[House Hearing, 114 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
FOOD SECURITY AND NUTRITION
PROGRAMS IN AFRICA
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON AFRICA, GLOBAL HEALTH,
GLOBAL HUMAN RIGHTS, AND
INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED FOURTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
OCTOBER 7, 2015
__________
Serial No. 114-104
__________
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COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS
EDWARD R. ROYCE, California, Chairman
CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey ELIOT L. ENGEL, New York
ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida BRAD SHERMAN, California
DANA ROHRABACHER, California GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York
STEVE CHABOT, Ohio ALBIO SIRES, New Jersey
JOE WILSON, South Carolina GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia
MICHAEL T. McCAUL, Texas THEODORE E. DEUTCH, Florida
TED POE, Texas BRIAN HIGGINS, New York
MATT SALMON, Arizona KAREN BASS, California
DARRELL E. ISSA, California WILLIAM KEATING, Massachusetts
TOM MARINO, Pennsylvania DAVID CICILLINE, Rhode Island
JEFF DUNCAN, South Carolina ALAN GRAYSON, Florida
MO BROOKS, Alabama AMI BERA, California
PAUL COOK, California ALAN S. LOWENTHAL, California
RANDY K. WEBER SR., Texas GRACE MENG, New York
SCOTT PERRY, Pennsylvania LOIS FRANKEL, Florida
RON DeSANTIS, Florida TULSI GABBARD, Hawaii
MARK MEADOWS, North Carolina JOAQUIN CASTRO, Texas
TED S. YOHO, Florida ROBIN L. KELLY, Illinois
CURT CLAWSON, Florida BRENDAN F. BOYLE, Pennsylvania
SCOTT DesJARLAIS, Tennessee
REID J. RIBBLE, Wisconsin
DAVID A. TROTT, Michigan
LEE M. ZELDIN, New York
TOM EMMER, MinnesotaUntil 5/18/
15 deg.
DANIEL DONOVAN, New YorkAs
of 5/19/15 deg.
Amy Porter, Chief of Staff Thomas Sheehy, Staff Director
Jason Steinbaum, Democratic Staff Director
------
Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, Global Human Rights, and
International Organizations
CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey, Chairman
MARK MEADOWS, North Carolina KAREN BASS, California
CURT CLAWSON, Florida DAVID CICILLINE, Rhode Island
SCOTT DesJARLAIS, AMI BERA, California
Tennessee
TOM EMMER, MinnesotaUntil 5/18/
15 deg.
DANIEL DONOVAN, New YorkAs
of 6/2/15 deg.
C O N T E N T S
----------
Page
WITNESSES
Carolyn Woo, Ph.D., president and chief executive officer,
Catholic Relief Services....................................... 3
Mr. David Hong, director of global policy, One Acre Fund......... 14
Mr. Roger Thurow, senior fellow, Global Agriculture and Food, The
Chicago Council on Global Affairs.............................. 18
LETTERS, STATEMENTS, ETC., SUBMITTED FOR THE HEARING
Carolyn Woo, Ph.D.: Prepared statement........................... 6
Mr. David Hong: Prepared statement............................... 16
Mr. Roger Thurow: Prepared statement............................. 21
APPENDIX
Hearing notice................................................... 38
Hearing minutes.................................................. 39
The Honorable Christopher H. Smith, a Representative in Congress
from the State of New Jersey, and chairman, Subcommittee on
Africa, Global Health, Global Human Rights, and International
Organizations: Statement of Kimberly Flowers................... 40
FOOD SECURITY AND NUTRITION PROGRAMS IN AFRICA
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WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 7, 2015
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health,
Global Human Rights, and International Organizations,
Committee on Foreign Affairs,
Washington, DC.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 12:45 p.m., in
room 2255 Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Christopher H.
Smith (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
Mr. Smith. The subcommittee will come to order, and good
afternoon to everyone. We are here today to address the topic
of food security and nutrition programs in Africa. As I think
many of you know, I am sponsor of the Global Food Security Act
of 2015, a bill which in its prior iteration passed the House,
unfortunately it didn't gain support in the Senate although we
are hopeful that that is something that will happen in the near
future.
The Global Food Security Act, H.R. 1567, will help provide
a long-term strategy to combat global hunger by authorizing the
existing national food security initiative coordinated by
USAID, commonly known as Feed the Future. It is a bill with
broad bipartisan support including the original co-sponsorship
of my friend and colleague, Ranking Member Karen Bass, who will
be here momentarily, as well as Foreign Affairs Committee
Chairman Ed Royce and Ranking Member Eliot Engel.
I am very happy that we will be joined shortly by the chief
Democratic co-sponsor, Betty McCollum, with whom we have worked
very closely on this legislation. I want to thank Betty as well
as her dedicated staffer Jenn Holcomb for their hard work and
dedication in promoting food security. This is truly a
bipartisan collaboration that will result in enactment sooner
rather than later of this legislation.
I also want to acknowledge that other subcommittee members
have joined us as co-sponsors, Mark Meadows, Dr. Scott
DesJarlais, and David Cicilline.
Investing in global food security is a policy that is both
penny-wise and pound-wise. This program strengthens nutrition,
especially for children during the critical first 1,000-day
window, from conception to the child's second birthday. Indeed,
there is perhaps no wiser investment that we could make in the
human person than to concentrate on ensuring that sufficient
nutrition and health assistance is given during those first
1,000 days of life--1,000 days that begin with conception and
continues through pregnancy, includes the milestone of birth,
and then finishes at roughly the second birthday of that child.
Children who do not receive adequate nutrition in utero are
more likely to experience lifelong cognitive and physical
deficiencies such as stunting. UNICEF estimates the one in four
children worldwide is stunted due to lack of adequate
nutrition.
By addressing nutrition during the first 1,000 days of life
we can help lay the groundwork for the next 25,000 or 30,000
days of life, or whatever number our Creator has allotted, and
ensure that they can be filled with good health, a good strong
immune system, and all the other positives that accrue from
that investment.
As our three witnesses will attest today, enhancing food
security is also transformational in the lives of millions of
smallholder farmers throughout the world, particularly women.
Feed the Future teaches small-scale farmers techniques to
increase agricultural yield, thereby helping nations achieve
food security, something that is in the national security
interest of the United States. Of course, we are our brothers'
and sisters' keepers and it is important that we be backing
this and having their backs in ensuring that this becomes a
reality.
It is also economical in the long run and should lead to a
reduction in the need for emergency food aid. The approach we
have taken in the Global Food Security Act is fiscally
disciplined, authorizing an amount for 2016. USAID nevertheless
can do more with less by leveraging our aid with that of other
countries, the private sector, NGOs, and especially faith-based
organizations whose great work on the ground in so many
different countries impacts so many lives. We will hear from
Dr. Woo from Catholic Relief Services, momentarily, of the good
work that her organization and other like-minded groups do
throughout the world.
By statutorily authorizing this existing program which had
its roots in the Bush administration and was formalized by
President Obama, we are also increasing our oversight by
requiring the administration to report to Congress. Political
will is absolutely essential in enacting a global food security
policy that will continue and hopefully expand.
Some things that I hope this hearing will bring to light
are that such interventions in the lives of so many people in
Africa, particularly in the first 1,000 days of life, are not
only cost effective but morally imperative. Without objection,
I will be adding testimony from Kimberly Flowers who is
director of the Global Food Security Project for CSIS.
And she points out in her statement that Tanzania has
received more Feed the Future funding than any other focus
country in the world, and then she just pours it on with what
has actually happened.
In 2014 alone, she points out, Feed the Future supported
farmers, increased the value of their agricultural sales by
more than $19 million. One hundred thousand producers reported
that they are using new technologies and management practices
for the first time, significantly improving production and
increasing incomes.
Feed the Future leveraged, she goes on, nearly $152 million
in private investments in food and agriculture. During the same
time, the U.S. Government reached 1.4 million with nutrition
services to improve maternal and child health focusing on
exclusive breastfeeding and complementary feeding, dietary
diversity, and the uptake of zinc, iron, and other targeted
micronutrient supplementation. This is a success story that
obviously needs to be replicated and Tanzania is certainly a
good showcase country where it has already done quite well. Let
me just now introduce our panelists. And again, as members come
I will recognize them for any opening comments that they might
have. We will begin with Dr. Carolyn Woo who is president and
CEO of Catholic Relief Services, the official international
humanitarian agency of the Catholic community in the United
States. Before coming to CRS in 2012, Dr. Woo served as dean of
the University of Notre Dame's Mendoza College of Business and
as an associate executive vice president at Purdue University.
Dr. Woo was one of five presenters in Rome at the release of
Pope Francis' encyclical on the environment in June of this
year.
We will then hear from Mr. David Hong who is a global
senior policy analyst who leads global policy engagement at the
One Acre Fund, a nonprofit social enterprise that supplies
smallholder farmers with the tools and financing they need to
grow their way out of hunger and poverty. Previously, David
analyzed donor agricultural policies at the ONE Campaign and
consulted on private sector agricultural investments at Oxfam
America.
We will then hear from Mr. Roger Thurow who joined the
Chicago Council on Global Affairs as senior fellow on global
agricultural and food policy in January 2010 after three
decades at the Wall Street Journal. For 20 years he was a
foreign correspondent based in Europe and Africa. His coverage
of global affairs spanned the Cold War, the fall of the Berlin
Wall, the release of Nelson Mandela, the end of apartheid, the
wars in the former Yugoslavia, and many humanitarian crises.
I would like to now yield to Dr. Woo for such time as she
may consume.
STATEMENT OF CAROLYN WOO, PH.D., PRESIDENT AND CHIEF EXECUTIVE
OFFICER, CATHOLIC RELIEF SERVICES
Ms. Woo. Thank you, Chairman Smith, and also Representative
Bass, when she comes, for holding this hearing. As mentioned, I
am the president and CEO of Catholic Relief Services which is
the international humanitarian and development agency of the
U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. We currently operate in
over 100 countries and implement our programming through
credible existing local networks, frequently those of the local
church.
Food security is a complex issue and requires a
comprehensive response. Using what we call our Pathway to
Prosperity model, we have improved nutrition and food security
by helping farmers build sustainable livelihood through a
multisectoral response. This actually includes agriculture
development, nutrition, natural resource management,
infrastructure development, and also formal market engagement.
We have used Food for Peace resources for this work but
increasingly Feed the Future also tackles these challenges.
Today I want to focus on nutrition specifically and make
three points: The importance of nutrition, the importance of
the Global Food Security Act on nutrition, and the importance
of U.S. leadership for nutrition. The first point, as Chairman
Smith mentioned, poor nutrition is the underlying cause of 45
percent of deaths of children under 5 years old, yet only 1
percent of global development assistance is devoted to
nutrition.
Poor nutrition leads to stunting, which causes significant
and permanent mental and physical impairment. The tragedy of
these permanent impacts on children is why Catholic Relief
Services is so committed to addressing nutrition in a child's
first 1,000 days of life beginning at conception and through a
child's second birthday.
According to the World Bank, for every dollar invested in
nutrition the return is $18. Catholic Relief Services adopts
community-based approaches and interventions to bring about
good feeding practices and reduce exposure to illnesses. We
help farmer groups, saving groups, and mother's groups grow
nutritious food or increase their income to be able to buy
these foods.
Let me just give you one example of how our Zambia USAID
Feed the Future project is doing. Now this intervention is not
like what you would expect. It is unusual in the sense that it
doesn't deal with feeding, per se, directly, but it deals with
income and asset generation. These are called Savings and
Internal Lending Community groups called SILC. These are groups
of small farmers who pool their money to make loans to each
other so they don't take on debt. Those that take out loans
from each other repay them with interest which gives all
members a return on their investment.
Let me showcase for you one woman by the name of Misozi
Zulu. She is a member of one such group. She is the mother of
two boys and she is raising them alone. She joined 22 women and
7 men in forming one of the first SILC group in her village.
Through this group she learned the basics of managing finance
and recordkeeping as well as the importance of good nutrition.
With greater financial knowledge and now access to capital,
Misozi took out a small loan from her group and she invested in
a bun-making business. She succeeded, paid off the loan and
took out a bigger loan, this time to buy chickens. Loans after
loans to date, Misozi has her own grocery store and is now
raising cattle. With the money she earned, now her diet for
herself and her children includes eggs, chicken, and vegetables
which make for a much healthier diet. And also she now can
afford the tuition for her children to go to school.
More than 80 percent of SILC members are women, and
participation is slowly changing their own perceptions about
their ability to contribute to household expenses. SILC groups
are also an important channel to distribute nutrition related
messaging and also to enable these small farmers to diversify
their livelihood, increase their income, and support healthier
diets.
The second point is the importance of the Global Food
Security Act on nutrition. I want to thank Chairman Smith and
also other sponsors of this bill because it elevates the
importance of nutrition, making it a cornerstone in food
security programming. This bill prioritizes vulnerable small-
scale producers providing more transparency and helping the
poor become more resilient.
The third and final point is that we believe that the U.S.
must continue to focus on nutrition and make it a vital part of
any food security and agriculture work. We urge the United
States to participate in the Nutrition for Growth Summit in Rio
next summer to exercise global leadership. We also advocate for
continued support for development funding in Food for Peace as
for its contribution to all the factors that improve nutrition.
Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Woo follows:]
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Mr. Smith. Dr. Woo, thank you very much for your testimony.
Without objection, your full statement will be made part of the
record as well as that of our other distinguished witnesses.
Mr. Hong?
STATEMENT OF MR. DAVID HONG, DIRECTOR OF GLOBAL POLICY, ONE
ACRE FUND
Mr. Hong. Thank you, Chairman Smith, Ranking Member Bass,
Congresswoman McCollum and distinguished members of the
subcommittee. Feeding a population of 9 billion people by 2050
is one of the greatest, if not the greatest, challenges facing
humanity. We will need to produce at least 60 percent more food
than we do today, and most of that increased production will
need to come from the 2.5 billion people that work on small
farms around the world.
Today these smallholder farmers are the single largest
group of the world's population living in poverty. They live in
remote areas and do not have access to basic agricultural tools
and trainings. As a result, they struggle to grow enough to
feed their families and face an annual hunger season of meal
skipping and meal substitution.
In the future, these hungry farmers have the potential to
dramatically increase their yields, not just to feed themselves
and their families but to feed the world. Agriculture yields in
Africa for most staple food crops could be two to four times
what they are today. And best of all, we know exactly what we
need to do to help smallholder farmers achieve these yield
increases.
One Acre Fund is an agriculture organization that has
developed an operating model to help smallholder farmers run
profitable businesses. We are unique in several ways. First, we
only serve smallholder farmers, primarily in east Africa, who
typically farm on one acre of land or less. Second, we are
technically a nonprofit but we operate like a business. Farmers
pay for our products and services. And third, we have
intentionally built a scalable model and we are growing fast.
We serve over 300,000 smallholder farmers in Kenya, Rwanda,
Burundi, and Tanzania, and we plan to serve 1 million farmers
by 2020.
We offer farmers a simple four-part operating model. First,
we offer financing for farm inputs such as hybrid seed and
fertilizer. We only finance productive assets. Farmers organize
themselves into groups and are jointly liable to repay their
loans, which is similar to microfinance.
Second, we distribute seed, fertilizer and other products
such as tree seeds and solar lights within walking distance.
Smallholder farmers live in remote and isolated areas so
getting products and services close to where they live is
critical.
Third, we offer training on modern agricultural techniques.
Many farmers don't know how to apply fertilizer or how to plant
in rows with the correct spacing, and we offer interactive, in-
person trainings throughout the agriculture season.
And fourth, we offer market facilitation to help farmers
maximize their profits from harvest sales. Just after harvest
the market is flooded with crop surpluses, driving prices down.
With proper training on safe storage, farmers can wait to sell
their crops until market prices increase.
This operating model has proven impact. On average, farmers
working with One Acre Fund increase their profits on supported
activities by 57 percent, or about $128. And for a farmer
living on less than $2 a day, this is a significant amount of
money.
According to our data, farmers invest their income gains in
new businesses, productive assets for the farm such as
livestock, and school fees for their children. An important
aspect of our model is our flexible repayment system. Farmers
can repay their loan at any time in any amount throughout the
entire growing season as long as they repay in full by harvest.
In 2014, I am pleased to report that the average repayment rate
was 99 percent, and in two countries 100 percent of clients
repaid their loans.
Farmer repayment enables us to move toward financial
sustainability in our field operations. Seventy-four percent of
our field expenses were covered by farmer repayment in 2014 and
the nature of our business model stretches donor dollars to
achieve more impact. Every dollar in grant funding that we
receive generates approximately $3 in additional farmer income.
In a constrained budget environment, it is even more
critical for development organizations to maximize efficiency
and impact. We are working hard to achieve financial
sustainability in our field operations so that we can use donor
resources to leverage even greater impact at a global scale.
For example, in 2012, USAID Kenya awarded One Acre Fund with
$3\1/2\ million to significantly scale up our Kenya operations.
Over a 3-year period we delivered agriculture loans to nearly
277,000 farm families, the majority of whom were women, and we
achieved repayment rates of 99 percent.
One Acre Fund has demonstrated that it is possible to help
hungry farmers become successful business people, with surplus
production that they can bring to local markets. Smallholder
farmers are the answer to our global food security challenge.
When they have access to basic tools and technologies they
thrive.
Thank you, Chairman Smith, Ranking Member Bass, and
subcommittee members for the opportunity to discuss our work
and for putting global food security high on the development
agenda. As you know, making progress on agriculture, food
security, and nutrition is imperative to the health and
wellbeing of future generations. May we not let them down.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Hong follows:]
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Mr. Smith. Thank you, Mr. Hong, very much.
Mr. Thurow.
STATEMENT OF MR. ROGER THUROW, SENIOR FELLOW, GLOBAL
AGRICULTURE AND FOOD, THE CHICAGO COUNCIL ON GLOBAL AFFAIRS
Mr. Thurow. Thank you, Chairman Smith, Ranking Member Bass,
distinguished members of the subcommittee, for inviting me to
testify today on the vital subjects of global food security and
nutrition. Nourishing the world in the face of population,
climate, and scarce resource pressures is a great challenge of
our time.
I have been investigating and writing about this challenge
for many years, first as a reporter and foreign correspondent
with the Wall Street Journal, and now as an author of two
books, with a third on the way, on global food security on
nutrition, as a senior fellow for the Chicago Council on Global
Affairs.
In my first book, ``Enough: Why the World's Poorest Starve
in an Age of Plenty,'' I and my co-author Scott Kilman explored
how we had brought hunger with us into the 21st century; how
the neglect of agriculture development and nutrition in the
post-green revolution years resulted in increasing levels of
hunger and malnutrition, particularly among smallholder farmers
themselves, creating this cruel irony: The hungriest people in
the world are farmers. Hungry farmers. What an awful, shameful
oxymoron.
In my next book, The Last Hunger Season, I set out to
illuminate the lives of these smallholder farmers. There are
hundreds of millions of them in the developing world, as we
have heard the majority of them are women, and their importance
for securing our global food chain. The more they succeed in
feeding their families and neighbors through sustainable
agriculture development through efforts like Feed the Future,
the more we will succeed in our great challenge to nourish the
world.
At this point let me note that the Chicago Council has
recommended the authorization of U.S. global food security
efforts like Feed the Future and appreciates the work of the
chairman, the ranking member, and others in their endeavors of
this on that front.
In my reporting, I followed four smallholder farmers in
western Kenya for 1 year, this in 2011. The transformation of
their lives when they finally had access to the essential
elements of farming--better quality seeds, small doses of
fertilizer, training, storage, and the financing to pay for it
all--was remarkable. One of the families had a tenfold increase
in their harvest in one season.
They were the Biketis--father Sanet, mother Zipporah, and
their four children. They were in desperate shape when I first
met them. Their youngest child, David, was manifestly
malnourished. They were in the middle of their hunger season,
this period of profound depravation when food is rationed and
meals shrink. In the previous planting season they had no
access to fertilizer or seeds and they could only plant 1/4 of
an acre. Their harvest was meager. Only two 100-kilogram bags
of corn, which is their staple food. That barely lasted 2
months and then they plunged into their hunger season.
The next year, joining the One Acre Fund, they then had
this access to the essential elements of farming. They were
able to plant one full acre, and their harvest was a
magnificent 20 bags of corn--two tons. With that tenfold
increase, they had more than enough to conquer their hunger
season and they now had a surplus for the first time in their
lives which they could use for school fees, for necessary
medicine, for construction of a small house with a metal roof
that didn't leak in the rain anymore, and most importantly,
they could afford a second planting season with a wide array of
vegetables to diversify their diets and greatly improve their
nutrition.
From Zipporah I learned that the deepest depth of misery
during the hunger season was to be a mother unable to properly
nourish her children, which brings me to my current reporting
on the importance of good nutrition in the 1,000 days, the
time, as we have heard, from when a woman becomes pregnant to
the second birthday of her child. This is the most important
time of human development. For what happens in those 1,000
days, the foundation of healthy physical development to rapid
growth of brain and cognitive skills, determines to a large
extent the course of a child's life--the ability to grow,
learn, work, succeed. And by extension, the long term health,
stability, and prosperity of the societies in which the
children and which all of us live.
Good nutrition is the cornerstone of this growth. It is the
vital fuel of the 1,000 days. Any disruption in nutrition
during this time can lead to stunting--physical, mental, or
both. Today, one in every four children in the world is
stunted. A child who is stunted is sentenced to a life of
underachievement, diminished performance in school, lower
productivity and wages in the workplace, more health problems
throughout life, a greater propensity for chronic diseases like
diabetes and heart problems.
The impact, the cost, ripple throughout society, from the
individual, to the family, to the community, to the nation, to
the entire world. The cumulative toll of all this stunts the
world economy by as much as 5 percent. For you see, a stunted
child in Africa or Asia or here in the Americas is a stunted
child everywhere.
In my reporting, I am following moms and their children
throughout the 1,000 days in four parts of the world: India,
Uganda, Guatemala--countries which face immense challenges of
malnutrition and stunting--and in Chicago. Why Chicago? Because
the issue of good nutrition is not just something that is over
there somewhere, it is also vital right here in the United
States. Good nutrition in the 1,000 days is crucial for the
success of American children in school and later in the
workplace here as healthy adults who are contributing the
nation's productivity and growth.
Nutrition and all that supports it--clean water,
sanitation, hygiene, healthcare, agriculture--are essential
components of global food security. In development work, all
these elements must come together at once at the same time.
And finally, here is where the United States Government
can, and should, lead with congressional action to authorize
legislation that commits the U.S. to a long term global food
nutrition security strategy with the success of smallholder
farmers at the center, with policies that strengthen nutrition-
smart agriculture development and that expand access to and
spur the consumption of healthy foods, and food aid and social
protection programs with the focus on the crucial importance of
the 1,000 days.
For that is where it all begins, and it is where our
actions on global food security and where American leadership
and agriculture development and improved nutrition around the
world has its greatest impact. Thank you again for this
opportunity to testify.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Thurow follows:]
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Mr. Smith. Mr. Thurow, thank you so much. I look forward to
reading your book.
Mr. Thurow. Thank you.
Mr. Smith. When will it be published?
Mr. Thurow. Next May, hopefully Mother's Day.
Mr. Smith. Very good. That is fantastic.
Mr. Thurow. Good timing, we hope.
Mr. Smith. Thank you, appreciate it. I will yield to Ms.
Bass.
Ms. Bass. Thank you. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, as
always, for holding this hearing on food security.
As defined by the U.N., food security is a situation that
exists when people have access to sufficient amounts of safe
and nutritious food for normal growth and development. In
contrast, food insecurity may be caused by the unavailability
of food, insufficient purchasing power, inappropriate food
distribution, or inadequate use of food at the household level.
While the primary means of addressing acute food insecurity
worldwide has been humanitarian intervention, this is costly
and, by nature, reactive. As such, the development of a long
term policy, which Mr. Thurow was just talking about, to
enhance food security at the macro level which would also lead
to economic growth, should be a goal of U.S. foreign assistance
and collaboration with our global partners.
The U.S. is the world's largest food aid donor spending an
average of $2 billion on food aid programs from 2006 to 2013,
and a majority of this spending was for emergency food needs.
It has been supplemented since 2010 with annual outlays of $900
million for nutrition and agricultural development programs
under the Feed the Future initiative.
Additionally, the U.S. has sought to address emergency food
assistance under two primary programs--Title II of the Food for
Peace Act, and the Emergency Food Security Program under the
Foreign Assistance Act of 1961. We had a hearing earlier today
where we were talking about the Food for Peace program and
making reforms to that program, and I wanted to get your
opinions about that for any of the panelists.
I believe that when I was coming in I was listening to Dr.
Woo talk about Feed the Future. I have had the opportunity to
visit Tanzania, Ethiopia, and Kenya, and see for myself
firsthand dramatic changes in watching farmers, as Mr. Hong
described, go from being subsistence farmers to actually having
excess, being able to sell their produce and developing their
villages, buying trucks, farm tools, school uniforms and really
transforming their communities.
So I wanted to get your opinions about what should be done
with our current Food for Peace program, how it should be
reformed. And Mr. Thurow, you mentioned in broad terms policy
changes that should take place, but you might provide some
specific examples as well.
Mr. Thurow. Sure. Carolyn, do you want to start?
Ms. Woo. Yes. Ranking Member Bass, thank you very much. We
also heard about the hearing that you had, but of course we
were on our way here and did not have the details of it.
But one point we want to make for Food for Peace is that it
is very important to protect the development piece of it. Now
all the things that we are talking about, all these
interventions of how to help farmers increase their
productivity, change their farming practices, build up their
livelihoods, and change nutrition practices, those things
happen through the development portion. And if we don't invest
in that portion we will just have greater and greater
emergencies and more people who would be needing help in an
emergency situation. So I think the development aspect of it is
absolutely critical for these type of long term, sustainable
interventions. Thank you.
Ms. Bass. Mr. Hong.
Mr. Hong. Yes, I am reminded of an example. When countries
invest in agricultural development you can have very different
results. So in southern Ethiopia the government invested
heavily in social protection measures and agriculture
development for their farmers, and during the Horn of Africa
food crisis the communities in Somalia faced severe famine and
had to be supplemented by food aid from abroad. And this
community in southern Ethiopia were fine because of the earlier
investments. And so the long term nature of this is really
important and cannot be stressed more and so that is why we
want to focus on agriculture development.
Mr. Thurow. Yes, I would agree with everything, I think,
particularly on Food for Peace and the broader food aid arena
that again with this irony that a lot of the beneficiaries of
Food for Peace are farmers themselves and smallholder farmers.
So that agriculture development piece of this is really
crucial so that these smallholder farmers have the ability to
grow enough food to feed themselves, their neighbors,
eventually their countries and the continent of Africa, and so
that they then won't be in the position of needing this
assistance; that they want to be self-sufficient themselves.
And that is what I have seen, and certainly what David
would see with his farmers and with Catholic Relief and all the
work that they do, is these farmers want to be independent.
They want to be able to feed their families. The Food for Peace
and the assistance is great in times of need and emergency, but
it is that long term, sustainable agriculture development that
is also a really key component of it.
Ms. Bass. Well, is there any more that you think that we
should do with Feed the Future? How it should be expanded, what
needs to be changed, reformed, anything?
Ms. Woo. I just want to say I think Feed the Future could
increase its emphasis on smallholder farming. I think currently
it deals with farmers with some assets, and again it is really
for people at the bottom. And once you invest in them and you
have these long term practices it increases resilience.
And the other thing is too that development assistance now
allows us to address the potential impact of climate. If it is
two degrees warmer, if water is being scarce, we are actually
looking ahead to prevent consequences to these farmers.
Ms. Bass. Thank you. Anyone else?
Mr. Thurow. I would say that also the emphasis on
smallholder farmers, but that nutrition is the cornerstone and
at the center of not only all agriculture efforts but all
development efforts. And I believe that USAID, in this all-
encompassing program of development assistance, has an emphasis
on nutrition at the center. And through that and particularly
the emphasis on nutrition and nutritious value of the crops and
nutrition education that then goes along with the programs that
then becomes a great benefit for the women, the women farmers.
Because what I have seen in my reporting, if they would also
have experience, is that when the farmers fail and they are in
this hunger season, the women and the women farmers feel that
they are failing on two fronts. They are failing as farmers
because they are not successful in growing enough to feed their
families, and they are failing as mothers because they are
having malnourished hungry children.
Ms. Bass. Thank you. Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Smith. Thank you very much, Ms. Bass.
Let me just ask, Dr. Woo, first to you, assuming the reins
of CRS as you did, and so effectively, you came with a
background as being a dean of a school of business. I think
your testimony and your leadership demonstrates that you
believe that the more business-like the efforts are to meet the
huge humanitarian needs and making it sustainable the better.
And I am wondering if you could just, you mentioned in
Zambia, for example, that smallholder farmers, you have helped
them with the balance between the harnessing agriculture for
consumption and for income through engagement with markets, and
you might want to expand upon that if you would.
Mr. Thurow, you make a very good point, as does Mr. Hong,
about agriculture yields: In Africa, for most staple crops
could be two to four times what they are today. That is huge.
What a capacity to build out towards. And then you point out,
Mr. Thurow that better quality seeds, small doses of
fertilizer, training, and storage, and financing to pay for it
all--it was remarkable when you talked about the Kenyan farmers
who in a year increased their yield tenfold in their harvest. I
mean that is spectacular with just some discipline.
And in answering the question or elaborating on that if you
could, we have learned the hard way what too much fertilizer,
too much pesticide does to people. It gets into the food chain.
It gets into our bodies. It has devastating impacts on children
especially. And I am wondering if those lessons learned by what
we have experienced and other Western countries with overuse of
fertilizer and pesticide, the best practices are being utilized
in places like Africa and other developing countries.
Let me also, Dr. Woo, if you would speak to the issue of
resilience. We got hit by Hurricane Sandy a couple of years
ago--and I had meeting, I missed our hearing earlier, with the
full committee, because I was chairing a meeting with FEMA on
people who still have not been anywhere near made whole.
South Carolina is experiencing it--every one of our states
go through it--California with its drought. Resilience. Maybe
you want you spend a little time on how that could be built
into the better crop that can withstand less rainfall, for
example.
And then on the first 1,000 days of life, Mr. Thurow, I was
at some of the scaling up meetings at the U.N. in 2010, and
actually joined seven first ladies of Africa where they spoke,
really, with unbelievable enthusiasm about how, like you have
pointed out and now your new book will, I am sure, further
elaborate on it, how stunting can almost disappear.
And I was in Guatemala the day they signed an agreement
with USAID and met with the Speaker the day they were actually
signing on, because stunting is as you know a big problem in
Guatemala as it is in many parts of Africa particularly in
Nigeria.
But this idea of the first 1,000 days of life--I like to
cross-reference work that I do. I wrote the Combating Autism
Act, the 2000 law, the 2013 and the 2010 versions. NIH has
found, and they have three major studies to prove it that if
enough folic acid is provided in the first month, not the
second, third or fourth--it is good, but it is not
determinative--but in the first month, it reduces the risk of
autism by 40 percent.
And we know tens of millions of kids and young people in
Africa, according to the World Health Organization, are
autistic or at least on the spectrum. And it seems to me that
if that is included, as I am sure it is, all this great outcome
for a modest micronutrient investment which could be made
during those first 1,000 days. So if you might want to
elaborate on that as well. But start with Dr. Woo.
Ms. Woo. Yes, Chairman, I think you asked me two question.
One is the business approach, the second one is about
resilience. Let me begin with resilience. The cornerstone of
adjusting resilience is really two things. One is to reduce
exposure to any type of natural or manmade disasters, the
second one is how do you help people rebound?
So rebounding is very easy to understand. If you lost all
your crops to a flood and you have no more seeds that is a
problem. You cannot rebound, right. And so you start with the
first one and that is if it is natural disaster, say for
example, anticipating floods, anticipating drought, you could
actually use seeds which are drought-resistant, flood-
resistant. You can change irrigation practices and so on, but
you have to look ahead.
And also there are also natural disasters such as storms.
In those situations you could have pre-planning, you could have
structures which could withstand various type of issues. So
resilience is looking at those two things. Reducing exposure in
different contexts, and secondly is increasing the ability to
rebound. And diversifying crops, for example, is a way to
rebound because then you are not all vulnerable to the same set
of effects.
Let me go into the business model because it is also a way
of achieving resilience. It has now become very much the common
thread that we undertake our programming, particularly in
agriculture. For us to have the effect which address several
billion smallholder farmers, we have to use approach which is
scalable and then sustainable, and we cannot do that on the
basis of just government funding or philanthropy. We have to
find ways where it creates a return, it creates a benefit so
that the people who want those benefits will sustain this.
So for a smallholder farmer program it is really what we
call Pathway to Prosperity. What does that pathway look like?
It starts with people who are vulnerable. They grow things
where there is no market. They grow it poorly. For example, the
quality is really poor, and also their growing practices are
not good. The overuse of fertilizers, for example, their land
can be very degraded. They may not have the tools and the
knowledge to manage all of those things correctly.
So the first step is really diagnosing whether people are
growing the right things with the right input in the right way
on the right land. I mean, as simple as that. That is usually
agriculture, but where we also come in is what we call the
smart skills.
So in fact it is a chapter from American agriculture. The
first one is forming co-ops. Each individual farm is very hard
to deal with, particularly when you have one acre, so the
formation of communities of co-ops, so that whole grouping
skills. The second one is a knowledge in finance and budgeting,
because now we expose them because they have this scale to
market.
How do we enable them to achieve certification so that they
could sell to various stores and so on? So also marketing
skills and negotiating skills so that we are connecting to the
formal market. And before they have all of these assets how do
they generate their capital? And so One Acre Fund is one of
those sources.
And I think you are reaching 1 million farmers, right?
Mr. Hong. We hope to.
Ms. Woo. You hope to. Well, we are talking 1 billion
farmers, all right, and so where do they find the capital to
take this journey? That is why savings group is very important
so that they don't borrow from an outsider but they borrow
within themselves. So when 20 people pool their resources they
could, like this lady I just talked about, started with a
baking business, then a chicken business, then a grocery store
and then buying cattle.
So how we accumulate that capital and then eventually form
people into co-ops that they have that type of group skills,
the finance skills, the marketing skills, the negotiation,
certification, in order eventually to connect with markets. So
that is the whole business model associated with all of this
transformation.
Mr. Hong. Yes, thank you, Chairman Smith. So you asked two
questions. One was around the yield gaps and one was around
resilience, so I will talk about resilience first.
One of the things that we have seen that is truly
impressive with many smaller farmers is they are incredibly
good at mitigating risk. And as they gain more income they
diversify their assets right away. They buy a cow, they buy
chickens, they are able to sell milk, eggs, things like that.
So if there is a crop failure they have other things to sell on
the market and other ways to make money.
One of the things that happened a few years ago is in Kenya
there was a disease called maize lethal necrosis disease, MLND,
and it was spreading. It is a virus and it would devastate
entire fields. And so we offered a package, an alternative
package of local staple crops like sorghum and millet and
orange-fleshed sweet potatoes to try to help farmers mitigate
against this type of risk.
We also offer things like drought-tolerant seed in our
program as well as crop insurance for many of the farmers we
work with. On yield gaps it is no secret that the soils in sub-
Saharan Africa are incredibly depleted. They require nitrogen
from sometimes inorganic fertilizer to develop anything. So for
us, we teach farmers to microdose to prevent leaching. So they
use very small scoops of fertilizer, they target it, and
through that they are able to increase their productivity.
And so I will just pass on to Roger.
Mr. Thurow. Yes, and I will just follow up on that. That
what you see in the field with smallholder farmers all over and
say the ones at the One Acre Fund, this little scoop that they
use it is basically the size of a thimble. They provide one
that is nice and plastic, but if they don't have that or that
one goes lost or something, they basically just have a Coca-
Cola bottle cap or a beer cap which they somehow affix to a
little stick and that is their dosage of fertilizer. One of
those per maize seed that they put in the ground, a third for
beans.
And so you see them bending over very carefully, close to
the ground particularly on the beans where they have a cap of
this, and it is just a third in this one and a third in the
next one. Back-breaking work because they are bending over so
far to do that.
And fertilizer, as it is for farmers in the United States,
I mean, it is the most expensive component of their farming.
They don't want to waste anything, so the microdosing. And then
also other innovations with composting, some conservation
agriculture and things that goes along, so there is other ideas
that are then also starting to spread.
And then just one point on the resilience. The crop
diversity, I think, is really important. So in terms of Feed
the Future or of other agriculture development programs, the
diversity of and kind of shifting away somewhat or including in
the work is just not an overreliance on the staple crops. So
the corn, the rice, the wheat, the beans, but also these orphan
crops--the millet, the sorghum, sweet potatoes--all sorts of
local greens and vegetables that we don't know anything about
but they know really well because that has been growing around
them for a long time.
And then the question on the 1,000 days. And the folic acid
is crucial, starting at the time that you mentioned and kind of
throughout the pregnancy. And what I found with a lot of the
moms and the expecting moms, and particularly in Uganda, India,
and Guatemala, is the reliability of the access to those kind
of supplements, so the folic acid and the iron tablets that
they make that they take. Whereas, here and Europe and the
developed world that is part of the prenatal checkups and
everything that you get and somebody is checking and making
sure that they are being taken and things.
There, when they go to the clinic there may be a shortage
of them, so they are told, well, you get them the next time you
come back. Well, who knows when the next time is going to be
when they come back because it is a distance that they have to
go to, there is probably a little expense with getting there.
They will take them, it may make them feel funny and so they
will say I was feeling better before I was taking these pills.
So the knowledge that then goes along with it. So it is this
whole integrated aspect. But it is folic acid, it is the iron,
it is the zinc, it is the vitamin A, all these things that are
essential and that we take for granted but are really key.
And as you said in your opening comments, Chairman, there
is no greater investment in this whole field than in the 1,000
days. And investment in innovation, what is going on with the
delivery systems of these fortified, of these supplements and
fortifications, and efforts like even one initiative that I am
following is the moms in Uganda are doing this. They are
growing orange-fleshed sweet potatoes and high-iron beans.
So the idea is that you let the crops do the work for you.
There is the vitamin A or the beta-carotene that then becomes
the vitamin A in the orange-fleshed sweet potatoes and in beans
which already have an iron content. Through breeding you raise
the iron content a little bit. And so they are just into foods
that they are eating four or five, six times a week, they are
getting those supplements and some of the important minerals
that they need.
Mr. Smith. Thank you. Ms. McCollum.
Ms. McCollum. Thank you, Mr. Chair. When you were talking
about sometimes taking the supplements and not feeling well, I
turned to Karen. I said, yes, iron can do a number on you when
you are pregnant.
Mr. Thurow. That is what my wife----
Ms. McCollum. So if you don't understand that that is going
to happen, if it hasn't been described that it will pass after
a week or so, you might be sorely tempted to say this might
have been a nice idea but it is not for me.
Mr. Thurow. Right.
Ms. McCollum. The first time I had an opportunity to really
see CRS in full action was in Malawi and I was at a seed fair.
And it was absolutely amazing. There was training, there was
nutrition, there was the talk about doing more diversity and
that and it was just absolutely wonderful. And I think for me,
no pun intended, but was some of the seeds of what I think
people have come up with Feed the Future because it was so
inclusive and it was so holistic at the fair.
I just had an opportunity to be in Senegal recently where
there was a Feed the Future project that was taking place with
rice, but along with it there was work on granting not
permanent title to land but 99 years for the title to the land
so that people could feel that they could make the investment,
and your neighbor next to you also was having a title.
So the whole idea of about community pulling together.
The training and the co-op is something which Land O'Lakes
from Minnesota does a lot in it, so I think we know what all
the pieces are and that is why I am so proud of the legislation
here that we are all supporting about Feed the Future.
But I want to turn this a little bit, and I hadn't planned
on asking this question, but the question of resilience, and
the way that you folks answered it, and then the question of
pesticides and using less of them. GMOs are very, very
controversial. Very controversial in Africa. I do not support
people not being able to harvest seeds and replant them.
I want to make it very, very clear that I think that there
are GMOs that can serve a higher purpose. When I was in
Bangladesh they were working on something with rice so it would
absorb less arsenic. In Bangladesh they have also worked on an
eggplant that needs less pesticides.
Can you maybe address for us how we have a rational
conversation, especially with what is facing Africa with wheat
rust, into the future. We have a rational conversation about
how we use science to improve the quality of lives and
resiliency in crops and take the conversation that direction,
knowing that some of us do support farmers being able to
collect their seeds, not being into a whole cycle of buying one
particular product line from seed to storage.
Could you maybe help us with that? Because as we talk about
it here, our African colleagues in the parliaments are shaking
their heads saying, well, if it is not good for the United
States why would I want it here? How did we get so confused on
what Norman Borlaug started working on? Who wants to take that
on?
Mr. Thurow. Well, that is a good point that you mentioned
Dr. Borlaug at the end, because he basically, all the work that
he did in the seeds and the breeding that he did, and of course
that was with the conventional breeding and he wasn't thinking
about GMOs and things at that time. And none of them were
patented. I mean he wasn't developing these to make money
himself. It was an impression of these seeds as a public good,
the research as a public good. So it is a very good point you
make of that they can serve a higher purpose.
And so I think one of the things that has happened is there
has been too many dogmatic positions and hardline thinking on
this. They are either good or they are the best thing to come
along, and kind of no middle ground in between. And I have seen
some of the debates in Africa and they are precisely confused
like that. And they have a great saying in Africa that when the
elephants fight it is the grass that gets trampled.
And so the fight in the GMO realm between the United States
and Europe and the other developed world countries that are
debating this thing and the contretemps that are going on over
that it then creates this state that for in Africa for them to
have a reasoned debate on these things, what their own
scientists say, what their farmers say, has become very
difficult.
So yes, to kind of take the dogmatic positions out of
there. And then, but I think this whole notion of this research
and development for a public good that seeds, drought-resistant
seeds, could be transformational for a lot of smallholder
farmers. And not only drought-resistant seeds, but particularly
with the climate change that the smallholder farmers that we
are all talking about and that you know very well are on the
front lines of climate change, they are going to bear the brunt
of whatever changes are coming. They are the ones that are
going to need to adapt to that. And so again this notion of
this research and things is for the public good, I think is
really good.
Mr. Hong. Yes. I mean, I think one of the things that we
have found are technology beyond GMOs. When you just think
about hybrid seed that is available on the market, for many
farmers they don't have access to technology that has already
been developed. So what we are trying to push for is to have
research institutions like the CGIAR system that Borlaug worked
for at CIMMYT and some of these other centers, make those
varieties available to farmers.
I mean, in all the countries where we work GMOs are illegal
in every place, and so it is not even an issue for us right
now. What we are talking about are just simple hybrid seeds
that do need to be repurchased every year, but farmers are
still able to use informal seeds if they like. They can choose
whatever they want. And I think for us it is really about
farmer choice and farmer autonomy and having them have the
array of choices that are available to many of the farmers in
developed countries. So for us that is where we are coming
from.
Mr. Thurow. I was just going to add that in terms of the
hybrid seeds, there is so much development and advances that
can be made when you talk about the yield gaps in Africa that
can be made up just on the existing seeds, existing standard,
non-controversial breeding that goes on that there is just a
wide opportunity there.
Ms. Woo. So I just want to address this on four dimensions.
The first one is the economic concerns associated with it,
which is if you cannot access your own seeds and you have to
depend on a very large producer that is a major issue. And we
with the Catholic Church are concerned about that.
But one of the things we have to remember is that actually
there is a lot of locally available and publicly available
hybrids, as some of our colleagues said. So, and also it is a
balance between how much is the farmer dependent on that. If
the farmer has diversified crops and not as completely
dependent on one provider of those seeds, and also if it is
locally available at the right price and also publicly
available materials.
But there is the first question which is the economic
control that they lose or that they could gain in different
ways. The second one is you mention irrational fears, and I am
not able to address that but I just want to say that we have
dealt with enough change in behavior. There are demonstration
plots, for example. There are a lot of farmer agents which go
out there to assist people in making changes, and you never
just turn over your plot to completely to a new thing. And so
there are rational vehicles to help people incrementally
observe the effect, but there is always an irrational part of
it, but where there are rational vehicles that can be
undertaken.
But the third thing, I think there is a lot of politics in
the discussion of GMOs and they exceed us actually, government
to government, regulatory bodies, people who set standards and
so on. But the fourth thing I want to say is that in some
situations GMOs would be a major contribution, but in other
situations in a lot of the work that we do we have not bumped
up against that as a major hindrance or obstacle in making
progress.
Mr. Smith. Thank you. Mr. Meadows.
Mr. Meadows. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you to the
group for your testimony, and I am going in there in just a
little bit. Having been in Kenya working with some local
farmers, and when we talk about farming I come from an
agricultural district of North Carolina. When you tell them you
are going to meet with farmers in Africa they don't comprehend
that it is a 1-acre little piece of property that they may be
growing maize on and the struggles that many of the farmers
have.
And I guess so I would ask you this, is as we look at the
aid--and I am proud to work with Chairman Smith and Ranking
Member Bass on a number of issues. But getting beyond just
humanitarian relief, which is what you are talking about, is
actually making it sustainable and reliable, how do we fight
back about the corruption, the potential for manipulation with
whether it be on a tribal basis or on a government basis within
those communities? Because that is a real problem as being
there on the ground we can talk about a lot of those things,
but it really are those issues that undermine the very nature
of what we are trying to do.
Dr. Woo, do you have any thoughts on that?
Ms. Woo. Not the whole answer but I just want to say, so
our partners, we work with about 550 Catholic organizations in
the field, and so that is one way to work with partners where
we understand their culture. We understand the workings. It is
not as conducive to corruption issues, a third party payment.
Mr. Meadows. Right.
Ms. Woo. At the end it is within the Church structure, so
that is how we generally deal with those issues. We are audited
all the time by the U.S. Government, right, I mean, and so we
have very strict policies in our financial administration, how
those things to----
Mr. Meadows. And I am not suggesting--please don't take it
that I am suggesting that you are involved in that. It is
really more at a local level there that----
Ms. Woo. And so the key, really, is the local partners you
work with are very important. Are they partners that have
accountability to the people there? And there are different
levels of accountability. And so if it is parishes and dioceses
and so on, there is a structure there. So that is how we bypass
some of the corruption issue.
Mr. Meadows. Okay, let me ask a different question then is
because I know that there were some farmers that would be
growing beans or maize and truly to provide for their family.
Government programs, and I am speaking specifically here about
Kenya, would come in and encourage them to grow other types of
products which would provide a better yield, supposedly,
financially. And yet the component was to sell back to the
government of which they didn't get paid for that for 6 or 9
months, 12 months, and it breaks up this cycle.
How do we make sure that the monies that would go forward
here and the training and education don't get hijacked, and I
want to say that in a polite way, hijacked into other areas
that really make farmers grow hungry? Any thoughts on that from
any of the panel? Or am I wrong with that? Is that not
happening or do you see that happening?
Ms. Woo. Oh, I think the compromise of that how incentives
could create behaviors--this is not part of the program--is
very much a part of many different development programs. And I
think where we see it is community advocacy, community voice.
How you build up the ability of that community to speak up for
itself is very important, and how it has access to government
ministries itself, and how again using a co-op structure for it
to be able to identify these issues and have a vehicle to speak
up. It happens not just in agriculture. It happens in mining,
for example, where local communities, their rights to land, the
proper use of that land and so on is an issue. And there is
really, advocacy is what we see as an important empowerment, a
piece.
Mr. Meadows. Okay. Mr. Thurow?
Mr. Thurow. Yes, I was going to say that the advocacy, the
community nature of this, so particularly among the women and
women's empowerment. Because when they feel that they can speak
up and that they are being heard, they become a whirlwind of
force and they don't put up with a lot of the stuff then that
governments or middlemen or others are doing because they can
see through that.
And yes, they are all, there is, with just the farmers in
the field and their families, this fed-up of they are hearing
things that there should be services provided by the
government. They are not there. If they are there is some kind
of corruption or strings attached that you mention.
But I think the important thing is that the more self-
sustaining these farmers become, that these smallholder farmers
become, that they are able themselves to exercise the choices
that David talks about. What kind of seed, I know what kind of
seed I want. I know my soil conditions. I know my altitude
conditions. I know what seeds are working here. That they can
act on that themselves. And the more empowered they become
through abandoning and conquering the hunger season by being
able to effectuate their own independence as farmers, I think,
makes a tremendous difference.
Mr. Meadows. Okay. I will yield back, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Smith. Okay. Mr. Clawson.
Ms. Woo. I will just add to say that that is why
programming is not just directed at individual farmers or
individual families, it has to address communities and how
communities in our case is connected up whether it is through
the Church structure or through government ministry, otherwise
the individual voice is not enough to overcome that.
Mr. Clawson. Thank you for coming today. Real quick, an
observation. You can think on it. Maybe we will talk another
time, because we have got to go vote.
It seems to me that if you look at poverty-stricken
countries either in Asia, southeast Asia, or Africa, the model
or the choice for poor folks is usually one of the two.
Subsistence farming--and folks like you help them innovate, do
better, one acre, et cetera, all that is great of course--or go
to the city. And you have got some bad choices in the city,
usually, if you show up from the country with a sack of rice
and that is it. Okay. And when we speak about how to get out of
that trap we usually don't talk about a middle kind of model.
And so just one thing for you all to think about, when
people come here and ask for our help and our funds, I always
think of small villages that learn how to make brooms for
factories in Cambodia or Thailand or some other micro-
manufacturing that grows into bigger manufacturing so that you
are not either micro-farming your way to eat or--God forbid--
prostitution in the big city. That there is actually something
where folks learn business skills that could also help them for
the modern world and make a little money.
So we don't have time to answer that, but if you will come
back sometime. I think we miss the only real model out of this,
and that is not farming your way out and that is not everybody
go to the city, but let's try to make some things that people
will buy. But I appreciate everything you all are doing because
I think it is wonderful.
Ms. Woo. I just want to say in the Pathway to Prosperity we
have actually a vehicles that allow people to do post-harvest
production which is what you are talking about.
Mr. Clawson. With credit? Because if there is no credit
those models never work. But you and I should talk another day,
so I can go vote.
Ms. Woo. Yes, so it is like canning, juicing, and washing
and so on.
Mr. Smith. Thank you, Mr. Clawson. Let me just ask one
final question. I have many more, but we do have a series of
votes.
With regards to wastage, the big emphasis obviously is on
building up capacity and increasing yield, but how do we
mitigate wastage? I saw a UNEP suggestion or estimation of $1
trillion worth of waste, one in four calories worldwide. In the
U.S. 30 to 40 percent of our food supply is wasted. It is less
so in Africa, but it is for other reasons, it is mostly because
of storage. And we know that the MCC build feeder roads in
Senegal, for example, to help the rice get to market, and I am
just wondering how much, are we putting enough emphasis on that
side of the coin?
Mr. Hong. Yes, I think that is a fundamental part of our
program. When I say market facilitation, part of that is how do
we minimize food loss and maximize farm profits. So one of the
things that we offer farmers are these bags that are
hermetically sealed storage bags so you can store your grain
for months, maybe even years at a time. They are developed at
Purdue and they are great technology. They only cost a few
dollars. So things like that and training farmers on how to
store at home so they can safely store those crops are
fundamental to post-harvest storage.
Mr. Thurow. Yes, I was going to say that storage and
storage innovation, I think, in this whole realm of agriculture
development in addition to really emphasizing nutrition, but
the storage and eliminating waste is the next holy grail of
what needs to happen particularly with innovation.
And David mentioned Purdue, but a lot of the universities
and a lot of the research institutions here and elsewhere in
the world and in the developing countries themselves are
looking at precisely that question, because all the hard work
that these farmers put into their crops and growing throughout
the planting season and then have a third or half of their
crops not even make it out of the field and onto the plate.
Here in this country what is wasted is food that is prepared to
be eaten and then not eaten or thrown away. There it doesn't
even get to the point of being prepared for consumption.
Ms. Woo. So I just want to say there are four causes of
food waste in Africa. Number one is people grow things that
other people do not want. They are not high quality. They are
harvested too early. They were rotted or whatever it is. Number
one.
Number two is the storage issue, that you want it but you
want a storage to be careful so that it is not infested by
pests or mold or whatever it is. The third thing is that there
are no roads to take it to market so you have to sell to each
other. The fourth is, even when you have roads, smallholder
farmers are not sophisticated enough to engage a formal market.
So it needs special assistance and building up that capacity.
So I think that those are the four causes of food waste in
Africa.
Mr. Smith. Thank you. Thank you, all three, for your great
testimony, for your leadership on these important issues. It
does help this subcommittee, and by extension the full
committee and the Congress to do a better job. We are pushing
very hard to get this legislation passed. It has already passed
the Foreign Affairs Committee, which there is one other
committee that needs to consider it and I am sure they will. So
again thank you for your leadership. It is extraordinary. The
hearing is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 1:53 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
A P P E N D I X
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Material Submitted for the RecordNotice deg.
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Material submitted for the record by the Honorable Christopher H.
Smith, a Representative in Congress from the State of New Jersey, and
chairman, Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, Global Human Rights,
and International Organizations
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[all]