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- 10/08/08: Remarks by Henrietta Fore, USAID Administrator and Director of U.S. Foreign Assistance at The President's Freedom Agenda
- 10/01/08: Remarks by Henrietta H. Fore, Administrator, USAID and Director of U.S. Foreign Assistance, at the Ceremony Marking the Full Operational Capacity of Africa Command (AFRICOM)
- 09/25/08: Remarks by Henrietta H. Fore, Administrator, USAID and Director of U.S. Foreign Assistance, at 2008 Millennium Development Goal Malaria Summit, New York - "U.S. Leadership in the Fight Against Malaria"
- 09/22/08: Remarks by Henrietta H. Fore, Administrator, USAID and Director of U.S. Foreign Assistance, at the White House Symposium on Advancing Global Literacy - "U.S. Commitment to Advancing Global Literacy"
- 09/17/08: Remarks by Henrietta H. Fore, Administrator, USAID and Director of U.S. Foreign Assistance, at the "Doing Business: Five Years of Reform" Event- "Building Business, Restoring Relationships"
- 09/16/08: Remarks by Lisa Chiles, USAID Counselor, at the
USAID Symposium on School-Related, Gender-Based Violence
 RSS Feed for Recent USAID Speeches and Testimony
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Remarks by Peter D. Bell
President and CEO, CARE
Reflections on the Future of Food Assistance
50th Anniversary of Food for Peace
Washington, D.C.
July 21, 2004
Good afternoon. I am pleased to join you in celebrating the 50th anniversary of the act that launched the Food for Peace program; to salute people past and present who have dedicated themselves to ending hunger; and to discuss with you how we might best go forward in this new millennium. I am honored to be with so many distinguished members of the Administration, Members of Congress and their staffs, Ambassadors, colleagues and friends. I congratulate Andrew Natsios, Roger Winter, Lauren Landis, and all of you at USAID for making this day of celebration and reflection possible.
I appreciate the opportunity to present CARE's perspectives on this long-standing public-private partnership involving the American people. CARE was conceived in 1945 as a public-private partnership to respond to the threat of famine in the war-torn countries of Europe. In the ensuing years, we delivered more than 100 million food packages to people in need - without distinction as to whether they had been friends or enemies. The CARE package became an American icon - a symbol of American generosity and caring.
CARE has been a partner of the Food for Peace program since its beginning in 1954. Over the past 50 years, we have taken America's bounty and channeled it as donated food assistance. CARE, alone, has reached more than 190 million people, using more than 18 million tons of food from Food for Peace valued at over 7 billion dollars. We were there in the Biafran famine of the 60s, the cyclones in Bangladesh in the 70s and 80s, the famines in Ethiopia in the 80s, the crises in Ethiopia, Rwanda, Somalia, and Sudan in the 90s, and the crisis in Southern Africa at the start of this millennium. Sadly, we are still in Sudan today, and now, for the first time, in Darfur.
From these experiences, we have learned that food resources, while extremely valuable, are not enough by themselves to improve people's lives. To advance food security and end hunger over the long term, we need to look beyond the direct distribution of food. Ultimately, we must commit ourselves to eliminating poverty.
Today, too many nations - most of them in sub-Saharan Africa - still lack food supplies sufficient to meet basic, minimum food consumption standards for their populations.
All of us should be concerned that decisions affecting food aid are being negotiated in the Doha Round of the WTO. I doubt that the WTO is the proper forum to discuss food aid explicitly intended to meet humanitarian and food security objectives for hungry and impoverished people.
Food aid is an important resource. When food availability from local production and commercial imports is insufficient, food aid fills an absolutely crucial gap and contributes to food security. When food aid is used inappropriately or managed poorly, however, it can impede agricultural production and export objectives in developing countries. Over the years, we have built safeguards to assess market conditions and developing country needs, and to prevent harmful unintended consequences.
The world has changed dramatically over the past 50 years. The Cold War has been succeeded by the war against terrorism. We have seen, for example, the spread of globalization, information technology, bio-technology, population migration, urbanization, and the HIV/AIDS pandemic. Some of the changes in the world directly affect food assistance. In 1954, the U.S. government held surpluses of food; today, it does not. Impressively, India, once the largest beneficiary of Food for Peace, has become self-sufficient in grains. The spread of HIV/AIDS in Africa has set back agricultural production in more than 20 countries.
In an increasingly complex and interconnected world, CARE is striving to use food aid more effectively.
Over the coming year, we will continue to ask ourselves how best to use this critical resource. I would like to share with you some of the questions we will be asking ourselves. These questions can be difficult, and even contentious. But if we are to keep our focus on reducing hunger, food insecurity and poverty, and on achieving the Millennium Development Goals, we must grapple with them.
I would highlight four sets of issues:
First, should US Government Food Aid Programs be consolidated?
Could consolidating the US government's six different food aid programs into a single program under one agency result in a more streamlined and effective food aid system? If so, the realized savings from this consolidation could be used to more directly address poverty and food insecurity.
Second, are there quicker and more flexible responses to emergencies?
When there is an outright shortfall in food availability, and when markets do not function adequately, food aid has an undeniably important impact in emergencies. It saves lives! But shipping food across oceans can be expensive and slow. With all our technological advances over the past 50 years and the rise in transportation costs, there is still no rapid, cost-effective way to get tons of food from here to Darfur.
What is the potential for procuring and transporting commodities from areas closer to the targeted populations in need? This flexibility, especially in the early months of an emergency, may help organizations to more rapidly distribute food and other resources.
Third, what is the future of monetization?
Monetized food is a valuable, flexible resource. With cash resources severely limited, PVOs have converted an increasing share of food aid into cash. Through monetization, PVOs have improved the nutritional status of children, increased agricultural productivity, helped develop local markets, and stabilized prices.
At times, monetization has also raised concerns it could discourage food production by farmers in recipient countries or displace commercial sales.
Under what circumstances is monetization the preferred mechanism to use? In which cases is it better to provide cash directly to augment the provision of food resources and to meet food security objectives?
Finally, we must ask ourselves: what is the appropriate use of food resources?
Currently, we use food aid in a broad range of programs. We use it to improve agricultural production, develop infrastructure, improve health and education, respond to HIV/AIDS, and achieve other desirable goals. As I have already suggested, food aid is ideally suited to address acute food insecurity in humanitarian emergencies. But it is often the only resource available to address food insecurity of any kind.
We need to be on the alert for those situations when its use may increase the risk of harmful unintended consequences.
We need to ask:
- How are resources to be used in conditions of chronic food insecurity?
- Is food aid the appropriate resource to use only when local markets are not functioning well or there is insufficient food available nearby to fill the gaps?
- How can food aid be used as part of a social safety net program?
- How can we make the best use of food resources to address the nutritional and food security problems accompanying HIV/AIDS?
- At what point is food aid no longer the most appropriate food resource to use?
These questions have important implications for all of us. They challenge ways we now work. We may resolve some of the questions quickly. Others will take considerable time. However, we must begin to seek answers. I have complete faith in our ability, working together, to find answers.
CARE and our PVO colleagues continue to be proud of the accomplishments of this more than 50-year public-private partnership. The true measure of our partnership has been our ability to build on past efforts, and to create new solutions to today's problems.
We still have not won the war on hunger. To do so, our public-private partnership must remain committed to building on our experience and finding more effective ways to combat hunger and malnutrition.
All of us know that winning the fight against global poverty, hunger, and malnutrition will not be easy. Good intentions alone will not be sufficient.
We must push ourselves to identify policy and operational changes to make food aid a more effective tool for reducing poverty and hunger. We must not shy away from those changes.
Every day, poor communities around the world show their commitment to lifting themselves out of poverty, despite hardship and adversity. The challenge for all of us is to draw from their strength and provide the most effective support, using food aid and other resources to allow every man, woman and child to realize his or her full potential.
I look forward with excitement to our continued partnership.
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