March 4, 2009

ACDI/VOCA Cosponsors Capitol Hill Forum on the Global Food Crisis

The Capitol Hill Forum 2009, “Advancing Agricultural Development and Addressing the Global Food Crisis—Present and Future,” was held March 3 in the Rayburn House Office Building. The forum, packed with Capitol Hill staff, administration officials, NGO and university representatives and others, was sponsored by the Association for International Agriculture and Rural Development (AIARD) and 21 cosponsors, including ACDI/VOCA.

The forum was the latest in a swirl of recent Washington activities examining agriculture’s importance in international development. Last week, the Chicago Council on Global Affairs released its report on the topic, the Roadmap to End Hunger was launched by almost 40 NGOs, and USAID held a major conference on chronic poverty that evinced a strong agricultural subtext.

The forum's emcee, Texas A&M University Adjunct Professor Mike McWhorter, opened the meeting with the remark, "What a difference a year makes." He observed that today nearly a billion people, almost 200 million more than a year ago, are going hungry. The current world food crisis, he said, coupled with the impact of the global economic crisis, has revealed the cost of agriculture's neglect by policymakers.

The program featured an overview of food security challenges, followed by a facilitated discussion by a panel of experts. Congressional spokespersons included U.S. Representative Betty McCollum (D-Minn.) and Connie Veillette, Senior Professional Staff, Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Congresswoman McCollum said, "We can't keep running from one famine to another." She called for longer-term agriculture development that focuses on the next generation and not the next crisis, and submitted that agriculture should be at the center of the U.S. foreign assistance program. Dr. Veillette reviewed the major provisions of the pending Lugar-Casey Global Food Security Act.

Keynoter Christopher Delgado, strategy and policy advisor for agriculture and rural development at the World Bank, said that GDP growth from agriculture raises incomes of the poor three times more than GDP growth from non-agriculture sectors. He emphasized that increased volatility of global grain prices is here to stay, and that the impact on the poor in developing countries is devastating. He held that risk management is vital at all levels in transition to longer-term investment in the productivity and sustainability of agriculture. Also needed, he pointed out, is focus on empowerment and access of the poor to inputs, services and markets. (To download his PowerPoint presentation, click here.)

Rob Paarlberg, professor at Wellesley College, represented the Chicago Council. He spoke of that group's recently released report, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which reached the consensus that the bulk of the poor are farmers who, as long as they are poor, have no good access to health, education or markets. He said the report concludes that what is needed is "a sustained, long-term effort to increase agricultural productivity on smallholder farms—not front-loaded crash programs."

Cheryl Morden, director at the United Nations International Fund for Agricultural Development/North American Liaison Office, said that gender has a determinative nature on agricultural development programs, and that under those circumstances it is remarkable that only 10 percent of projects properly address gender. She asserted that a renewed focus on agriculture must include addressing gender issues.

Josette Lewis, director at the Office of Agriculture for U.S. Agency for International Development, noted that development strategy must have agriculture at its core but suggested that, as was underlined at last week's poverty conference, to involve the very poorest was indeed difficult. She advocated attention to the policy underpinnings of poverty. We spend $300 million per year in Ethiopia on food aid, she said, but what is needed is a sound, comprehensive policy to help raise people out of poverty.

Devry Boughner, Cargill's director of international business relations, spoke about the advantages offered by the private sector, calling her company, which operates in 67 nations, with one-half of its employees in the developing world, a "development organization." She reviewed Cargill’s public-private partnerships in policy advocacy, technical assistance, crisis response, nutrition, education and the environment.

Again this year, ACDI/VOCA’s Dr. Susan Schram, vice president for outreach and cooperative programs, organized the forum in collaboration with a team of AIARD committees and sponsoring organizations.