Food for Thought

Not many people realize how little foreign assistance, comparatively, the U.S. government provides to poor farmers struggling to feed themselves and their families.

This year President Obama asked Congress to provide about $1.2 billion for international agricultural development.  And it looks like Congress is getting ready to short change that request significantly.

$1.2 billion dollars is a lot of money.  But it is also a lot less than the U.S. provided for international agriculture in the 1980s. According to Roger Thurow, co-author of the book Enough: Why the World’s Poorest Starve in an Age of Plenty, boosting agriculture production in the developing world hasn?t been a priority for a long time.  He calls it “one of the gobsmacking outrages of international politics.”

Senator Lugar (R-IN) just told the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations that, in Africa, which has severe food problems, donor aid to the farm sector plunged from $4.1 billion in 1989 to just $1.9 billion in 2006.

Our investments in food production are paltry when compared to the $63 billion (0ver six years) that the administration wants to fight HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis around the world.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying the U.S. shouldn’t provide significant resources to fight the preventable and curable diseases that annually kill millions.  We just need to find a way to do both.

I  contracted full onset pulmonary TB when I was a child in the Philippines.  Misdiagnosed at first, I was in bad shape by the time I made it to a state-of-the-art medical facility where I was eventually cured.  I am grateful for the medical care I received and don’t begrudge for a minute the funding we provide to fight these diseases.

But I also know that I had another advantage in my fight against tuberculosis – I was well nourished and otherwise healthy before I contracted the disease.  So when my body had to fight the TB pathogens, it was ready to do so.  It sustained me for the many weeks before I received proper treatment and, in the end, allowed me to make a full recovery with no permanent damage to my lungs or immune system.

Undernourished children do not have the same advantage. The money we provide to fight disease would be more effective if we also championed the causes of global hunger and food security.  Over 1 billion people in the world suffer from chronic hunger – and the vast majority of these people are farmers.  I hope Congress will start down the right path in FY2011 and meet the President’s request for international agricultural development.