[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 196 (Friday, December 1, 2017)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1634-E1635]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       AUGUST ``GUS'' SCHUMACHER

                                 ______
                                 

                           HON. MARCY KAPTUR

                                of ohio

                    in the house of representatives

                        Friday, December 1, 2017

  Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, I include in the Record a biography and list 
of accomplishments of August ``Gus'' Schumacher. Additionally, I 
include a copy of the Washington Post obituary article of Mr. 
Schumacher.

  August ``Gus'' Schumacher--Biography and Accomplishments: (Dec. 4, 
                          1939-Sept. 24, 2017)


                              biographical

       August Schumacher Jr. was born in Lincoln, Mass., on Dec. 
     4, 1939.
       --Fourth-generation farmer.
       --His father was one of the largest parsnip growers in 
     Massachusetts.
       --Gus grew up on a farm in Lexington, Massachusetts.
       --His grandfather and great-grandfather were farmers in New 
     York City.
       --They grew winter vegetables in glass-enclosed hothouses.
       Schumacher graduated from Harvard University in 1961 and 
     attended the London School of Economics.


           according to joel berg, ceo of hunger free america

       ``I had the high honor of working with, and learning from, 
     Gus at USDA during the Clinton Administration. He was a giant 
     who always pushed the envelope to get better programs and 
     more social justice, across America and the globe. He was a 
     driving force in creating the first federal program to enable 
     seniors to obtain extra produce at farmers' markets. He was 
     also the spark for the Dole-McGovern program, through which 
     the U.S. enabled developing countries to start school meals 
     program. When the stakes were high for people in need, Gus 
     didn't take `no'--even repeatedly--for an answer. He kept 
     pushing for new ways to get bureaucracies to aid people in 
     need. Perhaps his most important legacy was pioneering ways 
     to reduce hunger and aid community food systems and, at the 
     same time, transcending the stale debate over whether we 
     should focus on just one of those goals. After leaving 
     government service, he could have taken a well-earned 
     retirement. Instead he upped his work to make fresh, healthy 
     food affordable and available for everyone. As a person, he 
     will be deeply missed. But his legacy has improved the world 
     forever.''


                               world bank

       Took a job in the mid-1960s as a food project manager and 
     agriculture development officer for the World Bank.
       He spent the next two decades concentrating on technical 
     appraisals for agricultural-related loans in countries 
     including China, Egypt, Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda.
       Developed livestock operations in western Brazil, lent 
     assistance to herders in Kenya and projects in the Kosovo 
     Province of what was then Yugoslavia.
       After more than five years as agriculture commissioner, he 
     returned to the World Bank to help restructure the farm 
     sector in Central Europe after the breakup of the Soviet 
     Union.


         commissioner of food and agriculture for massachusetts

       Between 1984 and 1990 when Mr. Schumacher was agriculture 
     chief for Massachusetts, he created market coupon programs 
     for seniors and low-income families with children.
       Also served as the Massachusetts commissioner of food and 
     agriculture; he was appointed agriculture commissioner in 
     Massachusetts by Governor Michael Dukakis.
       In 1992, Sen. John Kerry and Rep. Chet Atkins, of 
     Massachusetts, authorized the WIC Farmers Market Nutrition 
     Program into the federal budget, and today it is a almost a 
     $6 billion program that allows every WIC mother and child to 
     get vouchers for fresh produce at farmers markets and 
     supermarkets.
       Gus raised $17,000 from the state and the Chiles Foundation 
     to create a Massachusetts pilot program that gave $10 worth 
     of produce coupons to WIC recipients to use at area farmers 
     markets.


                   usda undersecretary of agriculture

       USDA undersecretary of agriculture for farm and foreign 
     agricultural services from 1997 to 2001.
       Gus found that the commodity Credit Corporation Charter Act 
     of 1935's (CCC) stated purpose was the ``promotion and 
     marketing of American agricultural products,'' not just large 
     commodity crops. Gus told the USDA lawyers that he wanted to 
     create a market nutrition program for seniors using the 
     authority of the CCC. ``They looked at me like I just jumped 
     off the fifth floor,'' he recalled. ``They said, no, that's 
     not normal. I said, guys, it doesn't say wheat, corn, and 
     cotton. `Just write me a memo so I don't get indicted' ''.
       In 2000, the program began with $10 million in funding, and 
     is now funded at $22 million annually.
       In 1997 he became U.S. Undersecretary for Farm, Foreign, 
     and Agricultural Services in the Clinton Administration, and 
     he wanted to try to install a program for low-income seniors 
     at the federal level like the WIC Market Nutrition Program.
       On his watch the state Agriculture Department launched 
     ``The Fresh Connection,'' a newsletter and free service that 
     listed the sources and seasonal availability of foods.


                       senior advisor--world bank

       Schumacher directed World Bank teams involved in major 
     agricultural and forest sector re-structuring of post-
     Communist Poland. Project funding of $450 million was 
     disbursed under Poland Agricultural Sector Adjustment Loan 
     ($300 million) and Forest Development Project ($150 million). 
     He also led teams that developed the first Global Environment 
     Fund (GEF). Which also produced four other successful GEF 
     biodiversity protection projects in Slovakia, Czech Republic, 
     Belarus and Ukraine.


                          wholesome wave (ww)

       Since 2008 he had served as founding board chairman of 
     Wholesome Wave in Bridgeport, Conn., which seeks to increase 
     access to affordable, locally grown fruits and vegetables.
       In 2012, Wholesome Wave funding jumped to $2.38 million for 
     306 markets and 54 partners in 24 states and D.C.--money WW 
     uses to match the SNAP benefits that farmers markets would 
     receive were they able to register themselves for EBT card 
     use. Unlike now-defunct paper vouchers, EBT cards cannot be 
     used at many farmers markets; most lack the equipment to 
     process EBT purchases. Due to this, by 2004, SNAP spending at 
     farmers markets had plummeted to $2 million annually, from 
     $82 million in 1990. In order to accept electronic benefits, 
     a retailer--whether it was a grocery store or a farmers 
     market--needed authorization from the USDA's Food and 
     Nutrition Service (FNS), which authorization is hard for 
     small businesses like farmers markets to receive. However, 
     this authorization is recognized for its success in 
     preventing EBT voucher fraud. WW circumvents this bureaucracy 
     by using the aforementioned funds to create a match program 
     for farmers markets similar to that used by the government 
     through the SNAP program.

[[Page E1635]]

  



                             semi-official

       In California, non-profit Roots of Change, with grant 
     writing assistance from Gus for $1,500,000 for marketing 
     support of incentives, launched a program called Market 
     Match. The simultaneous appearance--and success--of double-
     your money markets drew national media and grant-makers' 
     attention and laid the foundation for rapid expansion. By 
     2009, Wholesome Wave granted $330,000, up from just $38,000 
     the year before, to shoppers at 40 farmers markets in 10 
     states plus the District of Columbia.
       Over the years, he wrote books and journal articles, and 
     taught agribusiness as a visiting scholar at Harvard Business 
     School.
       In 2007, Schumacher, along with Cathy Bertini, former 
     Director of the World Food Programme and Professor Robert 
     Thompson, Gardner Professor of Agricultural Economics at 
     Illinois, oversaw the preparation of the Task Force Report of 
     the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, titled ``Modernizing 
     America's Food and Farm Policy: Vision for a New Direction''.
       In 2013, Mr. Schumacher received the James Beard 
     Foundation's Leadership Award for ``his lifelong efforts to 
     improve access to fresh local food in underserved 
     communities.''
       In Boston, the Globe wrote about a time several years ago 
     when Mr. Schumacher, dining out at tony Hamersley's Bistro, 
     sat down at a table, reached into a brown paper bag and 
     pulled out a shiny, ripe red tomato. He asked for a serrated 
     knife, olive oil and a plate, then proceeded to make himself 
     a salad. ``Who's this guy who's making his own salad?'' chef-
     owner Gordon Hamersley wanted to know. His own tomatoes came 
     from California. Where had Mr. Schumacher's come from? 
     ``Twenty minutes from your doorstep,'' Mr. Schumacher said.


                             miscellaneous

       He chastised breakfast diners for serving English jellies 
     instead of American ones.
       Mr. Schumacher made personal deliveries of Asian greens 
     that included pea tendrils, Chinese chive blossoms and 
     Cambodian spearmint to the Washington restaurant TenPenh.
       For fun, Mr. Schumacher restored cider mills.
       Schumacher was a member of the 21st National Academy of 
     Sciences.

                  [From The Washington Post, Sept. 27]

   Gus Schumacher, a Force in the Farm-to-Table Movement, Dies at 77

                            (By Bart Barnes)

       Gus Schumacher, a fourth-generation farmer and third-
     ranking official at the Agriculture Department, told the 
     story of his epiphany about food hundreds of times.
       It was the end of a summer afternoon in 1980 at a farmers 
     market in Boston, and he was helping his brother load up his 
     truck with unsold produce grown on their family property in 
     Lexington, Mass. The bottom fell out of a box of pears, 
     scattering the fruit into the gutter.
       There, a young mother with two little boys eagerly gathered 
     them into the folds of her unhemmed shirt. She was a single 
     mom, she explained, dependent on food stamps, which back then 
     made fresh fruit and vegetables prohibitively expensive for 
     her. The pear spill was a bonanza.
       For Mr. Schumacher, he would say later, it was a seminal 
     moment in his life. He grew up on a farm, and it had never 
     occurred to him that parents would find it hard to provide 
     their children with fresh fruit and vegetables.
       He would change it, he told himself.
       Mr. Schumacher--who in a 50-year career also served as the 
     Massachusetts commissioner of food and agriculture, a food 
     project manager and agriculture development officer for the 
     World Bank and finally a co-founder of a nonprofit group that 
     tries to improve affordable access to fresh, locally grown 
     food--died Sept. 24 at his home in Washington. The cause was 
     an apparent heart attack, said his wife, Susan Holaday 
     Schumacher. He was 77.
       Since that farmers-market epiphany, Mr. Schumacher helped 
     make food assistance programs more generous in allowances for 
     fresh fruit and vegetables. He also became a force in the 
     farm-to-table movement, encouraging restaurants and retail 
     stores to buy produce locally.
       In 2013, Mr. Schumacher received the James Beard 
     Foundation's Leadership Award for ``his lifelong efforts to 
     improve access to fresh local food in underserved 
     communities.''
       In Boston, the Globe wrote about a time several years ago 
     when Mr. Schumacher, dining out at tony Hamersley's Bistro, 
     sat down at a table, reached into a brown paper bag and 
     pulled out a shiny, ripe red tomato. He asked for a serrated 
     knife, olive oil and a plate, then proceeded to make himself 
     a salad.
       ``Who's this guy who's making his own salad?'' chef-owner 
     Gordon Hamersley wanted to know. His own tomatoes came from 
     California. Where had Mr. Schumacher's come from?
       ``Twenty minutes from your doorstep,'' Mr. Schumacher said.
       That scene, or a version of it, would play over and over 
     again between 1984 and 1990 when Mr. Schumacher was 
     agriculture chief for Massachusetts. He was always asking 
     chefs whether they knew any farmers who could supply them 
     food directly. He created market coupon programs for seniors 
     and low-income families with children. He chastised breakfast 
     diners for serving English jellies instead of American ones.
       ``Gus was instrumental in bringing two seemingly obvious 
     groups together who never talked to each other--chefs and 
     farmers,'' Hamersley told the Globe. ``He's basically the 
     architect of chefs featuring locally grown produce. As 
     always, there was a team of people with him, but he was 
     sitting in the chair.''
       The Washington Post reported on Mr. Schumacher's work with 
     refugee and immigrant farmers all over the United States. He 
     encouraged them to grow and market their native vegetables, 
     such as amaranth. From New England, the New York Times 
     reported, Mr. Schumacher made personal deliveries of Asian 
     greens that included pea tendrils, Chinese chive blossoms and 
     Cambodian spearmint to the Washington restaurant TenPenh.
       August Schumacher Jr. was born in Lincoln, Mass., on Dec. 
     4, 1939. He grew up on a farm in Lexington, and his father 
     was one of the largest parsnip growers in Massachusetts. His 
     grandfather and great-grandfather were farmers in New York 
     City. They grew winter vegetables in glass-enclosed 
     hothouses.
       Mr. Schumacher graduated from Harvard University in 1961 
     and attended the London School of Economics.
       Over his career, he had a variety of consultancies, served 
     as Massachusetts agriculture chief from 1984 to 1990 and was 
     the USDA undersecretary of agriculture for farm and foreign 
     agricultural services from 1997 to 2001.
       Since 2008 he had served as founding board chairman of 
     Wholesome Wave in Bridgeport, Conn., which seeks to increase 
     access to affordable, locally grown fruits and vegetables.
       His first marriage, to Barbara Kerstetter, ended in 
     divorce. Survivors include his wife of 25 years, Susan 
     Holaday Schumacher of Washington; a stepdaughter, Valarie 
     Karasz of Brooklyn; and two grandchildren. A stepson, Andrew 
     Karasz, died earlier this month.

                          ____________________