AIARD Capitol Hill Forum

We can’t just look at the tragedies unfolding overseas and say, “It’s happening over there,” according to former Ambassador Christopher Goldthwait. American consumers, exporters and taxpayers are hurt by overseas conflict affecting agriculture, he told a packed Rayburn House Office Building on Jan. 31 during the Association for International Agriculture and Rural Development's Capitol Hill Forum "Agriculture in a World of Conflict and Violence: Investing in Our Future Security." He said that in addition to our moral obligation to try to resolve conflicts, there are “measurable and, taken together, significant” deleterious effects on the U.S.

The forum, sponsored by the Association for International Agriculture and Rural Development (AIARD) and its 14 university, foundation, private sector and NGO partners, was the latest installment in an ongoing effort to acquaint policymakers with critical issues in international agriculture and rural development, according to ACDI/VOCA Vice President of Outreach & Cooperative Programs Dr. Sue Schram who organized the event in cooperation with the AIARD board of directors.

Other speakers included Karl Walk, director of the Blommer Chocolate Co., Indira Ahluwalia, founder and president of Development and Training Services, Inc., and James Kunder, acting deputy administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development. Presiding was Dr. Mike McWhorter, former AIARD president and current international training coordinator at Texas A & M University's International Agriculture Programs, who set the stage by saying, “Poverty and despair are the breeding grounds for instability and terrorism.”

How conflict overseas affects U.S. agriculture

Goldthwait, former ambassador to Chad and former general sales manager in the Foreign Agricultural Service of USDA, identified three forms of impact on the U.S.:

First, he said, American consumers are affected by conflict-driven changes in supplies, if not of basic foodstuffs at least of some products like cocoa and coffee. He noted that after conflict broke out in Cote d’Ivoire in 1997, production of cocoa there fell 66 percent. Because Cote d’Ivoire accounted for around 40 percent of world production in a normal year, this precipitated a sudden drop in supply that caused New York Exchange prices to soar by over 60 percent the next year.

Goldthwait indicated, second, that conflict causes harm to U.S. exports when the affected countries can no longer import commercially. He pointed out that developing countries are some of the fastest growing markets for U.S. exports, especially for agricultural exports, because growing populations drive demand. Conflict can wipe out these markets almost overnight. For example, he said, before the invasion of Kuwait, Iraq was a major customer for U.S. commodities, having bought $783 million worth in calendar 1989. These purchases stopped abruptly when the invasion was launched. In 1990 U.S. exports fell to $355 million, and in 1991 they were zero. The impact was especially felt by the U.S. rice industry, for which Iraq was the largest customer, having bought $133 million in 1989.

Lastly, there is a very real impact on the need for food aid, and therefore on our development budgets. In the “Conflict” section of its 2005 annual report, the World Food Program reported that it fed 2 million people displaced in Darfur, 1.45 million in northern Uganda, an additional 366,000 in Colombia and 253,000 in the post-conflict environment of southern Sudan. This accounted for a large share of the 4.2 million tons of commodities it distributed worldwide. The year before, 5.1 million tons of food was distributed to conflict-affected regions.

The U.S. provides the largest part of WFP’s food aid resources (generally just over half) and a significant share of its operating budget. Obviously, Goldthwait said, these costs are charged directly to the U.S. government budget, and fall onto the shoulders of American taxpayers. In addition, he said that the Bush administration has used PL 480 Title II resources to help meet these needs. This means that food aid resources that were to have been used for development purposes under Title II, often to enhance long-term food security, are diverted to humanitarian relief. Sometimes this is because of natural disaster but often because of conflict. Therefore, conflict erodes our investment in resolving long-term food security problems, some of which of course may contribute to further conflict down the road.

A bottom-line approach

Mr. Walk of Blommer Chocolate, the largest buyer of cocoa in the U.S., also serves as the vice chairman of the World Cocoa Foundation, which helped to sponsor the forum. He said the WCF represents 60 members who trade over half of the world market. Since the majority of cocoa is produced by smallholder farmers with little education, access to market and interaction with others in the industry, the industry is vulnerable. The foundation undertakes a program of education and organization to overcome chronic disease, crop management and supply chain problems. A good example of that, he said, is the SUCCESS Alliance operating in four countries in partnership with ACDI/VOCA, USDA and USAID. SUCCESS has trained over 165,000 farmers to combat the cocoa pod borer and to move higher-quality cocoa to market.

Walk said that a good example of this work is a young Ecuadorian grower named Dora, who grew up on her mother’s cocoa farm. Under the SUCCESS project, she adapted the new methods and was promoted to the role of farmer trainer. Then, confronting supply problems, she secured funding to establish a seedling farm. Today, at age 22, Dora is producing a million seedlings each year.

Walk also cited the use of $100 solar dryers in the Amazon area of Ecuador that boosted returns to farmers 100 percent, and the $320,000 in premiums paid in 20 months to Indonesian smallholders for higher-quality cocoa. Thanks to an enlightened foreign development assistance program, these are cases where there is little additional cost to Blommer, he said, and the company doesn’t have to justify passing along higher prices to the consumer. Plus, laying the ground for increased general prosperity and providing ties to the global marketplace helps to preempt conflict.

Youth and gender

Indira Ahluwalia aptly framed the role of women in world agriculture. She said they handle 60-80 percent of food production, and feed 90 percent of the rural poor. In addition, even though the agricultural labor force is decreasing, the participation of women in it is increasing. Major causes are the toll on male farmers posed by war and HIV/AIDS. A third of the households in sub-Saharan Africa are run by women, who unfortunately tend to be younger, less educated, less skilled and less moneyed. Thus agriculture, she said, is being compromised.

Ahluwalia said gender and gender relations are learned social constructs, yet there are real barriers to women: a lesser sense of entitlement, inability to operate heavy machinery, reproductive demands, privacy issues, restrictions on mobility, in addition to legal discrimination such as the inability to own or inherit land, lend and hire. There are also considerable on-the-job risks to women farmers, not to mention the additional increment provided by various forms of conflict and natural disaster.

What has worked? Ahluwalia said in Kenya women who got the same education as men gained 20 percent in productivity. In Lebanon jam processed from local apples by women under the “Rural Delight” brand has found a ready Western market. Microfinance programs the world over have demonstrated not only that women repay their loans but also use the money wisely in the interim. She concluded that women can benefit from knowledge and skills, financial tools, markets, land ownership and technology, and that we need to brand U.S. development initiatives for fairness.

A view from USAID

USAID’s Acting Deputy Administrator James Kunder wrapped up the program. He spoke about the current effort to align development assistance with U.S. foreign policy and what that means in the context of conflict and security. He said there were five issues:

1. There is a dichotomy between response and prevention, and currently we lack complete knowledge on how to enter early on in a conflict situation, and especially on how to deal with the complex interplay affecting rural social displacement. We do, know, however, that when people are distressed, the vendetta impulse builds.
2. Food supply and emergency response are often considered in opposition to the supply and productivity side. He said we tend to get stuck in a rigid sequential timeline that has relief as a preliminary to reconstruction, which is in turn a preliminary to long-term development. He said, “The supply side has to be addressed up front and early to address productivity and migration.”
3. There is a notion that agriculture is not central to conflict. For example in Iraq we may have been concerned about oil, but in fact the largest single employer is agriculture.
4. A militarized situation focuses on projects that offer immediate returns, not on the “software” and the relationship building that will have long-term benefits, e.g., land tenuring, extension-oriented radio. Kunder said we need to better understand the vertically integrated nature of agriculture and food production.
5. The close proximity to and working with coalition forces represents a challenge. He recounted an exchange in Afghanistan that went something like this:
   Military: “Why are the NGOs not reporting in?”
   NGOs: “Why are soldiers wearing civilian clothes?”
   Military: “When the Taliban start wearing uniforms for the benefit of our snipers, we’ll reciprocate.”

Kunder ended with a favorable word for an administration provision to have more food aid commodities purchased locally, that is, in-country or in the region, rather than from U.S. producers. He said that a legislative battle is shaping up again on this issue and urged those in attendance to consider the added flexibility this would give to the delivery of food assistance.