[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 71 (Thursday, June 9, 1994)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: June 9, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
          AGRICULTURAL RESEARCH REMAINS A FOREIGN AID PRIORITY

                                 ______


                          HON. LEE H. HAMILTON

                               of indiana

                    in the house of representatives

                         Thursday, June 9, 1994

  Mr. HAMILTON. Mr. Speaker, the demands on U.S. foreign assistance far 
exceed the resources. The U.S. Aid agricultural programs have made 
substantial contributions to sustainable development broadly, and to 
the reduction of hunger and poverty specifically. The following article 
underscores the need for sustained commitment to agriculture, even in 
an era of intense fiscal pressure.
  The United States has a unique capacity for agricultural research. 
This research is critical for fueling advancements in agricultural 
productivity, necessary to keep pace with growing world population and 
food demand. This capacity was successfully demonstrated by the 
significant improvements in agricultural productivity spawned by the 
green revolution.
  As the following article by Jessica Mathews from the Washington Post, 
June 7, 1994 describes, these dramatic improvements in agricultural 
production brought about by the Green Revolution have, for the most 
part, reached a plateau. The growing Malthusian imbalance between high 
rates of population growth in much of the developing world and a 
relatively low rate of increase in agricultural productivity, calls for 
a renewed effort to improve agricultural productivity through 
agricultural research.
  I recommend the following article as a quick education on the 
importance of agricultural research in meeting world food and nutrition 
needs and contributing to stability in the developing world.

                           Malthus's Warning

                          (By Jessica Mathews)

       You've got to hand it to Malthus. It isn't everyone who can 
     start a debate that's still going strong after 200 years.
       So far, food supplies have not, as he predicted, been 
     overtaken by human numbers. Science has provided the means to 
     more than keep pace. Nutrition in the developing world has 
     improved, life expectancy has grown, and infant mortality has 
     been cut in half. For a while, in the 1960s and '70s 
     especially, the outlook seemed rosy.
       Yet there is still no reason to be confident that Malthus 
     was wrong in more than his timing. Already, 700 million 
     people are malnourished, and an appalling 40,000 die every 
     day of hunger and hunger-related diseases. There is 
     unmistakable evidence of overstress in land and water. And, 
     despite falling birthrates, the world is about to experience 
     growth on an unprecedented scale: 3 billion more people in 30 
     years--one India each decade--nearly all in the developing 
     countries.
       A growing number of experts now believe that governments 
     were misled by the transitory success of the Green Revolution 
     into an unwarranted and dangerous complacency about the 
     adequacy of future food supplies. They warn that absent an 
     urgent effort to refill the agricultural research pipeline, 
     the trend of a steadily improving human condition that we 
     have come to take for granted could turn sharply downward in 
     the early decades of the next century.
       They feel this way because although global agriculture far 
     outstripped population growth (now at 1.7 percent per year) 
     in the '60s and '70s, production per person suddenly stopped 
     growing in the mid-'80s.
       Statistically, it is too soon to tell whether the curve is 
     flat or actually heading downward. But it is clear that 
     growth rates in the yields of major crops have fallen sharply 
     in key regions. In China, for example, which is by far the 
     largest rice producer, yields (production per hectare) grew 
     by 4 percent annually in the 1970s. In the 1980s, the figure 
     was 1.6 percent.
       The easiest ways to expand production have been almost 
     fully exploited. Nearly all of the suitable land and the best 
     irrigation sites are in use. More fertilizer will provide 
     some boost, but in the major growing areas its use is already 
     at optimal levels.
       At the same time, the natural productivity of the land is 
     falling. Since 1945, 11 percent of the earth's vegetated 
     surface--an area the size of India and China--has been 
     degraded through soil erosion, salinization from poorly 
     managed irrigation and overgrazing. Some of this land is 
     permanently destroyed. Some could be expensively reclaimed. 
     On the rest, agricultural potential is greatly reduced. By 
     allowing nature's contribution to be destroyed while buying 
     water and fertilizer to replace it, the world has, in effect, 
     been running up a down escalator.
       Given these trends, there is only one way to triple 
     agricultural production in the next half-century. (Tripling 
     is needed to keep up with doubled population, alleviate 
     extreme malnourishment and meet the rising demand for meat.) 
     That is to sharply raise yields through research on improved 
     crops and farming methods that will allow far more intensive 
     production with far less environmental loss.
       Developing countries lack the size and scientific capacity 
     to do this on their own. Products for poor farmers provide 
     insufficient commercial motive. The work can only be done 
     through an international, publicly funded effort, located in 
     the developing world. Happily, such a system exists--a 
     network of 18 research centers launched in 1972 that go by 
     the almost-memorable acronym of CGIAR. Their early projects--
     new varieties of rice and wheat--have provided food for more 
     than 1 billion people.
       Unhappily, the system is now in crisis, its funding in free 
     fall. The centers have lost a third of their researchers 
     since 1989, and 20 percent of their funding in the last two 
     years alone. Their ability to recruit top talent is in 
     jeopardy. And all this because of a shortfall of $50 million 
     a year--a speck, a pittance--six-thousandths of one percent 
     of world military spending, to be exact.
       Those who think about agriculture's prospects cannot fathom 
     why governments have ceased to count it a priority. While 
     there are no end of research opportunities, breakthroughs 
     take 15 years or more to develop and distribute. Even 
     conservative projections (not counting uncertain but not 
     unlikely stresses like climate change) of the situation in 
     2020 are scary. The World Bank estimates that Africa's food 
     shortage then will be 20 times what it is today.
       On moral, economic or geopolitical grounds, the case for an 
     amply and securely funded program is overwhelming. Few 
     investments produce comparable economic rates of return. 
     Emergency relief, by contrast, produces none. In human terms, 
     everything begins with adequate nutrition--health, the 
     capacity to learn, the capacity to work and declining 
     fertility rates (which do not fall until after death rates 
     fall). And nothing is as sure a spur to ethnic hatred, 
     splintering societies and swelling tides of refugees, as 
     competition for a shrinking supply of food, water and 
     workable land.
       Much as ideologues love to fight over him, the verdict on 
     Malthus will have to stay out for some years yet. Most 
     likely, the outcome will depend not so much on whether 
     mankind has the technical capacity to feed itself as whether 
     it can muster the foresight and the requisite political will. 
     Early indicators to watch will be the results of this fall's 
     Population Summit in Cairo and the fate of a rescue plan for 
     the CGIAR.

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