emergency food assistance. But, as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pointed out in a visit to the region, the country
was able to cope far better than it had during the last such
drought, in 2002-2003.
One reason is that the Ethiopian government has used
Making Progress That Will Last
World Bank/Arne Hoel
Norman Borlaug, an American scientist, has been called
“the father of the Green Revolution,” an enormously successful effort in the 1960s to increase the yields of staple crops.
In many Asian and Latin American countries, new highyield seeds and techniques brought a tripling of production.
The proportion of people in Asia who were malnourished fell
from 51 percent in 1960 to 16 percent in 2000.
Success may have brought complacency, however. In the
years that followed, the United States and other developed
countries cut back sharply on investments in global agriculture. Many developing countries followed suit as attention shifted to manufacturing, extraction of resources such
as minerals, or other sectors thought to be faster, more direct
paths to development. For decades, agriculture was largely
neglected.
Fortunately, in the past few years, momentum has been
building to re-focus attention on agriculture and food security. Many African countries committed to spending 10 percent of their budget on agriculture. Then came the food price
crisis of 2008, when the cost of staple grains such as rice,
wheat, and maize rose suddenly and dramatically. Because
poor families spend up to 80 percent of their entire income
on food, their options are limited. When prices spiked, they
had to sacrific e the quantity and quality of food they ate.
The crisis pushed an additional 100 million people into
hunger—and pushed developed countries to act. In 2009,
the United States proposed a new global food security initiative. A group of eight developed countries pledged to
contribute a total of $20 billion in new funding to strengthen agriculture over three years.
Another sign of hope is the effort to improve development assistance to make it more effective. The United
States has been placing increasing emphasis on country-led
development plans and long-term solutions. The Bush administration established the Millennium Challenge Corporation, which makes multi-year grants to poor countries
committed to reducing hunger to carry out projects they
develop through consultations with their citizens. Participating countries frequently choose to concentrate on their
agriculture sectors. A key Obama administration effort is
Feed the Future, which seeks to improve agriculture in poor
countries by considering solutions all along the way—from
better soil quality to accessible markets for crops. Feed the
Future is the American component of the new global food
security initiative.
Two Feed the Future partner countries are Ethiopia
and Kenya. There is no doubt that people in Ethiopia suffered greatly during the 2011 drought that caused famine
in neighboring Somalia. Up to 5 million people needed
This woman in the Tigray region of Ethiopia received aid and
training for three years. As a result, she has gone from being
one of the most impoverished people in her community to one of
the wealthiest. She is now teaching other farmers to accomplish
what she has done.
its own resources and development assistance to help establish a “safety net” of nutrition programs for people at risk
of hunger. Another is that Feed the Future is supporting
programs to improve agriculture even in difficult environments. For example, the Tigray region in northern Ethiopia
suffers from severe soil erosion and frequent droughts. A
U.S.-funded program to help small farmers improve their
irrigation and horticultural techniques is beginning to pay
off. Girma, a 50-year-old farmer, is one of those who built
hillside terraces to prevent erosion and dug wells to help
irrigate crops.
It has brought better harvests. “Three years ago, there
was not enough water for drinking or irrigation,” Girma
said. “Now with our conservation methods… I can buy cereals for my family.”
Similarly, Leonard and Marion Manga, who live in central Kenya, participate in the U.S.-funded Kilimo Hai (Swahili for Living Earth) program, where farmers are learning
techniques for trapping rainwater and beginning to work
with seeds that are treated to help control pests.
The United States can be proud of our history of successful programs to reduce global hunger, poverty, and disease,
carried out under widely different circumstances under
presidents from both political parties, and our recent efforts
to make development assistance more effective to meet new
challenges and make lasting progress. In these ways, we are
combining our concern for others with our solid common
sense to create solutions.
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