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- 05/06/09: Testimony of Dr. Dennis Carroll, Special Advisor to the Acting USAID Administrator on Pandemic Influenza, before the House Subcommittee on Africa and Global Health - "2009-H1N1 Influenza Outbreak"
- 04/07/09: Remarks by Dirk Dijkerman, Acting Assistant Administrator, Bureau for Democracy, Conflict, and Humanitarian Assistance, at the 2009 International Food Aid Conference
- 04/01/09: Statement of Dirk Dijkerman, Acting Assistant Administrator, Bureau for Democracy, Conflict, and Humanitarian Assistance, before the Senate Subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs - "Assistance for Civilian Victims of War"
- 04/01/09: Testimony of Maureen A. Shauket, Senior Procurement Executive, Director of the Office of Acquisition and Assistance, Bureau for Management, before the House Subcommittee for Oversight and Investigations - "Efforts to Ensure Accountability and Oversight for Contractors Operating in Iraq and Afghanistan"
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This is an archived USAID document retained on this web site as a matter of public record.
Remarks by Andrew S. Natsios, USAID Administrator
Expanding Agricultural Productivity Through Science, Technology and Trade
March 27, 2003
Good Afternoon. Let me begin by making three points. First, there is no way
that United States foreign assistance programs can exist without the support
of the American people. Second, there is now a widely accepted principle that
public-private partnerships are required if there is to be significant poverty
reduction on the African continent. And third, the key to all success in development
is that there be democratic environments. Therefore, the Africa Society of
the National Summit on Africa’s primary objectives of educating Americans
about Africa, building partnerships, and facilitating the Continent’s
development and political transition to more open, democratic societies are
very important objectives.
Thank you for all that you do and in particular thank you for highlighting
this important topic – famine and drought in Africa.
I. The Food Crises in Southern Africa and Ethiopia
Persistent hunger and the risk of famine continue to pose significant development
and humanitarian challenges to sub-Saharan Africa. Some 206 million Africans
live below the poverty line; 33 million children are malnourished. Most of
the hungry are farmers, who cannot produce or purchase the food their families
need.
Long-term trends may be even worse: the U.S. Agriculture Department’s
Global Food Security Report last month estimated the number of Africa’s
hungry would grow to 427 million by 2012.
This past 12 months has been a particularly difficult period. Overlapping
food crises in southern Africa, the Horn and parts of the Sahel have put nearly
40 million people’s lives at risk. Africa also faces what The Economist
magazine calls the “double curse” of food insecurity and HIV/AIDS.
The loss of so many farmers and farm workers cuts deeply into all aspects
of food production and distribution.
One of the critical lessons we have learned from our past experiences is
that food aid and humanitarian assistance by themselves do not prevent future
crises from recurring.
A half century of study tells us that famine is a process. Early –
or pre-famine – indicators can be identified. Indeed, information from
USAID’s famine early warning system -- FEWS NET -- helped us anticipate
the food crises in southern Africa and Ethiopia. The time we gained allowed
us to ship hundreds of thousands of tons of grain and maize to these regions,
and helped saved many thousand human lives.
It is not drought that causes famine -- not in this century, or we would
be seeing hunger in the Midwest today. While drought may be a factor, the
true roots of famine lie in poverty, unsound or dysfunctional policy, repressive
government, corruption, failed markets, and violent conflict.
As the President’s Coordinator for International Disaster Assistance,
I have visited many parts of the world where people lived on the edge of famine.
Seeing that kind of hunger is not something you forget, but you learn how
some societies scrape through and others fail and how people cope as the threat
of famine approaches.
There are ways to approach these problems, and I am convinced that the best
is to plan relief in such way that it contains the seeds for long-term economic
growth and recovery within it.
Ethiopia’s present food crisis is an example of a supply-driven famine.
The country simply does not produce enough food to feed its people, while
it lacks the economic reserves to import enough to fill the gap. In such situations,
food aid, and more specifically imported food aid, is the appropriate short-term
response.
II. How the U.S. is Responding to the Food Crises
So the United States is providing more than $300 million of food aid to Ethiopia
this fiscal year. The problem is that we only have $4 million to invest in
the country’s agriculture. I dream of the day when the situation will
be reversed. While the Ethiopian Government has played a positive role in
responding to the famine, until very recently, it was reluctant to embrace
the kind of policies that stimulate economic growth and investment in modern
agriculture.
Food aid cannot be a solution to Ethiopia’s long-term problems. Today’s
crisis is just the latest in a long series of such crises. We want to see
that end. We want to bring a new Green Revolution to the people of Africa.
But unless the donor community and the government work hand-in-hand to promote
good government, sound economic growth and investments in science and increased
agricultural productivity, this will not occur and the cycle will continue.
This is precisely what our new agricultural strategy seeks to prevent.
The southern African food crisis is another example of a drought whose effects
have been seriously exacerbated by government policy. This is particularly
true in Zimbabwe. First, the government there set price controls for staples,
such as corn, which had the effect of inhibiting production and imports. Second,
it backtracked on the liberalization of the grain market, bringing corn back
under the control of the grain marketing apparatus and creating a monopoly
that inhibited open commercial trade. Third, it compounded the problem by
expropriating land and destroying the most productive part of the country’s
agricultural sector. In so doing, Zimbabwe’s ability to export surplus
food to its neighbors collapsed.
While I understand the country’s colonial history, I do not understand
how exposing millions of people to hunger and starvation contributes to anything
but Robert Mugabe’s personal political agenda.
At the World Food Summit last year, the United States made a commitment to
cut hunger in Africa in half by the year 2015. The goal is achievable. But
it means changing the way things work. And it means building new partnerships
with African leaders, other donors, and the private sector to accelerate agricultural
growth, support strong political leadership, and invest in the health, education
and economic growth the people badly need.
If this can be done – and we are working very hard to see that it does
– I believe the future of rural African can be very promising.
Investing the necessary resources in agricultural growth and productivity
will not only reduce hunger and add to rural incomes, it can save billions
of assistance dollars, funds that can be put to other uses, but which now
must be invested in emergency food assistance. Indeed, recent studies have
shown that a one percent increase in agricultural productivity can result
in six million people being lifted from poverty.
III. How Our New African Agricultural Strategy Will Work
Over the next five years, USAID’s new agricultural strategy will renew
this country’s leadership in agricultural development assistance. The
essence of this strategy is:
- accelerating science-based solutions to agriculture and making particular
use of biotechnology to improve productivity and reduce poverty and hunger;
- developing international and domestic trade opportunities for farmers
and rural industries;
- providing more training for scientists and agronomists and increasing
agricultural extension services for farmers and their families; and
- promoting sustainable agriculture and sound environmental management.
These “new agriculture” initiatives provide the framework for
our future action. Under each initiative, USAID will launch activities that
will signal our return to international leadership and, we hope, leverage
new commitments and funding from other sources.
This does not mean that we can abandon Africa’s short term needs. For
the foreseeable future, significant levels of food aid will be needed to ensure
that the world’s needy are provided a secure food safety net. That will
not easy. The food crises I mentioned in Ethiopia and southern Africa are
only part of the worldwide demand for food assistance. While the situation
in Afghanistan may improve somewhat this year, the Afghan people will still
need substantial food assistance from the United States. When you add to that
the amount we are giving North Korea, and the amount which Iraq may need,
the challenge is daunting.
Altogether these concomitant crises have pushed international food aid requirements
to their highest level in history. According to some estimates I have read,
global food aid requirements will exceed 12 million metric tons this year.
The needs of sub-Saharan Africa alone are expected to top five million metric
tons. Yet the amount of food aid available globally has dropped to its lowest
level in more than five years, in part because worldwide cereal production
fell more than three percent last year.
More ominously, global cereal consumption was 80 million metric tons more
than what was produced.
Fortunately, the Administration’s commitment to use the agricultural
abundance of this country to help the less fortunate is stronger now than
ever. President Bush pointed specifically to this in his State of the Union
address in January, when he said: “Across the earth, America is feeding
the hungry; more than 60 percent of international food aid (to the World Food
Program) comes as a gift from the people of the United States.” And
I am pleased to say that our funding in Fiscal Year 2003 again makes this
country the largest, most responsive food aid donor in the world.
As part of his Fiscal Year 2004 budget, the President announced a new $200
million humanitarian Famine Fund. This fund is designed to respond rapidly
and effectively to crises that our early warning systems identify and support
initiatives that encourage other donor support.
We are also addressing the longer-term picture. Under President Bush’s
Initiative to End Hunger in Africa, USAID funding for agriculture in sub-Saharan
Africa has grown from $113 million in Fiscal Year 2001, to $137 million in
FY ’02, to $164 in FY ’03.
USAID’s programs support agriculture in 25 African countries. We are
providing more than $10 million to the Consultative Group for International
Agricultural Research (CGIAR) and its affiliated research centers to support
their work in Africa. We are contributing more than $15 million to university
partnerships that conduct research on improving African agriculture. We fund
special Cochran Fellowships to train Africans in new methods, improved management,
biotechnology and agricultural standards and harmonization.
At the same time, our Global Development Alliance secretariat is bringing
new ideas, new partners, and new resources from the private sector to the
problems of African agriculture. In 2002, for example, we helped put together
18 agricultural-based alliances, which leveraged more than $37 million in
private funding from our partners.
We are also working to expand trade through the continent. In East Africa,
for example, a new Regional Agricultural Trade Expansion Support program has
been set up to new commercial opportunities for producers of maize, coffee,
cotton, and livestock. In West Africa, we helped support the development of
the West African Traders network, which has facilitated the trade of some
50,000 metric tons of cereals in the region. In Uganda, we are working with
local dairy cooperatives. In Guinea, Kenya, Madagascar, Mozambique, Tanzania,
and Uganda, we are funding rural road systems to help farmers get their produce
to market. In Liberia, we distributed seeds and tools and helped the country
get back to 90 percent of its prewar food production levels. We are fortifying
basic foods in six countries and working with several others to upgrade their
production standards and learn the rules-based system of the global economy
so they can meet WTO standards and increase their exports.
Improving food security in Africa presents a series of complex challenges.
There is no single approach that can solve every problem. Each crisis must
be addressed in light of its particular causes.
USAID is well into the process of restoring this country’s leadership
in international agricultural development. Our leadership is often followed
by others in the international community, and so, perhaps, we can look forward
to a time when Africa will have the resources and long-term strategies to
the fight hunger, malnutrition, and famine.
Yet we have to recognize that there are limits to what this country can do
alone. To be effective, Africa needs the sustained commitment of the international
donor community to the health, education, honest government and economic policies
that support growth and agricultural development. And most of all, Africans
themselves must take the lead.
I am pleased that many of the African leaders I have spoken to have supported
these ideas. I know we can make progress with them, and that gives me great
hope for what the future holds for Africa and its people.
Thank you.
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