REMARKS BY USDA-RMA ASSOCIATE ADMINISTRATOR
JIM CALLAN
Water for Children Africa
12th Africa Trade and Business Conference
Addressing Health, Education and Economic Empowerment
San Diego, CA
Nov 22, 2008

Thank you, Vickie, for that great introduction. Good afternoon everyone. It’s a pleasure to be here.

I am here representing the U.S. Department of Agriculture which was nicknamed “the people’s department” by President Lincoln who established it in 1862. USDA is the government agency charged with overseeing the U.S. food supply and helping farmers prosper.

The past eight years have been a time of remarkable prosperity for American agriculture. President Bush has ushered in unprecedented growth in the Ag economy. The prosperity we see in agriculture today is being driven by strong commodity prices, rising export demand … and the rapid growth of the renewable fuels industry in rural America.

This year, net cash farm income is on track to set an all-time record of more than $101 billion, despite increases in the costs of fuel, fertilizer and other farm inputs. And we expect export sales to reach a record $114 billion and generate one third of all cash receipts for U.S. farms.

A new global marketplace has emerged as some 1 billion new middle class consumers in developing countries like Mexico and China have made their presence felt. They are driving strong demand for grains … but also for beef, pork and chicken … dairy and processed food products.

These are markets that America’s farmers and ranchers are well-positioned to serve and where they can hold their own against competitors. All they need is fair access to foreign markets. That’s why President Bush has consistently made expanding free trade one of his highest priorities.

In my job, I work for the USDA agency that helps U.S. farmers manage the risk of natural disasters through crop insurance. The farmers in this country are tested year in and year out by any number of bad weather events. I am proud to say, that due to our Federal crop insurance program- many of them rebound much faster financially from the damage.

The Federal crop insurance program works through a unique public and private partnership. The structure allows us at the agency to focus more on program details and the insurance products themselves. Private insurance companies and their agents bear the responsibility for delivering our products to producers.

As I mentioned earlier, the last several years have been good for American farmers in many ways - which has also caused extreme growth for our program. Due to the upward trending values of crops we insure, this year we are looking at a total program liability that will be nearly $90 billion on over 272 million acres of farm and ranchland in America.

To put the recent growth of the Federal crop insurance program in perspective for you, in 2006 the program had $49 billion in liability. That is $41 billion less than just two years earlier and on 30 million fewer acres of insured land.

Earlier this year, you may have heard about all the flooding that occurred in the Midwest. That was a major issue for our program and the farmers it affected. Since it happened so late in the spring, many farmers had to make tough decisions on whether to replant the flooded areas or not. We don’t know the total extent of the damage that occurred as many claims have yet to be settled after harvest this fall.

We do know a favorable growing season followed the early flooding which helped many areas of the country to produce outstanding crops this year in spite of early problems. Current market prices have fallen from summer highs which indicate the losses on flooded land have been made up by higher expected yields in other areas of the country. However, these lower prices and rising input costs have many producers worried about next year. That, coupled with the ongoing credit crisis has many farmers and ranchers concerned because they will need to secure operating loans and get financing on equipment for next year.

Rest assured though - our farmers are some of the most resilient and talented in the world - they will get the crop planted.

RMA, through our partnership programs, also works with a number of grassroots level organizations here in the United States to serve the needs of many who go underserved by existing programs. These partnerships allow us to help some of the most capable and forward thinking organizations accomplish their goals to better our communities and our quality of life.

As I have learned more about your organization, I realized that you do much the same thing in Africa partnering with small villages. Undoubtedly, you are seeing success with your projects in the villages you work with. Your organization plays a very important role in the lives of many Africans you are reaching out and touching.

Many of us here in the United States are unaware of the struggles for food and water in other parts of the world. The people your organization is helping in Africa know the challenge all too well. They face numerous problems every year including drought, lack of infrastructure and trade barriers. Additionally, they don’t enjoy the network of great land grant universities we have here in the United States to do research and development for them.

The President has made it one of the central issues of his administration to bring aid to the people of Africa. At a recent charity dinner, he accepted the Bishop John T. Walker Distinguished Humanitarian Service Award, which pays tribute to leaders in humanitarian fields for Africa.

President Bush said the following and I quote, “We do not believe in paternalism. We believe in partnership, because we believe in the potential of the people on the continent of Africa. One of the most uplifting experiences has been to witness a new and more hopeful era dawning on the continent.”

The President has been very proactive with his commitment to help the people in Africa. The President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief has supported care for more than 6.6 million people worldwide and allowed nearly 200,000 children in Africa to be born HIV-free through mother-to-child prevention work. The U.S. has trained more than 700,000 teachers, distributed more than 10 million textbooks and provided hundreds of thousands of scholarships to help girls go to school in Africa.

Now I want to mention the Presidential Initiative to End Hunger in Africa. Under reimbursable agreements, USDA is providing 10 agricultural advisors to work with USAID in Washington, DC and in Africa to manage and implement the President’s Initiative to End Hunger in Africa. The Initiative, designed to be active for 15 years (2003-2017) in selected countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, aims to reduce poverty, especially in rural areas.

The USDA also has several ongoing aid programs that we are actively involved with to aid the people of Africa. These aid programs cover a wide range of issues related to research, education and economic development. The USDA:

The emphasis of the program is to harmonize sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) regulations with international standard setting bodies and increase export opportunities for plant, horticultural, and animal products internationally, as well as to the United States.

Another program under the Food for Progress Act of 1985, provides U.S. agriculture commodities to developing countries and emerging democracies committed to introducing and expanding free enterprise in the agricultural sector. Commodities are currently provided on a donation basis to foreign governments, private voluntary organizations, non-profit organizations, cooperatives, or intergovernmental organizations.

In fiscal year 2007, USDA provided food aid under Food for Progress to the countries of Ethiopia, Kenya, Liberia, Madagascar, Mozambique, Niger, and Tanzania. The fiscal year 2008 agreements currently being negotiated include programs in Ethiopia, Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mozambique, Niger, Senegal, and Tanzania.

The McGovern-Dole International Food for Education and Child Nutrition Program helps promote education, child development, and food security for some of the world’s poorest children. It provides for donations of U.S. agricultural products, as well as financial and technical assistance, for school feeding and maternal and child nutrition projects in low-income countries.

Donations to sub-Saharan Africa in fiscal year 2007 went to Kenya, Liberia, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mozambique, and Zambia in support of school lunch programs, malaria prevention, and school improvement. The recently-announced selections for 2008 include programs in Cameroon, Chad, Ethiopia, Rwanda, and Sierra Leone.

USDA staff also serve on the USAID-funded Famine Early Warning System Network project, which helps strengthen food security preparedness and planning worldwide via information networks. The goal is to strengthen the ability of African countries and regional organizations to manage the risk of food insecurity through the provision of timely and analytical early warning and vulnerability information. Famine Early Warning System professionals in the United States and Africa monitor various data information, including remotely sensed data and ground-based meteorological, crop, and rangeland conditions, as early indications of potential threats to food security. Activities include capacity development for rapid exchange of satellite data and flood-related analyses.

Another great program USDA is involved with is the Central African Regional Program for the Environment, called CARPE. This program is a USAID-funded five-year initiative that aims to identify and establish the conditions and practices required for reducing deforestation and biodiversity loss in the Congo Basin. An expanded African knowledge base and individual and institutional capacity, resulting from CARPE, serve as the foundation for a longer term, 15- to 20-year effort to manage forest resources in a sustainable manner, conserve biodiversity, and avert changes in regional and global climate. USDA and university partners managed the project and provided technical assistance.

The Norman E. Borlaug International Science and Technology Fellows Program was established in March 2004. The Borlaug Program provides short-term collaborative research training for entry-level international agricultural research scientists and policymakers. Mentors coordinate participants' training at U.S. land grant universities, USDA and other government agencies, international agricultural research centers, private companies, and not-for-profit institutions. Since 2005, significant new research partnerships have been formed to foster knowledge exchange and strengthen scientific capacity in African countries.

The Africa Women in Science Program has supported 28 leading female scientists from nine countries. To date, 28 fellows from 9 sub-Saharan African countries have participated in the program, with 21 Fellows trained in the last year.

The USDA Faculty Exchange Program brings university instructors to the United States for four to five months to upgrade their technical subject knowledge, improve teaching skills, and to develop new and revised courses for introduction at their home institutions. The Faculty Exchange Program is now implementing a program focused on horticultural phytosanitary issues. The program enhances capacity in African academic institutions to teach these subject areas to students and adults involved in risk assessment, pest and disease surveillance and detection, and border inspection.

The first African program at U.S. universities began in August 2007 with seven participants from Senegal, Ghana, Nigeria, Uganda, Botswana, and Mauritius. In 2008, nine Faculty Exchange Program participants will train in the United States.

The Embassy Science Fellows Program enables overseas posts to acquire scientific advisory capacity on issues important to their missions. It also provides U.S. scientists with opportunities for valuable international experience, usually involving work with national and international organizations. USDA has sponsored Embassy Science Fellows in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Madagascar, Nigeria, and Rwanda, to work in the areas of natural resource management, commodity marketing, remote sensing, and identification of plants that potentially possess medicinal and commercial properties.

In the private sector, USDA has been involved with several Trade and Investment Missions. In March 2008, USDA conducted such a mission in Accra, Ghana. Sixteen U.S. agribusinesses met with their West and Central African counterparts from Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Cameroon, Ghana, Liberia, Mali, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone and Togo. The purpose of the mission was to promote U.S.–Africa agribusiness cooperation, two-way trade and investment.

USDA also sponsored previous trade missions in southern Africa, Madagascar, and East Africa. These missions resulted in significant sales of U.S. and African products and increased investment opportunities in all regions.

This, though it might not seem so, was a brief listing of everything we in the Bush Administration and USDA are doing to aid the people of Africa.

In conclusion I would once again like to thank you for the opportunity to come here today and speak about the USDA African aid programs and U.S. agriculture. I hope you enjoy the rest of the conference.