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This is an archived USAID document retained on this web site as a matter of public record.
Briefing by Andrew S. Natsios
Administrator, U.S. Agency for International Development
"U.S. Initiatives on Famine and Nutrition"
World Food Summit, Rome
June 11, 2002
MR. NATSIOS: Thank you very much. I would like to make a couple of announcements this morning. The first is that the southern African drought is, perhaps, the most serious threat in terms of famine in the world today. The WFP and FAO have just completed their nutritional surveys and their food assessments, and they indicate that by the end of this year we need to raise 1.2 million tons of food to deal with the emergency. Over six million people are at risk, half the population of Zimbabwe, four million people in Malawi, which are the two most seriously affected, and more than a million people in Zambia. Smaller numbers of people in the neighboring countries are affected. The United States shipped 95,000 tons of food in December, which is now arriving in port and is being off-loaded. We ordered a couple of months ago another 40,000 tons and just a week ago, two weeks ago, we made a commitment from what is called the Emerson Trust, which is our reserve in the case of a major emergency. That commitment is for 275,000 tons of food. So our commitment to date is more than 400,000 tons of food, which is a third of the requirement we would hope other donor governments would step up and make commitments to contribute toward the relief effort.
Read more about the 2002 World Food Summit...It is also the case, however, as in most other famines, that in spite of the drought, there are other complicating factors. I want to talk about those for a minute. If the trading system is not liberalized in Zimbabwe, which is the country - by far - the most seriously at risk, there is no way that relief food is going to deal with the famine. What decisions the Zimbabwe government makes about allowing prices to be controlled by the market instead of by the Board of Trade will affect how much food is brought into the country commercially for those people who still have assets to purchase food. It will affect food supply in the country in a profound way. We can never separate markets from famine.
Amartya Sen, the great famine economist who won the Nobel Prize for famine economics five or six years ago, has a theory of entitlements which is accepted by most of us in the famine discipline as the pre-eminent theory of famine -- it says that one of the reasons that people die in famines is that there is a gap between the prices in the markets and people's ability to access those markets. It's a theory called entitlement. Family incomes collapse, prices go up, prices are rapidly rising in all of these countries in a very dramatic way and in a very dangerous way. Unless the markets are liberalized we are going to have a serious problem, particularly in Zimbabwe.
The second is that we do have reports now from the Danish Physicians for Human Rights and U.N. agencies which have suspended operations in various areas of Zimbabwe because there are reports of politicized feeding, which is to say villages that supported the opposition are not being provided with food assistance, and those areas that supported Mr. Mugabe are. We have one report from a human rights group that children have been taken out of line whose parents were known supporters of the opposition candidates in the last election. These are very disturbing charges that are being made by respected international organizations and human rights organizations.
We have to insist to all of the donors and other countries in the area that food will be distributed to the most impoverished and most destitute based on need, not based on political considerations. President Bush has said that food aid will not be used as a weapon of diplomacy during a famine. We insist in the same way that governments affected by drought or famine not use food as a weapon as well. We will not allow our food to be used in that way.
We have a paper on ending famine which is in your package, and I just want to say we are making a public commitment within USAID to lead the effort whenever there is a major food emergency pending to try to prevent the onset of famine. I have been through a number of famines in the last 13 years that I never want to go through again in my career. They are horrific events, particularly up close. We do know how to stop them and I just want to mention several things that are in our paper.
The first is early warning systems. We now have satellite early warning systems for all of Africa that tell us what ground cover is like and what the harvest is like, and we can tell if there is going to be harvest failure in advance of famine. If you see famine on television, it's too late to prevent it. The early warning system has to come well before that in order to mobilize the resources necessary to stop the event from taking place. So we need these early warning systems. They are in place now; the information is public; it's readily available. We cannot use the excuse that we don't know what's happening. We do know what's happening.
The second requirement is political will, that we make a commitment that we are not going to let this happen again. We have made our commitment and I know other donors feel the same way. We need competent assistance through institutions like the World Food Program, which did a remarkable job in Afghanistan to prevent a famine from taking place this past winter, and the NGO community, which is the tertiary distribution system. We also need to focus on what we call family livelihoods. Livelihood means increasing family incomes at a time, generally, in famine when family incomes are collapsing. It cannot just be on the supply side, it has to be on the demand side. In other words, it has to affect people's capacity to access markets at the same time we deal with the supplier food.
So our paper goes into depth; I'm not going to go into it in depth unless you have questions on how we propose to do this. There was a lot of research in famines in the last century and a half. We know what to do. We just need to provide the leadership and the early warning systems to make a commitment not to let this happen again. We are willing to do that and that is what this paper is about. We are showing that with respect to Zimbabwe and the other countries in southern Africa.
I might also add that on Friday we made a commitment of an additional 100,000 tons of food assistance to North Korea. That's in addition to the 50,000 we already committed earlier this year, which is 25% of the appeal proposed by WFP for the requirements for North Korea -- which is not our best friend in the world. It underscores the President's statement that we will not use food as a weapon.
I do want to say, however, we are deeply concerned that in North Korea there is inadequate monitoring. We want our own translators, not government translators, which we have had for seven years now. We want a national nutritional survey unimpeded by the government, which we have never been able to do fully in the past. We want access to counties and provinces that have been inaccessible since the famine started in the mid-90's that killed 2.5 million people. For future assistance from us -- we are willing to make the 25% commitment - we need some assurances that the food is going where it needs to go - to the people who are vulnerable, and we are insisting now with the North Korean government that this be the case in the future for any further commitments of food.
Finally, I want to talk about our paper on nutrition. There are a number of commitments we have made. We put some substantial investments into the production of two new varieties of rice. One is an iron-rich variety of rice that is not biotech rice. We found rice varieties that have high iron content and then replicated that. When I say we, I mean the international CGIAR network of agriculture research centers. This is a subsidiary of the World Bank. We have invested in the development of this kind of rice, and that will help with a principal cause of maternal mortality, in other words the mortality of women having children that is from anemia or iron deficiency. One of the major reasons women die in childbirth or after childbirth is because of very low iron content in their bloodstream. It also affects the survival rates of children after they are born if their mothers are anemic. If we get this kind of rice -- it's being tested now for taste to see whether it is acceptable to the consumer -- it will deal with the problem in rice-eating areas of maternal mortality and child mortality.
The second is a new kind of rice called yellow rice. This is biotech rice where beta carotene, which is high in vitamin A, has been added into the rice to deal with the problem of vitamin A deficiency in children. We found -- one of the great innovations of the 1990s in terms of nutritional research -- that two treatments of vitamin A per year for a child under 5 dramatically drops the infection rate among children for a variety of diseases. Most importantly, it reduces the child mortality rate, certain kinds of blindness -- there's a whole series of diseases that are retarded by an application of two treatments of vitamin A. The problem is getting vitamin A to children in remote areas. If we can get it into the food supply as a regular part of the seed, the children will naturally get it and the mortality rates will go down permanently as children keep that as a regular part of their diet.
We also know that higher levels of girl education will also substantially reduce the child mortality rate and particularly maternal mortality rate. An increase in primary education among girl children has an affect on a variety of other factors. It increases, interestingly enough in Africa in a number of tests -- just increasing the literacy rate among girls, because a lot of them are farmers, increases agricultural production with no other inputs at all, no other technologies. There have been a number of tests of this theory in Africa and it is proving true everywhere. We are not quite sure why; there are some intuitive things that are evident, but since a large part of the farming in Africa is done by women, we know that increasing the literacy rate among girl children will have a profound effect on child mortality, food production, and maternal mortality. So, the President has instructed us to increase the primary education account within AID's budget by 65% between this year and next year and we have a new strategy that we have announced for primary school education in Africa, particularly.
Anyway, those are the announcements today. You can see the other documents within that package. If any of you have questions, I'll be glad to answer them.
No questions? Yes --
Q. (THE WASHINGTON POST): Those conditions that you said needed to be met by North Korea - are those also for this 100,000, or is this just for the future?
ADMINISTRATOR NATSIOS: I have to say these are the same kinds of requirements that the World Food Program has publicly stated they require in other donors. This is not the United States speaking alone. It's a general concern that the donors have had for a long time, but we need to raise this again in a very visible way. It is not a condition on the 150,000 tons that we have already contributed.
Q. (IL RADIO POPOLARE, Milano): Just an hour ago 10 countries stood against the U.S. Farm Bill and the protectionist measures as an obstacle to developing countries' agricultures. What do you think about it and what's your answer?
ADMINISTRATOR NATSIOS: I am not an expert in our domestic agricultural policies, but let me tell you what I do understand. I think the people opposed to the Farm Bill have won the media fight, but there is a difference between winning a media fight and reality. The reality is there has been no increase in the amount of subsidies in the United States over what has been appropriated by the United States Congress in the last four years. So the subsidies are not increasing over what we have been spending for four years now. If you go back to the Appropriation Bills and you look at the Farm Bill the President signed, it doesn't change anything. It also does not change the tariff regimes at all.
There is no impediment toward the import of Third World agricultural products into the United States in terms of tariffs. I might also add that in the most food insecure areas of the world, particularly sub-Sahara Africa, the areas that the Farm Bill covers (which are primarily staple crops) are unaffected. It doesn't affect African agriculture in the sense of exports from Africa to the United States because the primary exports to the United States from Africa are fruits, vegetables, nuts, coffee, tea, cocoa, and they are not affected -- they are not even in the Farm Bill.
There are no phytosanitary code issues for any products in northern countries. We work with developing countries to try to train them in trade capacity measures to deal with those problems. If you look at the African countries that are increasing their agricultural trade with the United States, it's primarily in those areas and we don't have subsidies in those areas of any kind. They are not even in the Farm Bill. The Farm Bill primarily is around staple crops and, I think, cotton and a couple of other things. It's a relatively small group of agricultural products.
Q.: (inaudible)
ADMINISTRATOR NATSIOS: Well, because I have to say, a lot of the people talking about this are really unfamiliar with what is in the Bill. It is a very complicated Bill. Virtually all of the people who have spoken about this have never looked at the Bill in detail to see what it actually does and what the practice has been the last four years. I understand why. If you looked at it, it's very intimidating; it's so long. A lot of it also gets around to the question of what our commitments are in the future and I think that is what the fear is.
The fear is that this is a change of American policy in terms of the next round of trade negotiations and what the State Department, the U.S. Trade Representative, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture have all said this is our commitment to a general reduction in trade barriers in the food area, in fact in all areas, but particularly the food area, is American policy and we will negotiate seriously a general reduction. Our subsidies are much lower than the rest of the world's. Our subsidies are about 12%. The average subsidy in the world is about 62%. European subsidies are much higher than our subsidies in terms of our agricultural assistance. If you look at what is really going on in the world, what we have done, given what has happened in the last four years on our own system, it really is not changing the system. It is the perception that our commitment to reducing trade barriers in the agriculture sector is in effect in the future, and that is not the case.
Q. (International Press Service): Just to follow up, there were seven ministers here of the Cairns Group. Do you really think they are not aware of the complexities of the bill?
ADMINISTRATOR NATSIOS: I think they wouldn't be making the comments they are making if they were aware of it, to be very frank with you.
Congress has appropriated supplemental budgets for four years now in the area of subsidies. They have been in place. No one made any comments about that for some reason, but the levels in the Farm Bill are the same as what has happened the last four years.
Q. (THE FINANCIAL TIMES): Two questions about biotech. First of all, I asked yesterday about whether the Americans might have softened their position on IPR. Your comrade, I am sorry, your colleague…
ADMINISTRATOR NATSIOS: We don't normally use that term in the United States, especially since the end of the Cold War.
Q.: Mr. Larson, effectively said no. I took his answer to be because you are concentrating on developing private public partnerships. Can you confirm that you see no real shift in your position on IPRs? Secondly, the other main problem with this strategy of resting upon private and public partnerships is that it simply won't produce the crops that are needed.
ADMINISTRATOR NATSIOS: It won't do what?
(FINANCIAL TIMES): It won't produce the crops that are needed. It will have some effect in the margins. If it takes, say the (inaudible) Foundation, which is associated with the biotech company, it will arguably necessitate a big step up in public sector funding, then - or not a lot will actually happen on the ground.
ADMINISTRATOR NATSIOS: Yes, we have increased our funding for the agriculture sector bilaterally in AID's budget. Thirty million dollars this year, $70 million next year. It's the first increase we have had in 13 years. There have been steady cuts in agriculture for 13 years, 15 years, since 1986. In fact, Peter McPherson was here yesterday. He was the last AID Administrator to put heavy emphasis on agriculture in the budget.
Now the reason I mention that is because we are the largest donors to the CGIAR network of 16 agriculture research stations, which is a subsidiary of the World Bank. It's been around for 35 years now. I am a very big enthusiast for that network. They have had a profound effect where the seed that they have developed has gotten out into the rural areas. They do both just-improved varieties of seed by traditional means and the biotech area. We have been increasing -- unfortunately other donors are cutting their contributions to CGIAR, and we are disturbed by that. I don't want to mention particular countries, but it is not a good idea to cut funding to the one system of research stations that put in the public domain improved varieties of seed for the developing world. That is the donor countries' and the developing countries' principal organized way of developing and getting the seed out. They come up with some wonderful varieties.
We had also cut our funding in the last decade dramatically to agricultural schools that did a lot of research for us. We are increasing that again. We just put out a 10-year, $106 million contract for biotech research in the public sector, not the private sector. We are also having conversations with the private companies that are doing this research because they are beginning to realize they need to take out of the private domain, in terms of protected patents, and make them public and available in the Developing World.
There are a number of products that are of no use in the north. For example, in the sweet potato area, we are developing a new sweet potato now that should increase production in nutritional value. That is in the public sector. To answer your question, we believe there should be more investment in the public part of this kind of agricultural research. We urge companies in the north that are doing this research to make research available that has particular value to the developing world, particularly in terms of nutrition and hunger. They are increasingly stepping up to doing just that.
(THE FINANCIAL TIMES): On changing your position on IPRs, the answer is no.
ADMINISTRATOR NATSIOS: You are going to have explain…
(THE FINANCIAL TIMES): Intellectual Property Rights.
ADMINISTRATOR NATSIOS: Ah, Intellectual Property Rights.
(THE FINANCIAL TIMES): The answer is no, I take it then.
ADMINISTRATOR NATSIOS: Intellectual Property Rights, as I understand the conventions and the discussion, is around private sector research. It doesn't affect public sector research. Public sector research is public property. Any country that wants to use the CGIAR improved seed rice can use it. That is not affected by the patent rights, as I understand it. We wouldn't be investing money in seed varieties that are restricted for the developing - that's the whole idea of the network. It has been in existence for 35 years. They don't put restrictions on it. That international convention you are talking about and those rules do not affect the public sector investments you are making.
ADMINISTRATOR NATSIOS: Yes, sir; back here?
(CBS NEWS): You seem to be saying that nobody understands you. You are saying that the Cairns Group obviously has not read the bill on farm subsidies or they would not be making the statements they are making. You are saying there are Third World leaders criticizing you left and right and sideways. President Museveni this morning was guarded in his comments saying, "Well, if light comes you don't complain about how much there is."
You were replying to a question about subsidies. Surely, if everybody is against your subsidies, either there is something wrong with them or you have got a lot of explaining to do. Because if that is all they are focusing on then, doesn't that negate everything you are trying to do until you explain that or change that?
ADMINISTRATOR NATSIOS: I have to tell you I'm not an expert, once again, in how precisely these subsidies work. I have had briefings from our staff; I ask about it because it affects our work. What they are telling me is the situation is far more complex than the media reports are allowing. I think the problem with the Bill is the perception that it is sort of a statement of what America intends to do in the future. That is not the case. The United States will press for a general reduction in these trade barriers in the future and there is a provision in the Bill that Ann Veneman talked about yesterday, that if in any commodity group we are violating the agreements we make internationally, she can suspend or reduce the subsidy levels, it has a circuit breaker. She has discretion. There is discretion. That was an amendment added later in the Bill.
I think that is the concern. It's a general concern that this is a statement of American policy in the future - as opposed to real consequence in terms of the effect on markets. I think Ann said it yesterday very carefully. She and I have had a long discussion about it. I looked into it and it appears that there is a lot of the argument that is not being understood well. So we do have a problem in terms of explaining ourselves.
Q. (COX NEWSPAPERS): You talked about not allowing food to be used for political purposes and that there are charges that that is happening in Zimbabwe. Will there be some sort of process to determine whether the charges that are being made are correct? And what are the implications that even in the face of famine, it could be that food aid would not be forthcoming?
ADMINISTRATOR NATSIOS: It is not a matter of food aid not being forthcoming. We have made our commitments. The food is being shipped. We do not intend to go through the government ministries to distribute food aid if this pattern continues. We will be going through NGOs that have distribution networks within Zimbabwe where we can be assured there will be no politicized feeding. And that all areas of the country, regardless of politics, if they are in need will be fed according to that need - and not based on who voted in the last election and who didn't vote. We are watching it. We have an AID mission in Zimbabwe. The United Nations agencies are all watching this. They are very concerned about this and European human rights groups have also been on the ground and done this reporting. It's not a rumor, unfortunately. There is substantial evidence that this is going on. The question is whether the pattern can be broken. We go back to the standard of feeding based on need. We are just going to have to keep talking about it publicly until we are sure that is happening.
(National Public Radio): Can you tell us something about the U.S. position again on the right to food and why it is that you may register or reserve about that in the declaration?
ADMINISTRATOR NATSIOS: I think there is a different understanding of what the word "rights" means in the United States versus Europe, and it may have something to do with the differences in our political systems. In Europe -- I have spent a lot of time working with my counterparts in Europe -- the word "right" means sort of a general statement of principle that is a question of solidarity. People don't in the continental system -- as I understand jurisprudence in Europe, there is not a Bill of Rights you sue over. Over constitutional rights. When we talk about "rights" it means a legal theory that allows you to challenge people in the courts, and one of the problems we have had in our political system is that the courts anywhere in the United States sort of legislate public policy. That becomes a problem because the courts don't always look at the tradeoffs. When they make one decision -- I was in the State Legislature for 12 years, and we used to have problems where they would order us to appropriate money in one area and then we have to take it from other areas -- courts don't look at that. So, we see the word "rights" as having more legal implications to it.
Two, I might add, there has been a discussion of rights in the context of the U.N. Charter for 55 years now. I have to tell you, unless you operationalize these questions in terms of programs, in terms of resources, in terms of change of policy, the discussion of abstract rights is really not particularly good - we haven't got a good history of it. We said that food aid will not be politicized, but it still is being politicized. The question is, instead of talking and spending -- we spend so much time at these international conferences, I've been to them for 13/14 years now, constantly talking about these abstract sets of principles that never get implemented, that are on pieces of paper. Why are we having this conference now when five years ago we had a similar conference? We are not supposed to have had it five years later. Why? Because we are not implementing what everybody committed to do in these documents. We need to change the mindset and focus more on implementation and operations and less on abstract principles. That's my personal view, as well as the view of the U.S. government.
Q. (CNN): Given your allegations against Mr. Mugabe pulling children out of food lines (inaudible).
ADMINISTRATOR NATSIOS: I might add, these are not my allegations. The Danish Physicians for Human Rights have witnessed this themselves. They have a report on it. The United Nations has suspended operations in those areas in which they witnessed this going on. So this is in the currency within the international system.
(Q. is inaudible)
ADMINISTRATOR NATSIOS: As a general proposition, I have learned over the years - I'm a former politician and some people think I'm still a politician - I am more interested in what people do than what they say. There is always a large gap in the international system. Speeches are easy. People talk a lot. The question is what they do. That is what counts for us. Colin Powell has repeatedly said the speeches are nice, what are people doing on the ground, that is reality. That's what we are looking at.
Are there other questions?
Q.: (first part inaudible) There was a lecturer mentioning that the prices of the food products might be higher by 14 - 20 percent than what they are now, which means liberalization...
ADMINISTRATOR NATSIOS: Based on what?
(unidentified): He didn't say, he didn't mention more details. He just said that liberalization might, indeed, by reflecting more the actual costs of various food products, might ease the availability of some food products, but make accessibility to the poor, much more difficult. What would be the answer?
ADMINISTRATOR NATSIOS: You have to say that again, I'm not sure I got what your argument is.
(unidentified): It's not mine, we are just thinking about what those people in Geo Forum said, that if you liberalize the market the prices of many food products might rise by 14 to 20 percent. So if some food products become more available, the accessibility to the poor, by question of income, might become much more difficult. You would have a discrepancy between the targets and the means.
ADMINISTRATOR NATSIOS: That's a good argument and I think, as I recall, Kofi Annan actually addressed that yesterday. He said in the short-term the reduction in food prices from subsidies actually would allow more access for the poor. But over the long-term, it depresses production. Higher prices will mean more people will be encouraged to invest in agriculture and produce more food. That's just sort of simple, classical economics. There might be a disruption in the beginning, which is the reason we have food aid, food assistance to deal with people who are destitute, who can't afford to access markets, which is what causes famines. People can't access markets because the price has gone up so much.
Usually in a famine it is not 14 to 25 percent, it's 700 percent. Over six months, you might have an increase in prices which we had in a number of famines in the last decade. So to answer your question, I think in the short-term there might be disruption, but in the longer term prices will drop permanently, as more farmers are encouraged to produce more, which is the idea.
Sub-Sahara Africa is not producing enough food. We know that and they are not producing enough food consistent with the population growth rates. All of the research shows that, I think, from the international system. We have got to find ways to increase it. It's markets, it's incentives, it's domestic policy, it's investment in new technologies, it's investment in science, it's investment in training -- more scientists who are Africans who have their own research centers in Africa can handle some of this research. There are a variety of things we need to do to increase production. It's a multi-faceted thing. But markets are certainly part of it.
(Unidentified): You wonder why we are having this conference since we had a conference five years ago and not enough progress has been made. Summing up the U.S. government position, would you say that this conference should not have been held?
ADMINISTRATOR NATSIOS: I think it should be held, but we need to take the document and translate it into reality. I have been going to international conferences for 13 years and I can count the number of documents that never get implemented. I'm a very operational person, a very practical person. I'm really interested in what is going to happen after the conference is over, which is what we should be focusing our attention on.
Thank you all very much.
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Last Updated on: January 02, 2009 |
