WASHINGTON,
Oct. 7, 2015 - The future of Feed the Future is looking a bit murky. The Obama
administration is eager to get Congress to write the $1 billion-a-year
initiative into law to ensure that it has a future under the next president.
But a House-passed authorization bill stalled in the Senate at the end of the
last Congress and hasn’t moved through
either chamber so far this year.
The
House Foreign Affairs Committee, which has jurisdiction over Feed the Future
since it is run out of the U.S. Agency for International Development, approved a new version of the bill in April, the Global Food
Security Act (HR 1567). But the measure has never reached the House floor.
Meanwhile, commodity groups and House Agriculture Chairman Mike Conaway,
R-Texas, want to see the bill revised to ensure that the Agriculture
Department, the private sector and the land grant universities all have a role
in Feed the Future that is written into law.
Doing that would “make sure
that production agriculture and the systems associated with processing and
growing food” have a voice
in the program, Conaway tells Agri-Pulse.
“We’re not ready to sign off” on the bill, he said.
Some
farm groups, including the American Farm Bureau Federation, and development
organizations sent letters to Capitol Hill in June and again last month making
their case for ensuring that USAID has to coordinate with USDA and the
agriculture sector.
“U.S. farmers and
ranchers have decades of expertise across a broad range of agricultural
production systems, along with a variety of technologies that can advance best
practices,” the June letter said. “U.S. agribusiness can play an
important role in strengthening markets, developing sustainable supply chains,
and supporting knowledge transfer efforts.”
The
September letter calls for “establishing
platforms for regular consultation and collaboration between government
agencies and the private sector, including but not limited to agricultural
commodity and farmer organizations and agribusinesses.”
The
letters were also signed by former Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman and
former Nebraska congressman Douglas Bereuter, who are co-chairs of the Global
Agriculture Development Initiative of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs.
Commodity groups like the way that the Obama
administration has coordinated with USDA and the private sector and want to
make sure that continues. As it stands now, “there’s no real understanding, no
real delineation or requirement, that the next USAID administrator” continue coordinating
with USDA,” said Hanna Abou-El-Seoud, who lobbies on food-aid issues for the
American Soybean Association.
Feed
the Future was first developed during the George W. Bush administration and was
formalized under President Obama as part of a 2009 commitment to address food
insecurity in poor countries. But the White House never sought congressional
authorization for the initiative until last year, which could leave the effort
in limbo when Obama leaves office.
Eric
Munoz, who follows the issue for Oxfam America, a group that has evaluated Feed
the Future projects and given the initiative relatively high marks, said it’s “unfortunate that
this bill was introduced in March, and committees are still in the process of gathering
input. I do believe that this has slowed passage of the bill. However, there is
an opportunity to make sure (the agriculture community’s) ideas are put
forward for consideration by Congress as this bill moves forward to become law.”
The
House Foreign Affairs Committee is holding a hearing on food security Wednesday and
another on food aid reform. The food security hearing will focus on the need to
provide adequate nutrition to children. The witnesses will include Roger
Thurow, a former Wall Street Journal reporter who has been tracking Feed the
Future nutrition projects in Guatemala and elsewhere.
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