Agricultural
Big news. As you know, last week we delivered signatures from ONE’s “Fight the Famine, Feed the Future” petition to all Senate offices here in DC. Senator Durbin just responded, reaffirming his commitment to “work for adequate funding for humanitarian assistance programs as the Senate considers the Fiscal Year 2012 budget, and monitor the crisis in East Africa” (full statement below).
This is proof that our voices are being heard on Capitol Hill. One by one we’re letting our elected officials know that programs like “Feed the Future” really can break the cycle of famine for good and end extreme poverty in the developing world— all for less than 1% of the US budget. Check out Senator Durbin’s full statement below, and please leave him a message in the comments:
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As aid agencies warn more than 9 million people could be affected by a food crisis in East Africa, world leaders are failing to keep their 2009 promises to tackle the causes of chronic hunger and support farmers in the world’s poorest countries.
On the two-year anniversary of the L’Aquila commitments, which saw leaders promise to invest $22 billion in agriculture development, ONE’s new report ‘Agriculture Accountability‘ finds that donors have only delivered a fifth of the money promised with just one year to go until the deadline. As well as neglecting their financial commitments the report found countries are not demonstrating the political will needed to prevent future food crises.
The report’s key findings include:
- Overall donors have met only 22% of the financial pledges made at L’Aquila in 2009.
- Canada and Italy have delivered more than two-thirds of their pledges. France, the UK, Germany and the US need to substantial increase the funds they distribute in order to meet their commitments.
- Donors are not taking on the challenges of ensuring effective agriculture aid is delivered with the political will and momentum needed to tackle poverty and chronic hunger.
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The multilateral agriculture fund known as GAFSP, or the Global Agriculture and Food Security Program, has selected more country-led programs to invest in!
A few days ago, GAFSP announced that it would disburse $160 million to fund agriculture programs in Cambodia, Liberia, Nepal and Tajikistan. All of the programs are part of countries’ national agricultural investment plans, which means they are more effective and more in line with the actual needs of the people in those countries. You may remember Samuel Gatembeyi, a Rwandan farmer that ONE interviewed last month. He is living proof that GAFSP programs work. Like Samuel, farmers in Cambodia, Liberia, Nepal and Tajikistan now will also have the opportunity to benefit from GAFSP programs.
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This week, ONE, with partners ActionAid, Alliance to End Hunger, Women Thrive and others, hosted a reception on Capitol Hill to celebrate the recent successes of US investments in agriculture to strengthen global food security.
Following the Chicago Council’s Annual Symposium on Global Agriculture and Food Security, the reception was a huge success. It brought together Congress, the Administration, civil society and agriculture researchers to raise the profile of the multilateral Global Agriculture and Food Security Program (GAFSP), and bring recognition to the great work that the US government and our partners have been doing to help improve the lot of small-scale farmers in Africa.
We were honored to have leading anti-hunger advocate Ambassador Tony Hall emcee the event. There were also keynote addresses made by Samuel Gatembeyi, a small-scale farmer from Rwanda, assistant secretary of international markets and development at the US Department of the Treasury Marisa Lago, and Julie Howard, deputy coordinator of Feed the Future.
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Photos by Morgana Wingard
We began our trip to Malawi at a research station that developed improved seed varieties to counter devastating disease and drought. Many of those plant varieties developed at Chitedze Research Station are sold to Funwe Seed Farm to produce quality seed for the surrounding community.
Funwe’s packaged and certified seed is sold to farmers in agro-dealer shops, which is where we came upon Mrs. Flora Kahumbe. Flora owns two agro-dealer shops near Monkey Bay, Malawi, at the south end of Lake Malawi. She was trained by RUMARK, a local NGO that gets support from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. RUMARK makes sure that agro-dealers like Flora know about proper storage for seeds and chemicals, safe application of crop-protection chemicals like pesticides and the appropriate ways of applying the right types of fertilizer for maximum effect.
Yet, Flora is more than just a shop-owner; she’s really almost an extension agent that provides valuable knowledge to farmers on how to get the most out of their seed. With three employees in each store, Flora is creating stable employment in her community and ensuring that the seed she sells does its best to feed Malawi’s growing mouths.
Morgana and Emily were recently in Malawi where they observed firsthand the progress being made by farmers in Malawi– and the challenges. You can read Emily’s first post here.
Rosette ravishes crops like peanuts or “groundnuts” as they’re called in Malawi like the plague – its proliferating brown spots spread indiscriminately from plant to plant disregarding property lines. Every year Malawian farmers lose 21% of groundnut crops to this deadly pestilence – or approximately $9 million. In weeks a year’s investment rots under the scourge of these fatal marks.
To rescue these and other crops, the Chitedze Research Station (funded by The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation) is researching and developing new seed varieties that will be resistant to drought and disease. Investments in agriculture research and development averages a 43% return on investment and growth in agriculture is twice as effective at reducing poverty as growth in other economic sectors.
Laurie Garrett, Global Health Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, was featured on the Colbert Report Thursday. She explained to Stephen, who, in addition to being a popular TV show host, is apparently also an excitable food commodities trader, why she thinks that he has been making so much money lately on the rising prices of food commodities: other speculators, biofuels demand (40% of corn!), fires and floods, and the livestock-killing foot and mouth disease.
Stephen asked her to “make a case for humanity,” and she replied, “Maybe you are rich enough, Mr. Colbert to afford everything you need… but high prices are affecting people all around the world.” She noted that high food prices are affecting not just people in developing countries, but consumers here in the U.S. who buy much of their food from multinational food companies, for which corn is a major ingredient of many of their products. In true policy wonk fashion, she also pointed to a recent International Monetary Fund (IMF) report that indicated that the steep rise in wheat prices was indeed a major factor in recent riots the riots in Tunisia, where rioting citizens were initially seen waving baguettes in the air.
To that, Colbert replied, “Well then, shouldn’t people be thanking, me, the speculator, for bringing democracy to countries around the world?” It is an interesting question, and it leads me to ask myself, have we been unconsciously as a society excusing the impacts of high prices because dictatorships have crumbled as a result of them? Or maybe it’s just that we’ve been distracted by the unrest while millions of people have slipped into poverty and hunger due to high food prices. Not to say that the unrest does not deserve some of our attention, but why are we not outraged that 44 million more people now go to bed hungry compared to this time last year? Hunger is easy to forget, but I hope that you, as ONE a member, won’t forget what we can do to help.
Please read more about agriculture and food issues on ONE’s blog.
