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“Coffee is a very good crop for us. We are members of the coffee cooperative, and they give us a good price. Because they buy our coffee fruit, we don’t have to process it. We expanded our coffee farm two years ago, and we will plant more seedlings this year.” Cooperative Cafe Timor (CCT) is the largest producer of organically
certified coffee in the world. The cooperative includes 20,000
families and employs 3,000 East Timorese in postharvest work
each year. It began in 1994, when 800 farm families began
buying, processing, and marketing certified organic coffee
as a cooperative, with USAID assistance. By helping farmers focus on quality and consistency, CCT
coffee commands a high price on the world specialty coffee
market. When farmers like Soares sell their ripe coffee fruit
to the cooperative, they receive 40–75 percent more than
they would if they sold their coffee to other producers in
East Timor. They also save up to two weeks’ work needed
to process coffee fruit into dried coffee beans, giving them
time to harvest more of their crop. The cooperative’s USAID-supported activities include
primary healthcare, agricultural extension services, growing
vanilla, and fattening cattle. They also include a nursery
to provide shade tree seedlings to coffee farmers and a training
center for cooperatives and small businesses. MISSION OF THE MONTHBOSNIA AND HERZEGOVIAN
THE CHALLENGE In Bosnia’s 1992–95 civil war, 150,000 people
died. One of the worst massacres took place in Srebrenica
in the summer of 1995, when 7,000–8,000 Bosniak men and
boys were rounded up and killed. Survivors fled to safer parts
of the country. Six months later, the Dayton Peace Accords ended the war by dividing the country into two ethnically based entities. Srebrenica was left in the hands of Serb hardliners within the Republika Srpska entity. INNOVATIVE APPROACH USAID has worked to transform Srebrenica from a symbol of
atrocities to a symbol of the possibilities of return and
reconciliation. The Agency has invested $8.3 million to rebuild schools,
clinics, roads, and bridges. Power and water facilities are
being repaired. And a USAID project is trying to reconcile
residents of Srebrenica and their neighbors from Bajina Basta
in Serbia and Montenegro. Residents of Srebrenica and Bajina Basta used to cross the
bridge connecting their towns, but were cut off from each
other when hostilities began in 1992. Now USAID is helping
the two communities repair the road and install lighting on
the bridge. Another USAID project helped set up a cross-border
committee between the two municipalities. RESULTS More than 1 million refugees and displaced persons have
returned to their homes in Bosnia-Herzegovina, including many
to Srebrenica. The healing process took a leap forward in
November 2004, when the Republika Srpska government issued
a report accepting responsibility and apologizing for the
Srebrenica massacre. USAID has completed 32 projects restoring health clinics,
schools, roads and bridges, and power and water infrastructure.
One project restored power to 1,000 in Srebrenica’s Zeleni
Jadar village. The Agency is also assisting with housing reconstruction
in the area. The poorest returnees have been given small grants or loans
through a USAID project. Loans are repayable in part with
a low interest rate or repayable in kind. Habiba Halilovic, a 41-year-old widow and mother of nine,
is a typical beneficiary. She was barely feeding her family
until she joined the program and was given a cow. She repaid
the loan by giving her cow’s calf to a neighboring family. “Having a cow is golden,” Halilovic said. “Now
when I wake up in the morning, I no longer have to worry what
I will feed my children. We always have milk, cheese, and
sour cream.” With expertise from the U.S. dairy cooperative Land O’Lakes,
USAID has trained 190 farmers to produce Bosnia’s traditional
soft white cheese. In the first four months of the effort,
Srebrenica farmers produced over a ton of the highly prized
cheese, which costs about $2.50 per kilogram to produce and
sells for about $5.80. Other area farmers have also benefited, as cheese producers
have begun buying milk from neighbors to meet production goals. “The American government’s support to Srebrenica
is especially important to Bosniak returnees,” said Srebrenica’s
mayor, Abdulrahman Malkic, a Muslim who was held captive by
the Serbs during the war. “Projects have brought significant changes into the
average Srebrenica citizen’s life: They now have power
and water supplies in their homes and the overall quality
of life has been improved. That is something that will keep
returnees in Srebrenica in the future, but will also bring
other refugees from the city back to their prewar homes.” NOTES FROM NATSIOS
Lending credence to the declaration that there will be “no
famines” on his watch, President’s Bush’s administration
is redoubling its search for creative ways to stretch dollars
to meet the needs of the most vulnerable populations with
emergency and development food assistance. Despite all that
is being done to win the war on hunger, the number of chronically
malnourished people in the world continues to rise. Today,
it stands at more than 850 million. Despite the efforts of the humanitarian community to save
lives and strengthen livelihoods, conflict-related emergencies
and natural disasters create global food needs beyond the
capacity of the United States and other donors to respond.
Because of this, about 25,000 people die each day from hunger-related
causes. The current U.S. food aid budget, managed by USAID, is spent
primarily in the United States to purchase U.S. commodities
and ship them to people in food-related crises around the
world. This has been and continues to be an extremely effective
tool for fighting hunger in a multitude of situations. However,
in a time of shrinking resources and increasing food needs,
every effort must be made to increase efficiency and maximize
our budgets. In order to reach more people without increased
spending, the Bush administration has asked Congress to approve
a plan to use up to $300 million of the $1.2 billion food
aid budget to purchase commodities in developing nations when
a crisis occurs. This is expected to enable cheaper and faster
delivery of food to those in need and is projected to save
up to an additional 33,000 lives. The flexibility of having both cash and U.S. commodities
available to respond to food crises and potential famine is
critical. When natural or manmade disasters occur and food
aid is needed quickly in order to save lives, food is often
available close to the area of need and could fill a critical
gap before commodities arrive from the United States—an
average of three to four months later. With lower purchase
and transportation costs, which account for 30 percent of
the total cost of food aid, the United States could afford
to purchase more food and feed more people. In many cases,
carefully targeted local purchases would stabilize local food
prices, strengthen markets, and prevent famines. For example, while USAID paid to ship food to needy Afghans,
the surplus inside Afghanistan remained unsold and grain prices
fell. By purchasing food locally in Afghanistan, we could
have helped local farmers, markets, and political stability,
while feeding more people with the same amount of money. Though this would not be feasible in every case, having
flexibility to buy food close to where it is needed would
allow USAID to prudently use taxpayer dollars to save more
lives, support local development, and prevent future emergencies. The United States is fighting to meet the food needs of
people as emergencies are increasing in number and magnitude.
Our only choice if we are to combat the alarming trend of
food insecurity is to be as prudent as possible in our use
of finite resources to meet needs head-on. |
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