[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 116 (Thursday, July 19, 2007)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1563-E1564]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




   THE IMPACT OF AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT ON FOOD SECURITY IN AFRICA

                                 ______
                                 

                       HON. CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH

                             of new jersey

                    in the house of representatives

                        Wednesday, July 18, 2007

  Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Madam Speaker, this morning the Subcommittee 
on Africa and Global Health held a hearing on the impact of 
agricultural development on food security in Africa. Living in a 
country of plenty as we do, at least for most of us, where local 
grocery stores have aisles of fresh produce, cereal and even pet food, 
one can easily forget that other parts of the world are not similarly 
blessed, and what undernourishment that results from food insecurity 
means in practical terms.
  UNICEF estimates that undernutrition is a leading cause of mortality 
of children under the age of five, contributing to the death of about 5 
million children every year. One to two

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percent of all children under 5 in the developing world, or almost 13 
million, suffer from severe acute undernutrition. These children are 
far more susceptible to dying from childhood illnesses including 
diarrhea and pneumonia.
  Of course, undernutrition does not affect only children. Twenty-five 
percent of all undernourished persons in the world, or about 218 
million, live in Sub-Saharan Africa. This constitutes about 30 percent 
of that region's population.
  Agriculture production is essential for addressing this crisis on 
both the local and national levels. And yet Africa faces numerous 
challenges in meeting the basic need of food and nutrition for its 
people. These include the simple lack of food in markets or fields; 
poor food delivery mechanisms; many people's inability to buy food or 
agricultural resources due to poverty; obstacles to food access due to 
social status; lack of sanitation and clean drinking water; and natural 
and man-made natural resources.

  I can attest to at least one aspect of these challenges from my own 
experience in Africa. I have traveled along a segment of the Pan-
African Highway, which is one of Africa's primary transportation 
routes. The part that I rode on is a narrow, paved, two-lane road with 
numerous bicyclists, pedestrians and animals walking along the 
shoulder. I was told that another major segment was a dirt road that 
was taking far longer than anticipated to be re-paved. One often 
encounters open-air trucks overloaded with bananas or other produce 
broken down in the middle of the road, exposed to the sun and heat. I 
am told that they can remain there for hours or even days at a time. No 
one can travel this major road after dark, as the road is not lit and 
the danger of hitting one of these disabled vehicles or some other 
object on the road is too great. Even if a community is growing bumper 
crops of high quality agricultural produce, it would be next to 
impossible to transport food in a timely manner under these conditions.
  As we are noting time and again during the subcommittee hearings, 
inadequate infrastructure is a major obstacle to development generally 
in Africa, and that certainly applies in the case of agricultural 
development. African leaders recognized this when they named increased 
agricultural trade capacity and infrastructure as one of the four 
pillars of the Comprehensive African Agricultural Development Program 
of the African Union's New Partnership for Africa's Development. The 
Subcommittee heard just three weeks ago how the Millennium Challenge 
Corporation is working to address this need. Congress should be looking 
for additional measures to create the infrastructure necessary to 
support agriculture businesses and rural farming populations.

  It is unfortunate that some attribute Africa's food crisis, at least 
in part, to the Continent's population growth rate, and name people 
themselves, especially children, as a cause of the problem of food 
insecurity. At a recent hearing on the shortage of safe water in 
Africa, the Subcommittee learned that the United Nations Development 
Programme has found that the global water crisis is attributable to 
power, poverty and inequal access to safe drinking water, not shortages 
in quantity resulting from population increases.
  I would propose that the same analysis applies with respect to the 
availability of food and levels of food security. Many researchers on 
this issue attribute food insecurity not so much to an absolute deficit 
of food, particularly at the national and international levels, as to 
the failure of socioeconomic systems, including markets and political 
processes, to distribute food equitably or efficiently. Many are of the 
opinion that better functioning and open market systems are equally or 
even more important to providing adequate food supplies as absolute 
increases in food production. While we should and must seek to increase 
the quality and quantity of food supplies, we must also address longer-
term challenges of policy and infrastructure to attain a permanent 
solution for food security. People themselves should be considered not 
a source of the problem, but a valuable resource in achieving this 
goal.

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