can see where the kick-start is a
very positive step, both in the desire and needs of our
American agriculture community to move their commodities, and
to try to target it to something positive. Thus, initiative is
going forward.
On a positive side of the initiative, in the first year, in
the pilot phase little time can be taken to allocate
commodities under Section 416. We have to ship them by the end
of December 2001. Thought needs to be given about not just
distributing those commodities, because that is a short period
of time to identify appropriate targets and start a whole
distribution system. Find where there could be additionality
and expansion of programs or new programs that are ready to go
and may be ready to start distribution. The monetization that
Dr. Levinger is referring to, the sale of the commodity in the
country and the use of the proceeds for building the basic
structures for education, is an important element that could be
very constructive in the first year of the program. Those funds
could actually be spent over several years under the current
law. You could sell in 1-year and use those funds over several
years to support the development of the PTAs, the school
structures, the training of teachers, etc., to create the
environment where education can take place and also where
distribution can take place, This is an approach that could be
very positive this year.
A second thing that could happen very positively in a pilot
program is to search for new ways and innovative approaches to
using food assistance. PVOs are trying a variety of ways, and
probably others are as well, to make these programs more
effective. I know that you are going to be hearing soon from
the private sector. There may be some ways in this pilot phase
to see how the private sector can partner with the
organizations tat do the work on the ground and with local
administrators--how they could come together in some more
creative ways. Allowing this flexibility would be very
important.
Third is an issue that Mr. Hackett just raised, and that is
an administrative issue. This year will be a jump-start of the
program. Secretary Glickman pointed out that they have been
doing a lot more food aid than usual at USDA, a significant
amount, and their staffing for that is pretty thin. It is
important to somehow facilitate the relationship between USDA
and non-governmental groups. It is very easy for USDA and the
World Food Program to relate because they have what is called a
``Global Agreement.'' When USDA wants to make an additional
commitment to WFP, they can just add on to it.
However every time a PVO comes up with an idea or a plan,
it has to go through a much more rigorous review. However, if a
PVO has been in this field for many years--I mean, you are
talking about organizations. I know my members work in over 100
countries and have on-ground expertise and really capabilities,
and they show best practices. They have computer systems for
tracking and monitoring the food. They have in place
measurements to not only measure the food and how much gets
there, but the impact, in other words, progress of the program.
So if they have these best practices in place and they can
basically show that they are capable of handling these
programs, that the USDA should enter into this type of a global
agreement that Mr. Hackett referred to, that would help USDA in
its administrative struggles as well.
So, for example, if Catholic Relief Service had identified
three particular locations where it wanted to pilot some
interesting work or additional work, it could do this under
this agreement without USDA feeling the obligation or need to
go through a whole series of analysis and time constraints.
So I think some of these ideas could come forward in this
pilot regarding countries of choice. Many of these PVOs are,
you know, now that there is a pilot announced, looking at their
programs, I know, and I am sure the World Food Program is, too,
because they are dealing a lot with national governments and
probably looking there to see which ones would be appropriate.
I would be happy to answer any other questions that you
raise, but I just wanted to throw out some of those ideas for
you directed to some of your questions. Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Levinson can be found in the
appendix on page 105.]
The Chairman. Well, we thank you for that testimony.
Ms. Brookins.
STATEMENT OF CAROLE BROOKINS, CHAIRMAN AND CHIEF EXECUTIVE
OFFICER, WORLD PERSPECTIVES, INC., WASHINGTON, DC.
Ms. Brookins. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. First of all, my
name is Carole Brookins, and I am Chairman and CEO of World
Perspectives, which is a company I founded 20-years ago to do
analysis and consulting globally on political, economic, and
trade factors affecting agricultural markets and the global
food system. And I appreciate the opportunity to be with you
today to discuss this very exciting concept.
I certainly applaud everything that has been said all
morning, both starting with Ambassador McGovern and Senator
Dole, and, of course, Secretary Glickman, and, your very
important kick-off to this hearing today. I have considered
this issue myself for several years, and I think that the
question that we are really grappling with is not the merit of
the concept, as you have said, but the best means to carry it
forward.
I can remember back in the 1970s--I guess when you get old,
this is what they pay you for, your memory, but, you know, I
can remember back in the 1970s when Henry Kissinger said we
would ``end hunger in my generation.'' You know, well, Henry is
still around and we still haven't ended hunger. And I think we
have been grappling, even with the recent World Food Summit, to
try to get our arms around this again.
But when we take a look at this concept and how to carry it
forward, I truly believe if we implemented appropriately and
effectively, it could be to the next 50-years what Food for
Peace brought to the world's hungry over the last century, and
on top of it have a very profound impact on the economic
development of countries around the world.
In terms of the merit of the concept--I will submit my
testimony to the record--I think we all can agree on the
importance that this concept brings. But I think that we have
to throw one other point in--that humanitarianism and good
citizenship and good business are not mutually exclusive. Think
that has been something that has been very much lacking in this
morning's hearing, with the possible exception of how this very
much fits into a child labor initiative. In fact that is where
my ideas began came a year and a half ago.
If we want to eliminate child labor, we are going to have
to give children education, and good education. And we are
going to have to give incentives for parents and the ability
for parents--to let their children go and get an education
while they have to be concerned about making sure they have
adequate diets.
Whereas the President made some very important statements
on this issue in Okinawa, the great focus of the G-8 now is on
eliminating the digital divide. I think that we have kind of
jumped a lot of steps, because before we can aspire to ending
the digital divide, we must first end the nutrition divide and
are bringing many, many more people in the marketplace.
Now, as to the means to the end, a very wise person once
told me when I was starting my business that 10-percent of a
successful business venture is the idea and 90-percent is the
implementation. So with this in mind, I would like to raise a
few considerations that I think are critical to putting a
sustainable program in place instead of just getting good
advocacy discussion about something and rounding up the usual
suspects again, as we have done on many occasions.
First of all, we know that bilateral and multilateral food
aid programs have been operating for more than 50-years, that
some have been more effective than others. There have been
problems in implementing other school lunch programs over the
years such as cost-effectiveness and practical implementation
issues, including logistical problems which have been
identified. But, most importantly, the sustainability of the
programs has been a problem because most such programs have
relied almost exclusively on government budget support. And I
think when we look even at surplus commodity disposal, trying
to get the European Union and others to agree even to a tonnage
commitment on food aid, apart from a monetary commitment, has
been a real problem in maintaining a sustainable supply.
This isn't to say that the World Food Program's work has
not been highly successful in many cases and that many non-
governmental organizations, including the leadership here at
this table, have not been extremely effective in delivering
both food and technical assistance in a cost-effective way that
has obviously been provided by donors, by official donors
through bilateral or multilateral assistance. And they bring
tremendous resources and experience to this program.
I agree that all these players need to be involved in
creating a sustainable initiative. However, I think that past
experience and the structure of today's globalized economy
means that this ambitious goal cannot be sustainably achieved
by simply adding on to the broad programs that are already
being carried out, or by using only public sector financing and
administering only through national and multinational public
sector initiatives. If there is anything we have learned from
the last two decades in particular, it is that the tremendous
momentum of wealth creation, flexibility, innovation and
productivity, and real-time response is in the private
commercial sector.
So I would like to set out my own implementation
guidelines. First, this must be a real private and public
partnership initiative. And when I say that, this is not just a
matter of PVOs or NGOs and Government entities, but also
getting the private commercial sector involved, both private
corporations and foundations. There is not one country that I
have visited--and I am sure the same is true for you, Mr.
Chairman--where we have not seen our companies involved very
directly in community outreach wherever they are in the
developing world. And what better way to meet the two goals of
creating a highly trained workforce and also creating real
buying power in a country than beginning to focus on getting
children educated and getting children adequate nutrition.
Second, this must not be a food dumping initiative. It
cannot be a one-year commitment when we have surplus
commodities, or when there is an election coming and, we have
to show that we are moving product. This must be sustainable
over time in terms of both monies pledged and commodities
pledged. It must have a multi-year commitment to it.
Third, it must not be layered into existing bureaucratic
agendas. Too many good ideas get swamped or drowned in
bureaucratic channels. We have seen this over and over again,
and that is why I suggested a year and a half ago to set up a
new private-public institute which I have named Food for
Education and Economic Development [FEED]. FEED could be
mandated much as the National Endowment for Democracy was in
1983 and has had a tremendous record with a very targeted,
focused mandate involving both Government money and private
money.
And fourth it must begin, as far as I am concerned, on a
small targeted scale, be it at a national level, or be it, as
Ellen Levinson said, at a very local level. You need to come up
with very solid terms of reference, and you need to do it also
on competitive submissions. Instead of our going to people and
saying; ``Look what we have for you,'' let's find out who the
people are out there who really want to put something together
and let them bring to us what they are going to do to implement
it, and then help them achieve it. I think this would set a
whole new groundwork, a new base in place for the way we deal
with these initiatives around the world by letting people who
are ready come to us and letting us then say, yes, we will help
you achieve your goal.
Fifth must also support global market development. I think
we have to look at this in terms of our whole farm program and
the way we look at our farm program. Does it make sense to be
taking acreage out of production or doing other things when
there is such a need for resources around the world? Perhaps we
could console some new iteration to freedom to farm in the next
farm bill that we could include in terms of farmers planting
certain land for this purpose.
In closing, I think it is perfect timing to move this
forward, but I would urge that the Senate Agriculture Committee
seriously only support this proposal with a view to directly
involve, engage, and commit the private business community,
both local and global, in designing and implementing the
programs to be carried out.
Thank you very much, and I would be happy to answer any
questions.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Brookins can be found in the
appendix on page 112.]
The Chairman. Thank you.
The collective output of you four is formidable, and I
would really start with Dr. Levinger's thought. First of all,
it is a sobering set of facts which she has as far as the
learning situation, that learning doesn't necessarily occur
because children are fed. At least she has sort of said there
is a different threshold, and that is an important concept. As
we think through all of this, our instincts are clearly to feed
people, and that may still be where we end up. In other words,
as you get more and more goals on top of this, as I was in
dialogue with Secretary Glickman, democracy, human rights, all
sorts of things, this becomes a very ambitious program in which
we sort of take on the entire agenda of our Government. But,
still, that is why we asked you to come, to bring some
perspective to this, because it is a school lunch program, the
idea of schools--and you have described, Dr. Levinger, what,
unfortunately, is the plight of schools in many countries in
which we might be involved. They are pretty rough-and-tumble
situations, ill-financed, bad teachers, bad curriculum,
language that children don't understand, and the achievements
are low.
Now, then this is more jarring, and I noted down not only
in your testimony but just to make a note to myself that
nutritionally people may not be better off if the parents
simply don't feed them another meal, sort of subtract that, so
that the number of calories per day might not change. Now, that
is very sobering. How in the world do we affect that? In other
words, you can't have guidelines for parents, or at least that
is so intrusive, that is sort of beyond capability of
administrative, to make sure that this is in addition to. But
in real life, this might be the case, that many people don't
learn very much more and, in fact, are not even much better off
nutritionally.
So those are pretty tough criteria to start with, and then,
finally, the sustainability, which all of you have talked
about. Clearly, there is always enthusiasm for the use of
surplus commodities, but my own view of this is that not much
of that is going to make much difference to what we are talking
about today, because very quickly all of you in one way or
another get into so-called monetization. That is a way of
saying we are going to sell the commodities. You know, the
typical view of this is that we have excess food in this
country, maybe in bulk form or processed form, as the case may
be, but let's say the bulk form and so we don't need it and we
ship it rather than waste it.
But what you are pointing out is, of course, a practical
measure. This is of very little use to most of these programs
in that form, and what is of great use is that you sell it, get
money for it.
What you are saying, Dr. Levinger, is that you sort of
shore up these schools. If the whole educational initiative is
$5 a child a year or some very modest amount like that, and you
can get $5 a child a year out of selling some of these
commodities in Country X, well, you have doubled at least the
amount of educational opportunity for that child.
Already we are some steps divorced from the basic concept
here. The idealism of getting food into children because we are
shoring up the school so that the school will be good enough
that the children will go to it, learn something, therefore,
like our school lunch program, have a benefit. You wanted to
make a comment?
Dr. Levinger. I just wanted to be clear that what I was
describing was a partial monetization, certainly not a full
monetization.
The Chairman. I understand. But it still is there, that
somehow we sell in these countries, and for other purposes
maybe shore up the school, but maybe the infrastructure, the
whole preparation process, whatever.
Now, Ms. Brookins, you have also added child labor here,
and that is an important objective, and others have touched
upon that, too, Senator Harkin earlier this morning, and it
might very well be a part of this if the parents support the
children going to the school and the children stay there and
all the rest of it. You know, I think as you get into this--and
you as a very sobering panel, you have just realized how many
problems people have all over the world. You try to fix one
problem here, and, of course, you are right in the middle of a
whole host of them, and anybody who has done any work in any
other country understands that. But, still, it is useful to
remind ourselves how much we want to do all at the same time.
But, nevertheless, we are here in the Agriculture
Committee, and we are dealing with a food program and with USDA
trying to guide us through. So I think, we have to understand
that, too, that our means are somewhat limited, even if our
aspirations are very high.
Now, I think all of you have said that the global agreement
that sort of permeates this discussion has been largely between
USDA and the international group. But PVOs, after all, are
doing most of the legwork, or could, and the problem is there
are a lot of them. They come in all sizes and shapes. Some are
good and some are not so good. So what I think you are
qualifying to say is that if a PVO sort of qualifies, begins to
meet the criteria as a group that has a track record of doing
very well in this, is very sophisticated, there may be sort of
a blue ribbon group--or maybe that is not the right
terminology, but there is some--so that global agreements can
occur with these groups without, as you say, negotiating one by
one each of these innovations. And that I think is critically
important, but it is an important point just in terms of our
own organizational infrastructure in this country that we have
these kinds of agreements and we do so at the outset. We sort
of find out who is in the field, who has a track record of
achievement, who could do a lot if, in fact, we do not have the
bureaucratic problem of paper shuffling each time one of you
gets involved in this.
So I would hope that whoever is writing up this legislation
sort of includes that concept because I think it is just very
important.
I noted, Ms. Brookins, that you pointed out that the
problem of sustainability as we have discussed it today--and I
tried to touch upon this a little bit in my colloquy this
morning--really does boil down to annual appropriations. That
is what we do here, and this is why the presence of Senator
Cochran was very important this morning. Senator Cochran I saw
on the floor during our recess, and I told him how much I
appreciated his coming over. He has to wrestle with the hard
realities of all of this, namely, after it leaves our care and
concern as an authorization committee. And I think it will have
very strong support in this committee, and that was manifested
this morning.
But then people come in that are part of our economy and
say if you are going to spend X number of dollars somewhere in
the world, there are some Americans that need help. Well, we
can say we can't be that hard-hearted, that myopic, but the
fact is, as some of you have commented, our foreign aid has
been declining precipitously year after year. It has gone on
now for several years without surcease, just a secular decline.
I made a mission to see the President 1-year after he was
just re-elected and asked him really to overrun OMB and to ask
for $1.5 billion more, just for the sake of argument, and he
did ask for $1 billion more, and he got it. That was the only
singular reverse of this secular pattern. But, nevertheless, it
has gone downhill ever since.
So we are in an atmosphere in which in our own activities
in Government, whether they are in nutrition or whether they
are just foreign aid for whatever purposes, development,
language training, whatever we do, we are doing less of it--and
in terms of real dollars, much less. And you sort of have a
line out in the future.
So we are talking about making water run uphill here
because even if you have a lot of surplus commodities and you
monetize them in some way and you don't account for them
exactly dollar for dollar and you get the PVOs and some other
money from American philanthropy--and a lot of that would have
to be a part of this, I think. Still, there is an outlay.
Senator Cochran has people that have to deal with this.
Now, in a practical way, we have had Dr. Borlaug and people
like this that I admire very much before the Committee. They
are talking about world hunger, about what we need to do in the
next 20-years, 50-years, and so forth to feed the world. And
Dr. Borlaug as a witness in India, in China, now in Africa, is
there. And you finally get back to cutting-edge research,
things that we need to do to increase either yield or quality
or resistance to problems or what have you.
Now, this committee 3-years ago passed a bill for 5-years
of cutting-edge research, $600 million, $120 million a year.
But the appropriators in the House X'ed it out, year one, year
two, you know, a wonderful idea, everybody from the scientific
community, humanitarian community, the food community in here
praising that initiative and it passed the Senate, but not the
appropriators.
Now, USDA to their credit has managed to figure out how to
get $120 million for this year, and I give great credit to
Secretary Glickman and his staff, even over the protests of the
House people who are still trying to X it out. But when we are
talking about sustainability, we are talking about the politics
of appropriation and competing interests in this country. And
this is why these PVO and global agreements you are talking
about are not only interesting in terms of bureaucracy, they
are probably what we are talking about in sustainability.
Catholic Relief Services, it goes the course every year,
regardless of the ups and downs of politics here, changes in
committees. So, you know, that somehow we have to sort of
factor into this.
Then, you know, we talked earlier this morning, Ambassador
McGovern started with 300-million-children in the world. But
each of you seemed to me to be saying you need to walk before
you run, and the targeting of this is probably important.
Nobody would deny that. We went through it with Secretary
Glickman. What are the criteria? And he had some for this
working group that does this sort of thing.
But, of course, then it becomes much less ambitious, and
the people whose enthusiasm for feeding all children say here
you folks are already tailoring this down and, furthermore,
maybe the countries, as one of you suggested, who really want
it--I think you said that, Ms. Brookins. That makes common
sense not to force it on somebody who doesn't want it. But if
you are looking at it from a humanitarian standpoint, there are
a lot of countries that have very indifferent and sometimes
strange governments. And so what do you say to them? You are
out of luck, history has dealt you a bad hand in terms of your
leadership?
Well, maybe we have to say that, as a practical matter,
even with our ideals, and we may not be able to intrude into
some countries. And Sudan--I mentioned Dr. Frist's experience.
It is clear the Government of Sudan is trying to systematically
starve a large part of its own country. This is unthinkable,
but it happens in the world, and that is not the first instance
of this in which food is used as an internal weapon for
political hegemony of one group over another.
So that is a pretty tough prospect. Even if Dr. Frist gets
in with some money to try to work on the AIDS problem there, or
whatever, for the good of all of us, it is still pretty tough
to run a school lunch program.
So there has to be some willingness for this, but I suppose
we are going to find out a very checkered pattern in terms of
willingness and how much intrusion countries are prepared to
have.
The people over in Ms. Bertini's shop in Rome have a pretty
good idea of where the politics of this lies, that we don't
have to reinvent the wheel here. But as we are trying to think
through it in terms of our own governmental response, we all
have to become more sophisticated. And you can be helpful in
this well beyond your testimony today and what you have already
looked at.
I noted, for example, Dr. Levinger, for the benefit of all
who are witnessing the hearing, you have given some website
references to studies and books that you have written which
give a great deal of the research and background, and that
would be helpful. And I know many will want to avail themselves
of that additional testimony that comes in that form.
Well, I am sorry to have conducted this monologue, but I
want to stimulate the juices again with all of you. As a
practical matter, what do you foresee as you take a look at
this from our perspective in the Senate or the House as a
practical way of proceeding, say in the year ahead or in a 2-
year period of time? You have suggested the monetization of the
commodities under 416. That sort of takes us out to the end of
calendar year 2001, perhaps, as sort of one place where we get
some money from that standpoint. USDA already has indicated
that administratively they are doing a lot of things, and the
Secretary indicated a whole lot of programs that were
impressive.
So something is going to happen, anyway, given the impetus
of the Secretary and people who have testified, but what should
we do as a practical matter both in the short run but,
likewise, in terms of the sustainability of this idea,
something that might grow, that might be here for a long while?
Does anybody have a contribution? Mr. Hackett?
Mr. Hackett. If I may start, Mr. Chairman, I think the time
invested right now in trying to formulate how this thing could
work over a 5-year horizon is well worth it. It allows then the
American private voluntary agency communities that are not
deeply involved in this right now because of the burdensome
issues that I mentioned before to re-engage, and to re-engage
their constituencies, which is particularly important.
The Chairman. Yes.
Mr. Hackett. So I think the investments that actually are
starting this afternoon with USDA people and the PVO
communities and WFP are well worth it, and we can begin to
formulate kind of a road map for the longer term. But we have
got to think out at least 5-years.
The Chairman. Well, I like the idea of re-engaging
constituencies that you have and others have. I talked about
this broad decline of foreign assistance or even foreign
interest, but it comes from the decline of constituencies in
this country. People have found other things to be not only
more important, but have relegated this to such low importance.
So it may be that the private people have been discouraged
or have gotten some other signals, but maybe as you say, to re-
engage, sort of find the rest of the world out there, and some
very exciting possibilities.
Yes, Ms. Levinson?
Ms. Levinson. Well, I would like to add to that. What has
happened--and Dr. Levinger was--she went through the
literature. When it was found that really school feeding
couldn't have an impact on nutrition and sustainability is
difficult, turning it over to a government, in the early 1990s
USAID under Public Law 480 Title 2 program had asked the PVOs
who were conducting those types of programs, the school
feeding, the distribution type programs, straight, basically,
mainly just distribution, to basically eliminate those programs
under Title 2. And what happened at that point--and Catholic
Relief Service took a lead in this, but other PVOs got involved
and, actually, Dr. Levinger was very much a consultant in this
whole process. There was what we would call a reinvention of
school feeding so that--remember, you were just saying before
these are hard issues to tackle if you have a working family,
if you have a family that doesn't have enough money and they
make their children work, how can you compensate? Well, they
have created models to take care of that with take-home
rations. There are other ways to attack that, and they have
come up with methods to do that through distribution, as well
as, of course, you do have to have better education. But you
have both.
So there are methods, and one of the things that could be
done in this pilot program, since these PVOs have already
developed these new methods and have been doing it under
agreements with USAID over the past 6-years, this would be a
good opportunity, this pilot phase, also, to work with some of
those new techniques, and also to perhaps build in some new
ideas that if there could be partnerships with some of the
local agricultural interests or businesses who would perhaps
want to also somehow contribute and participate, that may be
another element to explore in this pilot phase.
The Chairman. Yes?
Ms. Brookins. Well, I want to pick up on that because I
really do believe that there has been a serious lack here. If
there is going to be a meeting today with USDA of the PVOs and
World Food Program, why is it that representatives of the
business sector have not been involved, be it from U.S.
commodity groups and farm groups, but also non-agricultural
people? I have talked to people at several of the business
councils who think this is a very interesting idea. Many of our
corporations are on the ground everywhere virtually in the
world, and are doing humanitarian outreach in the local
communities, helping children with education and schools, that
type of thing. Plus, if you are looking at logistical support
in-country and you are looking at developing logistical
support, especially in local or regional areas, what better
place to be looking than the business community.
Would you let me digress for 1-minute on that?
The Chairman. Yes.
Ms. Brookins. Several years ago, I had the privilege during
President Reagan's administration of heading up a task force on
food hunger and agriculture in developing countries. It was
organized at the State Department. We had some people coming in
to testify, to talk to us about different things. Someone came
in at one point and was talking about the problem AID had
experienced delivering seed in Zaire--it was Zaire at that
time, you know. In any case, he said how difficult it was
because they had to get the seed delivered before the planting
season, but the Government had no trucks and no agency to
deliver the seed.
But someone from the private business community was sitting
at the table and said to the aid official there; ``If you
travel through Zaire throughout the country, is there any
product that you see everywhere in the country?'' And the AID
official said, ``yes, there is a beer that is produced in
Kinshasa.'' So this business person said, well, all you need to
do then is contract with the brewery distributor and get those
seed bags put on the beer trucks.
I didn't mean to digress, but I want to make my previous
point once again, that it is the private sector which produces
the tax receipts which allows the Federal Government to spend
money for all these different priorities. But then it comes to
a program like this where we have businesses located everywhere
in the world, and commodity groups and farm groups, who are
involved everywhere in the world, and they are not being
brought to the table.
I am not representing, I am not lobbying for any of them,
but I think they need to be involved in helping to plan and
design these types of activities.
The Chairman. I think that is a very, very important point.
Let me just sort of underline it anecdotally from my own
experience, the hunger programs in my home State. It is not a
new finding. The U.S. Conference of Mayors and others have
suggested that there are many more demands on the food pantry,
the food banks in our States, than has been the case in recent
years. This is counterintuitive to many people because they
would say at a time of fuller employment in the country and
greater income that these demands should not be occurring in
this way. But, in reality, they are. And as I have visited with
the major food banks in our State, the problem comes down--and
Second Harvest is an umbrella organization--to such figures as
96-billion-pounds of food in this country are not needed
ultimately by households, by restaurants and what have you.
Ninety-five billion of this is wasted. It is destroyed, and it
comes down to the point that some of you are making. To convert
part of that 95 requires money. It has to be packaged and
preserved and transported, distributed in some fashion. And so
the problems and the costs of doing all of that as opposed to
simply disposing of it on site are economically difficult.
Now, I have proposed legislation to enhance the deduction
for companies but, likewise, to include for the first time
partnerships, individual farmers, other people who would
receive the same tax treatment for doing this, so that, that
somehow changes the economics to a point that there is some
reason why some of this might be convertible to food banks and
others in our country.
A lot of people think that is a great idea and have
cosponsored it. It hasn't happened because tax legislation is
very difficult to pass this year, and all the vehicles thus far
have run into some problems, but, you know, hope springs
eternal and each time around we try this one out.
But it makes the point in a domestic situation that food is
there, but converting this situation either by transportation,
monetization, some other form, to something that is going to
help the people that we are talking about here today really
takes a lot of planning and sort of a stream of decisions.
Now, that does involve the business community. In fact,
even without the deductions, large corporations routinely make
shipments of huge cartons of all sorts of things coming into
the food banks, and they are taking on warehouse capacity, and
you know many of these places. And they send the word out and
station wagons come in, in one case to 150 agencies, small
churches, sort of underneath the radar screen of life in my
State. About 10-percent of people are receiving some benefits
from all this.
So this is a significant thing just in our own country, but
as I say, converting it to abroad really requires even more
imagination, and it has to have American companies because they
have the ability to do this sort of thing, and in many cases,
the eagerness to do this. We are routinely in touch with
foundations of people who want to know how they would go about
doing this and do not have the expertise.
So we want to get these folks involved right along with the
PVOs or however they want to set up their situations, because
at the outset they have to be on the ground or sustainability
of it won't occur for those of us who are in the temporary
business of politics and appropriation. Some of you will be
around a lot longer to sustain this.
Well, I appreciate very much your coming and your patience
and, likewise, your thoughtfulness in responding to these
questions. And perhaps you will be stimulated by this to think
of some more questions as well as answers. So if you have
supplemental testimony, we would appreciate that.
Yes?
Ms. Levinson. I want to thank you very much because I have
to say listening to you is a very great joy for those of us who
work in the field in this area to hear someone put it all
together verbally, just sitting there. It is just--you know, it
makes me happy just to be here and hear it. So thank you.
The Chairman. Thank you.
[Whereupon, at 12:37 p.m., the Committee was adjourned.]
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A P P E N D I X
July 27, 2000
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DOCUMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD
July 27, 2000
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