On May 24, the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Africa and Global Health held a hearing examining international food aid programs, including Title II of P.L. 83-480, or the Food for Peace program. The hearing focused on food insecurity in the developing world with particular attention to Africa.
In his opening statement, Chair Donald Payne (D-NJ) said, “More than a decade has passed since the World Food Summit in Rome where nations pledged to work together to cut the number of undernourished people in half by the year 2015. In 1990, or 1992, the baseline for the World Food Summit, there were 823 million undernourished people in the developing world. According to the new statistics from the Food and Agriculture Organization [of the United Nations], the number remains essentially unchanged; there are now 820 million people in the third world who are not getting enough food. We need to know why so little progress has been made.” Rep. Payne said he suspected that some of the lack of progress is due to too few resources from the developed world being earmarked for long-term agricultural development programs rather than emergency aid. Besides that, he said Africa and the undeveloped world face significant challenges in the form of poor governance, poverty, conflict, water shortages, and climate change. He recommended that the U.S. and other nations try to “balance the increasing need for emergency food aid with long-term development.” In closing, he said, “In the face of these potential hurdles, we must be sure that each of the tools we are using to improve food security is operating at maximum efficiency.”
“The executive director of the UN [United Nations] food program, Jim Morris, answered a question I posed about how much it would cost to truly address the food crisis in Africa,” began Ranking Member Chris Smith (R-NJ). He continued, “He responded with an estimate of $3 billion per year over a 10 year period with Africa leveraging an additional $2 billion per year for a total of $5 billion. He anticipated that with such assistance, Africa would begin to underwrite an increasing percentage of its own food requirements and the need for assistance would decline. That is the solution we ought to be looking for.” Like Rep. Payne, Rep. Smith cautioned that too much food aid is being given in response to emergency situations rather than to encourage sustainable agricultural development. “My proposal is not to ignore the emergencies, but we cannot continue to divert resources from desperately needed food development initiatives,” he said. “Unless we increase the total food aid budget so that more resources can go to non-emergency food aid, we may well see the percentage for emergency aid increase and the possibility for long-term solutions diminish accordingly.” In closing, he said, “Food is a matter of life and death and we must treat food aid with the kind of commitment it deserves.”
Thomas Melito, director of international affairs and trade at the Government Accountability Office (GAO), testified about the “need to increase the efficiency of U.S. food aid programs in terms of the amount, timeliness, and quality of food provided and ensure the effectiveness of U.S. food aid so that it reaches the most vulnerable populations and does not cause negative market impact.” Dr. Melito described the numerous challenges that hinder the efficacy of U.S. food programs, including insufficient planning for food transportation; legal requirements that 75 percent of U.S. food aid must be shipped on U.S. ships; inadequate coordination between government agencies, such as the Department of Transportation (DoT), U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and Department of Agriculture (USDA); international conflict; and budget constraints. He said that all partners in delivering international food aid must work to “[ensure] that food aid reaches the most vulnerable populations such as poor women who are pregnant or children who are malnourished” and to “identify the causes of their vulnerability.”
Dr. Melito shared with the subcommittee recommendations from a recent GAO report on improving international food security and surmounting the challenges facing U.S. food aid programs. The report advises USAID, DoT, and USDA to coordinate the delivery of food aid through a unified technical system that would also be used to resolve food quality complaints; examine contracting practices to lower the cost of overseas food shipments; develop a unified information collection system to track expenditures; determine whether monetary aid will be more effective in limited situations; and use a coordinated monitoring system to improve nutrition standards and the monitoring of food delivery.
Vice Chair of the Alliance for Food Aid David Evans said that “Policy changes over the past five years have essentially reduced overall food aid levels, shrunk development-oriented programs to 42 percent of their 2001 levels (according to an April 2007 GAO report),and exposed the lack of contingency planning for food emergencies.” He told the subcommittee that “while some emergencies, such as sudden natural disasters and outbreak of civil war, cannot be predicted in advance and can occur any time during a fiscal year, other emergency needs are ongoing and can be factored into the regular budget request and appropriations process. For example, areas such as the Horn of Africa that are prone to drought, flooding, locusts, or other natural disasters are monitored through a variety of early warning systems…Because the administration does not ask for adequate funding to meet these anticipated emergency needs, funds have been withheld from the non-emergency programs for several months as USAID adjusts its budget and waits to see if there will be supplemental funding.”
Mr. Evans recommended that rather using supplemental funding, Congress and the administration should ensure 1.2 metric tons of food be available for non-emergency food aid each year, which would “reestablish America’s commitment to help those suffering from chronic malnutrition and hunger.” The food aid would be available to “programs that address the underlying causes of chronic hunger, including mother-child health care, agricultural and rural development, food as payment for work on community infrastructure projects, meals in schools and take-home rations to encourage school attendance, and programs targeting HIV/AIDS-affected communities.” He also recommended that the government agencies responsible for food aid carefully monitor the quality and formulation of food aid since both are “crucial to delivering safe, wholesome products to undernourished populations, particularly vulnerable groups such as infants and young children, women of child-bearing age, and people living with HIV/AIDS.”
William Hammink, director of the Office of Food for Peace at USAID, and Annemarie Reilly, chief of staff of Catholic Relief Services, also testified.
