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This is an archived USAID document retained on this web site as a matter of public record.
Remarks by Administrator Andrew S. Natsios
United States Agency for International Development
50th Anniversary of Food for Peace
Washington, D.C.
July 21, 2004
I am privileged today to be able to celebrate with you the 50th Anniversary of P.L. 480. This year marks a significant milestone and provides us with an opportunity assess what has been accomplished by the many dedicated participants in this program. Even more importantly, it allows us to pause for a moment and reflect upon how best to meet the challenges of the future.
The P.L. 480 programs would not be possible today without a long history of scientific progress in American agriculture. President Lincoln has a prominent role in the history of American agricultural productivity leading to our modern day food program.
I would like to draw attention to a less appreciated side of Lincoln which is overshadowed by the grandeur of his war-time role and the myth-like stature he has earned. The fact is that Lincoln was one of the greatest of our nation's "development Presidents." His legacy on this score is part of his enduring contributions to his country.
Specifically, I am speaking about a series of initiatives that transformed the continental United States. First, the Homestead Act - which spurred development of the nation by offering America's burgeoning population clear title to the land they worked out West. Here was the fungible stake hold for great numbers of people in a rapidly diversifying economy. The Homestead Act was the means of bringing large numbers of citizens into the economic nexus of the country.
Lincoln's second legislative achievement was the Morrill Act. This created the state land grant college system that would furnish the economic, agricultural science and technological know-how to modernize agriculture.
The third had to do with laws that created a continental railroad. The steam engine came to be seen as the transformative symbol of modernity. Through its influence, the Western farmer was able to grow large food surpluses and transport them to ports for sale abroad.
Lincoln's policies looked first to broadening the distribution of cultivable land, then to increasing its productivity, and finally to distributing its bounty throughout the country as a whole. As a result, in the words of one historian: "By the 1920s the per capita income had risen high enough for the domestic demand for food to have become highly inelastic. That is, incomes had risen to the level where consumers were able to buy all the food they needed and further increases could have little effect on food consumption."
As a result of the productivity realized, the U.S. made available assistance to other countries during and just after the First World War as well as following World War II. Our directed assistance to Russia and other parts of Europe in two world wars under Hoover saved countless lives and provided the leverage for them to build their own successful agricultural systems.
On July 10, 1954, when President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed Public Law 480 into law, he declared that this legislation was intended to "lay the basis for a permanent expansion of our exports of agricultural products" and would have "lasting benefits to ourselves . . ." and would also benefit "peoples of other lands." In doing so, he created the framework for the modern day U.S. foreign food assistance program which has indeed provided the predicted benefits as a legacy to those touched by this program both in the U.S. and abroad.
Early in his administration, President John F. Kennedy gave the P.L. 480 program a new name, Food for Peace, and placed it under the auspices of the newly created United States Agency for International Development. He stated more poetically what the more laconic Eisenhower left unsaid: "Food is strength, and food is peace, and food is freedom, and food is a helping hand to people around the world…" President Ronald W. Reagan went so far as to say that Eisenhower, by his act, had proceeded to "quietly" change the world.
Since 1954, Food for Peace has sent more than 106 million metric tons of American food at a cost of about $33 billion to more than 150 countries. We estimate that almost 3.4 billion people at risk of hunger and malnutrition have directly benefited from receiving this assistance. I am not aware of any other program in human history that has saved as many lives.
In much of Asia and Latin America, where famine has taken millions of lives, basic food security has been established and sustainable development has become a reality. And in many of these places, our food aid investments have played an important role in helping to bring this about. Japan, South Korea, Mexico, Argentina, Morocco and Chile, and even a number of European countries were recipients of early P.L. 480 programs. Many of these graduated countries have gone on to become major food donors.
India is another example of a country which has taken great strides toward achieving food security. Ambassador Himachal Som, who is India's Representative to the UN's agricultural organizations, gave a speech at the recent WFP board meetings in which he commented upon the positive impact of the Title II programs in India. He not only stated that India had benefited immensely from the direct feeding programs of P.L. 480, he went on to praise our monetization and food for work programs for providing the resources to build agriculture-related infrastructure and helping to create food security through child and women development services. He also made several insightful comments on both the idealism and pragmatism of the US government and how these qualities are the motivation behind the American food aid program. In Ambassador Som's own words: "I am happy to say that India's experience of U.S. food aid is a good example of creation of assets and opportunities that have enabled our emergence from a situation of dependence."
Food for Peace programs have made substantial improvements in children's nutrition and saved millions from starvation, stunted growth and malnutrition. A recent study shows these programs have been reducing chronic undernourishment by 2.4 percent per year. They also reduced the number of underweight children and helped them sustain more normal body weights over time through programs that provide rations and school meals, inoculate infants, monitor maternal and child health, and supply vitamin supplements.
Though the program has achieved many successes worldwide over the past 50 years, I believe that the past year has shown remarkable evidence in their commitment to defeating hunger. Some of the most notable achievements occurred in the averting of widespread famine in Ethiopia, the feeding of four and a half million people in southern Africa and successful emergency interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Many of you have participated in these and other achievements of the program. It is a fact that the Food for Peace program would not be successful without the commitment of farmers, businessmen, grain elevator operators, truckers, bargemen, freight forwarders, NGOs, PVOs and many others. The cooperation played out on a daily basis between all of the parties involved is a striking logistical and managerial achievement.
The year 2003 saw one of the largest amounts of food distributed through Title II in its 50 year history - and just slightly below what was distributed in 1985, the year of the terrible Ethiopian famine. In fact, if you add the 401,000 metric tons we received from the Bill Emerson Humanitarian Trust, last year was the biggest year since P.L. 480 was passed.
But if there was one major difference between 1985 and 2003 in Ethiopia, it was the fact that this time we were not caught off guard and the situation did not develop into a widespread famine.
This is largely due to one of the most important advances in combating hunger over the past half-century -- the establishment of a Famine Early Warning System (known as "FEWS") in 1986. This use of U.S. satellite technology to identify early signs of drought has proven effective in providing the advanced notice necessary for responding to threatening situations in time to save lives and prevent famines. The FEWS information network (or FEWS NET) shares U.S. satellite data on precipitation, river levels and crop growing conditions in order to inform countries of impending floods, cyclones and droughts. The system enables countries to prepare for pending emergencies, identifies food deficits and surpluses for commodity traders and assists FFP in sending assistance where and when it is needed most. In the case of Ethiopia, it prompted Food for Peace to begin shipping food aid months before the crisis peaked, averting the large population movements and mortality associated with the famine in 1985.
Though the accomplishments of the past are noteworthy, the food challenges of the future remain daunting as some 840 million people are still food insecure. Many of our current challenges did not exist at the founding moment of Food for Peace. One of the most serious new threats to food security is the HIV/AIDS crisis.
The AIDS epidemic threatens to ravage farm communities and rural areas around the world. Among the many "casualties" of war, it must be said, is agriculture itself as well as the markets, roads, and transportation systems that support it.
Other more recent threats to food security are complex humanitarian emergencies which are increasing in scale and magnitude. The number of people trapped in situations of war and conflict is staggering. Last year, the World Food Program (WFP) estimated that more than 23 million people stood in need of humanitarian assistance. This is not only a human catastrophe but a drain on the productive resources of the largely agrarian societies afflicted by war.
The combination of these and other trends means that we at USAID have little choice but to seek new ways to operate. Simply feeding people from one day to the next is not going to end hunger. We must use all the tools at our disposal to put an end to this problem. One such tool that we have found effective is using monetization to stabilize food prices in emergencies. One example of this is the MAP program in Zimbabwe which provides food in the local market at affordable prices for the local population.
In addition, investments must be made in the areas of health and livelihood strengthening. Our food assistance must be carefully calibrated so as not to increase dependency, disrupt local markets, or discourage local agriculture. Flexibility and innovation will be key in the coming years as we create new tools and resources that will achieve results without rendering harm on populations at risk.
Our food aid will obviously continue to focus on people's immediate, short-term food and nutritional needs. But we have to invest in longer-term solutions, as well. It does not make sense to spend hundreds of millions of dollars feeding people in a country like Ethiopia and only give a tiny fraction of that to help them improve their agriculture. We have to make real investments that help farmers increase and sustain their productivity. We've now developed a plan with the Ethiopian government, the World Bank and other donors to end chronic famine in Ethiopia, through which food aid will play an important role.
Consequently, USAID is working toward implementation of both short and long term interventions which link agricultural development, trade and food aid in order to promote food security. The U.S. is committed to supporting a variety of proven and innovative programs to address hunger and USAID's Office of Food for Peace is making a dramatic shift in its approach to addressing food needs.
Food for Peace's new focus, outlined in it's emerging strategy, is to work at multiple levels (from the national government to the local community to the individual) to reduce various types of vulnerabilities to food insecurity. Efforts will be centered on strengthening coping capacities of individuals and communities to deal with various types of risks. By increasing a population's ability to protect themselves from the effects of shocks, they will experience less of a loss when disasters strike and will be able to recover and achieve stability more quickly.
Food for Peace will continue to fund a wide variety of interventions to address long term food security needs such as: agricultural programs that increase farmers' productivity; economic growth programs that enable women to increase family incomes through micro-enterprises; and nutrition programs which identify vulnerabilities such as vitamin A and iron deficiencies that lead to serious health problems for adults and stunting in children.
Food for Peace and its partners are also researching the best ways to use food assistance to address HIV/AIDS, its debilitating effects on individuals and family members as they cope with the disease, and its devastating effect on the productivity of rural communities. Research has shown that a nutritionally healthy person is better able to resist the onset of disease after being infected by the HIV/AIDS virus than a person who is not well-nourished. As a result, food related activities are being included in HIV/AIDs programs in Rwanda and Uganda.
In speaking of rural communities, one innovative approach to addressing agricultural needs around the world is the Farmer to Farmer volunteer program which is funded by Title II of P.L. 480 and run by the USAID Economic Growth, Agriculture and Trade Bureau. The program has shared American expertise and training with individuals and farm organizations abroad in a variety of programs, including: horticulture and high value crops, income diversification, dairy and livestock, producer organizations, financial services, marketing and processing, as well as natural resource management.
A few weeks ago, we celebrated a milestone when the number of volunteers to serve under this program reached 10,000.
The goal of those of us implementing programs under P.L. 480 is to make our food programs unnecessary as we share the tools and knowledge which will enable countries to grow the food to meet their own needs, just as the United States and other countries have done. South Korea, Taiwan and Chile are all examples of countries that made the successful transformation. Though this may take several more decades, it is a reachable goal worth achieving.
We at USAID are proud to have played a part in this extraordinary program over the past fifty years and we are dedicated to making unprecedented progress toward achieving food security, with the support of all of our partners, in the coming years.
Thank you.
(Applause.)
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