Exodus From Hunger (17 page)

Bread and now the Alliance to End Hunger have helped many community coalitions against hunger. We also pushed Congress to approve the Hunger-Free Communities Program, which is now funding similar work on a larger scale.

The Obama campaign statement was also clear that ending child hunger won’t be achieved by food assistance alone. We need complementary measures to reduce poverty, notably tax credits for poor working families. As a candidate, Obama supported tax credits and also outlined a broader strategy to cut poverty in half.

Bread for the World’s 2010 Offering of Letters built popular support for tax credits that help low-income working families. These include the Earned Income Tax Credit, which boosts wages for the working poor, and the Child Tax Credit. These credits increase the refunds that low-income workers get on their tax returns. Tax credits are the government’s largest antipoverty programs. The Earned Income Tax Credit alone lifts 7 million people—half of them children—out of poverty.
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As the political parties debate tax regulations, especially tax benefits for affluent people, advocates for hungry children need to rally around these tax provisions that help poor working families. Bread for the World has repeatedly invited churches across the country to help us strengthen the national nutrition programs, and church people also need to understand that better wages for low-income workers are important to hungry children.

We want President Obama to be explicit about his continuing commitment to the goal of ending child hunger. His rhetoric about the struggling middle class may have broader political appeal. But a big majority of U.S. voters say we should try to end child hunger in this country, and we aren’t going to achieve that goal unless the president is explicit about what we are trying to do. Michelle Obama is encouraging good nutrition for children, and we would like her to be more forceful in talking about children who don’t get enough to eat.

We urgently need to moderate child hunger in this time of high unemployment. Once the economy expands again, we could make rapid strides toward ending child hunger in America.

President Obama made this promise in his inaugural address: “To the people of poor nations, we pledge to work alongside you to make your farms flourish and let clean waters flow; to nourish starved bodies and feed hungry minds.”

I was thrilled—but even more thrilled when the president and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton later announced they were indeed launching a global hunger and food security initiative. Bread for the World immediately convened a coalition to help shape and support it. By the second year of the administration, Congress had doubled U.S. funding for agricultural development assistance, and the administration was proposing further increases.

An increase in aid to develop agriculture in poor countries is long overdue. Developing-country governments have underinvested in agriculture, mainly because people in urban areas tend to be stronger politically. International aid agencies have also underinvested in agriculture. Rural roads have been neglected, for example. Fertilizer prices are high, and the prices farmers get for their crops are low, because it is expensive—or impossible—to run trucks into many parts of rural Africa.

Grain prices have moderated since they spiked in 2008, but they are expected to remain high relative to recent decades. High grain prices have increased hunger among poor consumers, but also opened new opportunities for investment in agriculture. Many of the poorest people in the world are farmers. With quality seeds, fertilizers, and better rural roads, poor farmers can increase their production, raise their own incomes, and help moderate prices for poor people who have to buy food.

The U.S. world hunger initiative, called Feed the Future, is investing in the agricultural productivity of poor farmers. Our government is responding to plans developed by poor-country governments. U.S. officials are also promoting consultations with farmers’ associations, women’s groups, and religious bodies to help make the initiative responsive to local realities and encourage coordination among all the actors involved.

Partly in response to Bread for the World advocacy, the U.S. initiative includes a specific focus on undernourished children. A major international study of nutrition programs published in
The Lancet
, a British medical journal, in 2008 has given us new clarity about what interventions are most effective in reducing death and disease due to undernutrition. The lessons are these: focus on babies and pregnant women, promote healthy family habits (such as breast-feeding and hand washing), get special foods to severely undernourished children, and add a few key vitamins and minerals to foods that everybody eats (iodine in salt, for example, and Vitamin A in cooking oil).

Rather than go it alone, the United States is also encouraging other governments and the private sector to ramp up their investment in poor-country agriculture. At his first G8 Summit in July 2009, President Obama convinced the other major industrial countries to promise major increases in their assistance to poor-country agriculture. I attended a heartening meeting at the United Nations in September 2009, cochaired by Secretary Clinton and U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. The leaders of many nations talked about their participation in this global mobilization to strengthen food security and reduce world hunger. It was great to see our government using its international influence for good.

In April 2010 I attended a prayer breakfast at the White House and spoke briefly with President Obama. I thanked him for the commitments he has made to hungry and poor people in our country and worldwide. He replied, “We’re serious about the global food security initiative, and we intend to mobilize serious money behind it.” The United States has never before led an international effort to reduce world hunger.

This U.S.-led effort to reduce world hunger will require sustained attention from concerned citizens. We must insist that Congress funds it, and legislation may be needed to make it a long-term, bipartisan commitment. We will also need to monitor that the initiative is effectively administered.

President Obama also wants the United States to support achievement of the Millennium Development Goals. He has promised to double development assistance (adding $25 billion) and create a transformed development aid agency.

Because of alarm about the U.S. fiscal deficit, Congress won’t approve continuing increases in development assistance unless some of their constituents insist on it. Poor people themselves and the governments of poor countries will continue to provide most of the resources needed for their development. Yet aid from the United States and other industrialized countries is an important supplement, especially now, when most developing countries are struggling with global economic problems.

Development assistance should be focused on moving forward toward the Millennium Development Goals. As 2015 approaches, the United States should also provide leadership for international agreement on an updated version of the Millennium Goals—perhaps looking forward to 2025.

At the international climate-change summit in 2009 the United States offered to provide substantial additional assistance to help developing countries do their part to slow climate change (reducing pollution and protecting tropical forests) and to deal with its impact. Climate change is already causing droughts: the International Panel on Climate Change estimates that 75 to 250 million Africans will be exposed to increased water stress by 2020. Less water will be available in the heavily populated river basins of Asia by 2050. In coastal areas, resources are needed to deal with increased flooding. Climate change further adds to the need for investment in agriculture. Without investments to help farmers adapt, yields from rain-fed agriculture in some African countries will drop by half by 2020.
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Bread for the World is also engaged in a major, multi-year campaign to reform U.S. foreign assistance. We want to make sure that aid dollars are used well, and that more of our aid gets to people who really need help. I cochair a coalition of think tanks, advocacy groups, and charities that work in developing countries. It is called the Modernizing Foreign Assistance Network. The Hewlett Foundation has provided important support for this cause.

Bread for the World and our coalition partners have urged that the United States put more emphasis in its foreign policy on poverty reduction and development. The Obama administration has indeed put more emphasis on development, but U.S. diplomatic and military purposes still too often compromise development programs. Such compromise is clear from the distribution of U.S. assistance to developing countries. Most U.S. aid goes to Iraq, Afghanistan, Egypt, Colombia, Jordan, Ethiopia, and Nigeria—all countries that are important to U.S. interests. Other developing countries get tiny slivers of the aid pie.
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Figure 7
Distribution of U.S. Aid by Country, 2004–2008

Source: William Easterly and Laura Freschi, based on data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development

Bread for the World wants to see resources shifted to poverty-focused development assistance, which doesn’t include most of the U.S. aid that goes to Afghanistan and Iraq or other politically motivated aid. In other ways, too, we want our government to put more emphasis on development, especially the reduction of poverty.

Bread for the World and its coalition are also pushing for a strong international development agency within the U.S. government. At present, twelve departments, twenty-five different agencies, and nearly sixty government offices maintain foreign assistance programs. The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), our government’s lead development agency, needs to be revitalized. It should focus on development, with some separation from the diplomatic goals of the State Department. USAID’s administrator should be invited into the highest councils of government, a voice for hungry and poor people around the world when our government is thinking about other issues, such as trade. Over time, other U.S. aid programs should be combined with USAID into one strong agency.