The President’s Budget: Agriculture

Feb 1st, 2010 5:34 PM UTC
By Emily Alpert

President Obama just released his budget request for fiscal year 2011. Despite all the tough times that we are all facing, President Obama not only increased overall development assistance to the world’s poor, but he made unparalleled increases in development assistance to agriculture and food security. Investing in agriculture is critical to reducing poverty and meeting global food security needs because it provides much needed employment, income, food and opportunity for the majority of poor people.

Ever since the food crisis erupted in 2008, the U.S. government made several commitments to address this catastrophe. The first was to double development assistance to agriculture over 2008 levels. The second was to provide $3.5 billion over three years as part of the “Global Food Security Initiative,” (GFSI) announced at the G8 Summit in L’Aquila, Italy last July. There are still more than 1 billion people suffering from hunger – the highest number ever recorded – so our jobs are not done. But, we can recognize strong efforts, accomplishments and follow-through when we see it, and the President’s 2011 budget request on food security is just that.

The FY2011 budget request increases development assistance to agriculture by $750 million over 2010 levels, which, if we include funding for nutrition, adds up to fulfilling a commitment to provide $3.5 billion over 3 years. In addition, the U.S. has also leveraged $18 billion from other donors.

The process by which the Obama Administration has taken forward this initiative is also admirable. As part of a broader effort to improve the quality of U.S. foreign assistance, the GFSI takes a “whole of government approach.” This means that even though the State Department is leading the charge, they have consulted with all government agencies that are involved in agricultural development such as USAID, USDA and USTR to develop a comprehensive inter-agency food security strategy. Inter-agency coordination is crucial to increasing the effectiveness of US assistance abroad by minimizing cost, duplication of efforts and ensuring the approach looks at all related development sectors like health, nutrition and education holistically.

While this is all a lot to be thankful for, we must view this success in context. This is just a milestone on the road to poverty reduction. Increased funding and sustained momentum are still needed to tackle the food crisis, especially after you take into account the impacts of the financial crisis and climate change on poor people. Quality is also equally important as quantity when it comes to aid: we need to ensure that these funds are spent in the most effective way possible to increase food security. ONE is calling on the U.S. to provide greater transparency on their financial and operational commitments and continue to be a strong global leader in mobilizing other G8 members and donors to follow suit.

TAGS: Agriculture, FY2011 US budget, Policy News