Institute Notes: A Dialogue on Overcoming Hunger and Poverty

Hunger-Crisis Resources from Bread for the World

Bread for the World now has a webpage with a number of resources on the current hunger crisis in the United States and around the world. Included are fact sheets, analysis, blog posts, press releases, actions you can take, and links to other helpful resources. All of these materials are intended to help you understand what caused the crisis and what can be done to alleviate the suffering.

Just added today is a letter from David Beckmann to President Bush, urging President Bush to act boldly and recommending the establishment of a “Presidential Hunger Initiative.”

David devotes several paragraphs to the importance of achieving a successful conclusion to the Farm Bill, and he recommends the president “intervene personally to close the deal.”

The Farm Bill is currently hung up in Congress. A conference committee appointed by House and Senate leaders is negotiating final changes to the bill. But the negotiations have not gone smoothly. Conference members have asked for several short-term extensions while they work out how to pay for new spending increases, including $10 billion of new spending for nutrition programs.

President Bush has said if Congress can’t come up with a new bill soon he will push for extending existing laws governed by the farm bill until a new administration takes over. That would be a disaster for hungry people in the United States.

“Higher food and fuel prices, unemployment and more constrained credit have increased hunger and poverty in our own country," David writes. "Your administration has indicated you are willing to go along with the $10 billion increase in nutrition funding that Congress wants to include in the farm bill. In view of the changed situation, you should actively support increased funding for food stamps and food banks.”

Rising in Food Prices: Ethiopia’s Response

It is unfortunate that an already food insecure country like Ethiopia now has to cope with the sudden hike in food prices. As I indicated in a previous post, Ethiopians were feeling the price increase for a long time. As long as I can remember, it has been a common household conversation. If my middle class family complains about this price increase, how can those living on urban slums - whose income to feed themselves and their family depends on selling tissues or other commodities for a few cents - survive the current price increase. This concern is also shared by WFP Executive Director Josette Sheeran. She indicated that “the price hike witnessed in Ethiopia has also been challenging urban dwellers all over the world”.

In a recent report, the World Bank noted that governments may pursue any different strategies to address higher food prices. The following chart survey’s some of the policy choices governments have made in response to the crisis. It shows that many countries taken in this sample have reduced taxes, instituted price controls and provided consumer subsidies. Some of these approaches address prices directly, but a more appropriate response may be to increase the purchasing power of the poor through, for example, targeted safety nets or cash transfer programs like those currently used in Brazil, China, Ethiopia, Egypt, Indonesia, Mexico, Mozambique, South Africa, Sri Lanka, and Tunisia.

The Millennium Development Goals -- Is the U.S. at all serious?

The U.S. government has finally published its own self assessment on progress relative to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) – The United States Commitment to the Millennium Development Goals. And even by the standards of government bureaucratic flummery, this is a particularly lame document. One would never know from reading it just what the eight MDGs and their progress indicators are, much less the extent to which the USG is helping countries to meet them. Instead, there is simply a bald assertion that the United States is a strong and consistent supporter of the goals of the Millennium Declaration of the United Nations, followed by a resume of U.S. development strategy and its “four key components:” Country ownership and good governance; a pro-growth economic strategy; investing in people; and addressing failing and fragile states.

And even here, the document is much longer on assertion that evidence of achievement. Contrary to the report’s claim of “strong” U.S. support for the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness, the U.S. government has been one of the laggards when it comes to aligning aid with country priorities, “untying” aid (i.e., eliminating the requirement that aid be spent on donor country goods and services), using recipient country procurement and financial management systems and working through coordinated multi-donor and multilateral institutions. And as for supporting pro-growth economic policy, USAID’s funding for economic growth is at its lowest level in years. The two unambiguously positive features of U.S. aid are its support for AIDS relief (PEPFAR) and malaria, which implicitly address MDG 6, and debt relief (one of the indicators of MDG 8). The Millennium Challenge Act incorporates a number of the Paris Declaration principles, but it is too early to see any real effects in terms of poverty alleviation.

Rising Food Prices: Responding (Appropriately) to Need

My colleagues have written extensively about the need for a long-term response to the sudden and sharp rise in food prices. Investments in agriculture, particularly in technology and infrastructure, are a must to deal with food availability over the long run.

Supporting agriculture is critical, and will pay off in the long-term, but there is also a need for a short-term response. Quite simply, long-term solutions won't put food in the mouths of people today. World Vision Canada recently announced that they are going to have to cut back on their food aid programs because they simply can't afford to buy food at current market prices. The World Food Program has similarly suggested that without a major infusion of cash, they will not be able to meet expected need.

What should the short-term response look like? The U.S. has already released $200 million from the Bill Emerson Humanitarian Trust which signals a needed infusion of basic grains for food aid programs. A newly released Chatham House Briefing Paper argues for the need for moving away from in-kind food aid and toward a cash or voucher type program that would enable people to buy food on local markets.

And then there is the important issue raised by Medecins Sans Frontieres. As I wrote several months ago, it's the quality of the food as much as the quantity that matters in food aid programming. MSF has been a strong advocate for improving the quality of food aid, and this emergency situation should not obscure the fact that quality is an important consideration in all food aid programming. Especially to meet the heightened nutritional needs of young children, simply providing basic staple grains is not enough. Fortified food, even animal source proteins such as such as milk are essential for young children.

It is important that the world act in the short-term to ensure that people do not starve and that this period of sudden increased vulnerability does not leave lasting physical scars on children. Let us not forget, however, that meeting this objective requires not just more food, but more of the RIGHT food.

Thoughts on the global food crisis on Earth Day

It's Earth Day, an annual reminder--it's amazing to me that we need one--that we must protect the environment. This year it falls in the middle of a global food crisis, raising so many questions about our management of the Earth's resources and how we will meet future needs.  The UN's Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that before the food crisis 854 million people faced hunger--a staggering number but a vast improvement from just a decade earlier. The current crisis threatens that progress and could set back development efforts substantially. According to the World Bank and the World Food Program, we face the devastating prospect of an additional 100 million people going hungry because they are unable to afford food at the current high and rising prices. The numbers are unfathomable but there is much that can be done in the short and long term.

With all likelihood that food prices will continue to rise for the foreseeable future (for more on this see here), the international community must begin to think very differently. Rising demand for diversified foods as a result of growing prosperity in parts of the world that have seen a dramatic fall in extreme poverty rates in recent years (most notably, China and India) is to be celebrated. But it also requires us to plan for how we meet this demand and because population growth will continue to put pressure on resources.

Climate change is and will affect food production. Australia, a large wheat producer and exporter, is in the tenth year of a drought. Floods, droughts and changing weather patterns all over the world will make

The "Perfect Metaphor?"

The “perfect storm” was certainly the metaphor of choice at last week’s Food Aid Convention to describe the increased demand, high fuel prices and drought that have combined to drive global food prices to unprecedented highs, further impoverish the very poor and hungry and jeopardize prospects for achievement of the Millennium Development Goals. Its repetitive use, however, can serve to obfuscate as well as enlighten. A storm – even a “perfect” one -- is a short-term phenomenon. Almost everyone agreed that what we’re facing is a long-term problem – a prolonged season of bad weather. Consumer demand in China and India will continue to grow, and high petroleum prices will continue to encourage use of farm output for biofuels. Climate change will render production more variable, increasing market instability.

What to do? Everyone also agreed that a combination of short and long-term responses is needed: we need to meet immediate food needs while pursuing other reforms (in trade, economic policies) and increasing investment in agricultural productivity that will serve to encourage increased supply. But consensus begins to evaporate when it comes to specific remedies. All do agree on the need for more money for food, given the steep and continuing increase in food costs. But should that aid be cash or in-kind? Should Congress maintain a “safebox” for developmental food aid programs designed to address the longer term problem of food production, or commit all available resources to meeting the immediate needs? Is the administration’s continued effort to get authorization of local and regional procurement a timely and appropriate response to the crises, or a divisive diversion that will end up undermining political support for food aid? What is the most appropriate, effective means of encouraging increased production in chronically food insecure countries? All of these questions left on the table are reflective of the different interests and agendas in play around what should be a straightforward program – assuring that people receive adequate nutrition on a sustainable basis.

Hunger is Back in Plain View

I do the grocery shopping in my family and lately I can’t help thinking about what's in the basket before I get to the check out line. We all know how the price of food has been rising. So far it hasn’t really changed what I'm eating. I’m fortunate in that way, and I’m growing more aware of it each day.

We also know this is a bigger issue than what' s in our own grocery baskets. The cost of food has shot up dramatically all around the world. In some places the consequences are grave. Food riots have occurred in dozens of countries as people who were already living on the edge are pushed that much closer to starvation. It’s quite alarming and something we’re not used to thinking about, the possibility of societies descending into chaos, governments falling because of food prices and hunger. I don’t think this is an exaggeration. The prime minister of Haiti was sacked last week after government forces turned their weapons on protestors and killed some of them.

Here in the United States, the effects of rising food prices on the poor have not been this dramatic, but many people are feeling more than just a little pinched. I don’t often get to talk with people in the emergency food network, but at a meeting I attended last month where lots of food bank staff was there from all across the country, they were saying their shelves are emptying faster than they can restock them, and they’re certainly calling this a crisis. They rely on private donations and government support and neither is keeping up with demand, so people who need food are getting turned away because there isn’t enough.

World Scientists’ New Proposal to Feed the Poor

The International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD) launched their report, April 15. Four hundred experts on agriculture and development worked on the report which outlines ways in which “agriculture can feed a world with an exploding population and a changing climate, while reducing poverty and environmental degradation”

The report is a result of a four year assessment involving scientists from more than 100 countries. It engaged non-governmental organizations, consumer groups and the private sector. The central question of IAASTD is core to what Bread for the World’s mission. The report is extensive (it is more than 2000 pages) and looks at the potential of agricultural knowledge and science and technology to reduce hunger and poverty, improve rural livelihoods, and achieve environmentally, socially and economically sustainable development in poor countries.

The report’s release coincides with heightened concern over rising world food prices and the IAASTD report responds to this growing concern by arguing that global farming needs to change radically to avoid future food shortages.

The report advances several important arguments. Among them:

• In the past agricultural science has emphasized increasing agricultural production at the expense of environmental, social or economic sustainability.
• Trade liberalization in agriculture has not benefited all countries that have opened their markets. This is because some developing countries which have liberalized agricultural trade have not made improvements in basic infrastructure and institutions that are necessary to relieve hunger and poverty, and improve and protect the environment. And;
• Agricultural research and development efforts have focused on only a handful of crops without advancing knowledge or improvements in other staples foods, some of which are important to Africa, for instance tef in Ethiopia. In advancing agricultural science in similar countries, the IAASTD report acknowledges that “Genetic erosion is of particular concern in sub-Saharan Africa because many countries have a wide range of crops and livestock species that are considered relatively unimportant on a global level but are important as local staples.

The report also stresses that “we have little time to lose if we are to change course. Continuing with current trends would exhaust our resources and put our children’s future in jeopardy.”

Counting All the Children

Because the federal government wants to help families with children, it created something called the Child Tax Credit (CTC). Families with children file for the CTC on their income tax statement. The CTC provides a maximum benefit of $1,000 per child—but not all families get it. Those with incomes below $11,750 can’t qualify. Below $11,750, the family doesn’t have enough taxable income. They get nothing—$0 whether they have one child, two children or many more children.

Recently, I blogged about the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), the program Ronald Reagan called the best pro-family, pro-work, anti-poverty program ever created. Let’s be equally blunt about the CTC—this may be the worst anti-poor, anti-family program ever created. "Hey, mom and dad, those kids of yours may mean the world to you, but as far as the taxman is concerned, let’s just say they're pets. Forget about the diapers that need changing, the shoes and other clothes, the visits to the pediatrician, the food those kids eat—mere technicalities. Mom and dad, the taxman wants to ignore all that because you don’t make enough money." 

Legal Empowerment and Poverty Reduction

This week the Center for American Progress and Georgetown Law Center organized an event titled “The future of Human Rights.” In general, the theme of the conference was on the importance of “soft power” to improve the credibility of United States and creating a better world. There was a consensus among most of the participants and the presenters that more attention should be given to development assistance, particularly to secure human rights, improve education and provide assistance to prevent and help those affected by diseases in disadvantaged and underprivileged areas and groups.

The event was filled with high profile presenters and speakers including former Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright. It was my first time seeing her in person and I found her speech compelling. Her speech started with similar tone with what was reflected in the opening video which reflects how United States favorability rating have declined in the past decade and how it can be changed. Additionally, she outlined what the next president should do in order to restore the credibility of the United States, boycotting the Olympics was not among her recommendations. She did offer more presence and higher level involvement in the international development is key for United States to increase its credibility. She also outlined the three access of evil as ignorance, poverty and disease.