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96–908PDF 2015

FOOD SECURITY AND NUTRITION

PROGRAMS IN AFRICA

HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON AFRICA, GLOBAL HEALTH, 

GLOBAL HUMAN RIGHTS, AND 

INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED FOURTEENTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

OCTOBER 7, 2015

Serial No. 114–104

Printed for the use of the Committee on Foreign Affairs

(

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.foreignaffairs.house.gov/ or

http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/

(II)

COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS 

EDWARD R. ROYCE, California, Chairman 

CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey 

ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida 

DANA ROHRABACHER, California 

STEVE CHABOT, Ohio 

JOE WILSON, South Carolina 

MICHAEL T. MCCAUL, Texas 

TED POE, Texas 

MATT SALMON, Arizona 

DARRELL E. ISSA, California 

TOM MARINO, Pennsylvania 

JEFF DUNCAN, South Carolina 

MO BROOKS, Alabama 

PAUL COOK, California 

RANDY K. WEBER SR., Texas 

SCOTT PERRY, Pennsylvania 

RON DESANTIS, Florida 

MARK MEADOWS, North Carolina 

TED S. YOHO, Florida 

CURT CLAWSON, Florida 

SCOTT DESJARLAIS, Tennessee 

REID J. RIBBLE, Wisconsin 

DAVID A. TROTT, Michigan 

LEE M. ZELDIN, New York 

DANIEL DONOVAN, New York 

ELIOT L. ENGEL, New York 

BRAD SHERMAN, California 

GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York 

ALBIO SIRES, New Jersey 

GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia 

THEODORE E. DEUTCH, Florida 

BRIAN HIGGINS, New York 

KAREN BASS, California 

WILLIAM KEATING, Massachusetts 

DAVID CICILLINE, Rhode Island 

ALAN GRAYSON, Florida 

AMI BERA, California 

ALAN S. LOWENTHAL, California 

GRACE MENG, New York 

LOIS FRANKEL, Florida 

TULSI GABBARD, Hawaii 

JOAQUIN CASTRO, Texas 

ROBIN L. KELLY, Illinois 

BRENDAN F. BOYLE, Pennsylvania

AMY PORTER, Chief of Staff THOMAS SHEEHY, Staff Director

JASON STEINBAUM, Democratic Staff Director 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON AFRICA, GLOBAL HEALTH, GLOBAL HUMAN RIGHTS, AND

INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS

CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey, Chairman 

MARK MEADOWS, North Carolina 

CURT CLAWSON, Florida 

SCOTT DESJARLAIS, Tennessee 

DANIEL DONOVAN, New York 

KAREN BASS, California 

DAVID CICILLINE, Rhode Island 

AMI BERA, California 

(III)

C O N T E N T S 

Page

WITNESSES 

Carolyn Woo, Ph.D., president and chief executive officer, Catholic Relief 

Services ................................................................................................................. 3

Mr. David Hong, director of global policy, One Acre Fund .................................. 14

Mr. Roger Thurow, senior fellow, Global Agriculture and Food, The Chicago 

Council on Global Affairs .................................................................................... 18

LETTERS, STATEMENTS, ETC., SUBMITTED FOR THE HEARING 

Carolyn Woo, Ph.D.: Prepared statement .............................................................. 6

Mr. David Hong: Prepared statement .................................................................... 16

Mr. Roger Thurow: Prepared statement ................................................................ 21

APPENDIX 

Hearing notice .......................................................................................................... 38

Hearing minutes ...................................................................................................... 39

The Honorable Christopher H. Smith, a Representative in Congress from 

the State of New Jersey, and chairman, Subcommittee on Africa, Global 

Health, Global Human Rights, and International Organizations: Statement 

of Kimberly Flowers ............................................................................................. 40

(1)

FOOD SECURITY AND NUTRITION PROGRAMS 

IN AFRICA 

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 7, 2015

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

SUBCOMMITTEE ON AFRICA, GLOBAL HEALTH, GLOBAL HUMAN RIGHTS, AND INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS,

COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS,

Washington, DC. 

The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 12:45 p.m., in room 

2255 Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Christopher H. Smith 

(chairman of the subcommittee) presiding. 

Mr. SMITH. The subcommittee will come to order, and good afternoon to everyone. We are here today to address the topic of food 

security and nutrition programs in Africa. As I think many of you 

know, I am sponsor of the Global Food Security Act of 2015, a bill 

which in its prior iteration passed the House, unfortunately it 

didn’t gain support in the Senate although we are hopeful that that 

is something that will happen in the near future. 

The Global Food Security Act, H.R. 1567, will help provide a 

long-term strategy to combat global hunger by authorizing the existing national food security initiative coordinated by USAID, commonly known as Feed the Future. It is a bill with broad bipartisan 

support including the original co-sponsorship of my friend and colleague, Ranking Member Karen Bass, who will be here momentarily, as well as Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce 

and Ranking Member Eliot Engel. 

I am very happy that we will be joined shortly by the chief 

Democratic co-sponsor, Betty McCollum, with whom we have 

worked very closely on this legislation. I want to thank Betty as 

well as her dedicated staffer Jenn Holcomb for their hard work and 

dedication in promoting food security. This is truly a bipartisan collaboration that will result in enactment sooner rather than later of 

this legislation. 

I also want to acknowledge that other subcommittee members 

have joined us as co-sponsors, Mark Meadows, Dr. Scott 

DesJarlais, and David Cicilline. 

Investing in global food security is a policy that is both pennywise and pound-wise. This program strengthens nutrition, especially for children during the critical first 1,000-day window, from 

conception to the child’s second birthday. Indeed, there is perhaps 

no wiser investment that we could make in the human person than 

to concentrate on ensuring that sufficient nutrition and health assistance is given during those first 1,000 days of life—1,000 days 

2

that begin with conception and continues through pregnancy, includes the milestone of birth, and then finishes at roughly the second birthday of that child. Children who do not receive adequate 

nutrition in utero are more likely to experience lifelong cognitive 

and physical deficiencies such as stunting. UNICEF estimates the 

one in four children worldwide is stunted due to lack of adequate 

nutrition. 

By addressing nutrition during the first 1,000 days of life we can 

help lay the groundwork for the next 25,000 or 30,000 days of life, 

or whatever number our Creator has allotted, and ensure that they 

can be filled with good health, a good strong immune system, and 

all the other positives that accrue from that investment. 

As our three witnesses will attest today, enhancing food security 

is also transformational in the lives of millions of smallholder farmers throughout the world, particularly women. Feed the Future 

teaches small-scale farmers techniques to increase agricultural 

yield, thereby helping nations achieve food security, something that 

is in the national security interest of the United States. Of course, 

we are our brothers’ and sisters’ keepers and it is important that 

we be backing this and having their backs in ensuring that this becomes a reality. 

It is also economical in the long run and should lead to a reduction in the need for emergency food aid. The approach we have 

taken in the Global Food Security Act is fiscally disciplined, authorizing an amount for 2016. USAID nevertheless can do more 

with less by leveraging our aid with that of other countries, the private sector, NGOs, and especially faith-based organizations whose 

great work on the ground in so many different countries impacts 

so many lives. We will hear from Dr. Woo from Catholic Relief 

Services, momentarily, of the good work that her organization and 

other like-minded groups do throughout the world. 

By statutorily authorizing this existing program which had its 

roots in the Bush administration and was formalized by President 

Obama, we are also increasing our oversight by requiring the administration to report to Congress. Political will is absolutely essential in enacting a global food security policy that will continue 

and hopefully expand. 

Some things that I hope this hearing will bring to light are that 

such interventions in the lives of so many people in Africa, particularly in the first 1,000 days of life, are not only cost effective but 

morally imperative. Without objection, I will be adding testimony 

from Kimberly Flowers who is director of the Global Food Security 

Project for CSIS. 

And she points out in her statement that Tanzania has received 

more Feed the Future funding than any other focus country in the 

world, and then she just pours it on with what has actually happened. 

In 2014 alone, she points out, Feed the Future supported farmers, increased the value of their agricultural sales by more than 

$19 million. One hundred thousand producers reported that they 

are using new technologies and management practices for the first 

time, significantly improving production and increasing incomes. 

Feed the Future leveraged, she goes on, nearly $152 million in 

private investments in food and agriculture. During the same time, 

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the U.S. Government reached 1.4 million with nutrition services to 

improve maternal and child health focusing on exclusive 

breastfeeding and complementary feeding, dietary diversity, and 

the uptake of zinc, iron, and other targeted micronutrient supplementation. This is a success story that obviously needs to be 

replicated and Tanzania is certainly a good showcase country 

where it has already done quite well. Let me just now introduce 

our panelists. And again, as members come I will recognize them 

for any opening comments that they might have. We will begin 

with Dr. Carolyn Woo who is president and CEO of Catholic Relief 

Services, the official international humanitarian agency of the 

Catholic community in the United States. Before coming to CRS in 

2012, Dr. Woo served as dean of the University of Notre Dame’s 

Mendoza College of Business and as an associate executive vice 

president at Purdue University. Dr. Woo was one of five presenters 

in Rome at the release of Pope Francis’ encyclical on the environment in June of this year. 

We will then hear from Mr. David Hong who is a global senior 

policy analyst who leads global policy engagement at the One Acre 

Fund, a nonprofit social enterprise that supplies smallholder farmers with the tools and financing they need to grow their way out 

of hunger and poverty. Previously, David analyzed donor agricultural policies at the ONE Campaign and consulted on private sector agricultural investments at Oxfam America. 

We will then hear from Mr. Roger Thurow who joined the Chicago Council on Global Affairs as senior fellow on global agricultural and food policy in January 2010 after three decades at the 

Wall Street Journal. For 20 years he was a foreign correspondent 

based in Europe and Africa. His coverage of global affairs spanned 

the Cold War, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the release of Nelson 

Mandela, the end of apartheid, the wars in the former Yugoslavia, 

and many humanitarian crises. 

I would like to now yield to Dr. Woo for such time as she may 

consume. 

STATEMENT OF CAROLYN WOO, PH.D., PRESIDENT AND CHIEF 

EXECUTIVE OFFICER, CATHOLIC RELIEF SERVICES 

Ms. WOO. Thank you, Chairman Smith, and also Representative 

Bass, when she comes, for holding this hearing. As mentioned, I 

am the president and CEO of Catholic Relief Services which is the 

international humanitarian and development agency of the U.S. 

Conference of Catholic Bishops. We currently operate in over 100 

countries and implement our programming through credible existing local networks, frequently those of the local church. 

Food security is a complex issue and requires a comprehensive 

response. Using what we call our Pathway to Prosperity model, we 

have improved nutrition and food security by helping farmers build 

sustainable livelihood through a multisectoral response. This actually includes agriculture development, nutrition, natural resource 

management, infrastructure development, and also formal market 

engagement. We have used Food for Peace resources for this work 

but increasingly Feed the Future also tackles these challenges. 

Today I want to focus on nutrition specifically and make three 

points: The importance of nutrition, the importance of the Global 

4

Food Security Act on nutrition, and the importance of U.S. leadership for nutrition. The first point, as Chairman Smith mentioned, 

poor nutrition is the underlying cause of 45 percent of deaths of 

children under 5 years old, yet only 1 percent of global development assistance is devoted to nutrition. 

Poor nutrition leads to stunting, which causes significant and 

permanent mental and physical impairment. The tragedy of these 

permanent impacts on children is why Catholic Relief Services is 

so committed to addressing nutrition in a child’s first 1,000 days 

of life beginning at conception and through a child’s second birthday. 

According to the World Bank, for every dollar invested in nutri- tion the return is $18. Catholic Relief Services adopts communitybased approaches and interventions to bring about good feeding 

practices and reduce exposure to illnesses. We help farmer groups, 

saving groups, and mother’s groups grow nutritious food or increase their income to be able to buy these foods. 

Let me just give you one example of how our Zambia USAID 

Feed the Future project is doing. Now this intervention is not like 

what you would expect. It is unusual in the sense that it doesn’t 

deal with feeding, per se, directly, but it deals with income and 

asset generation. These are called Savings and Internal Lending 

Community groups called SILC. These are groups of small farmers 

who pool their money to make loans to each other so they don’t 

take on debt. Those that take out loans from each other repay them 

with interest which gives all members a return on their investment. 

Let me showcase for you one woman by the name of Misozi Zulu. 

She is a member of one such group. She is the mother of two boys 

and she is raising them alone. She joined 22 women and 7 men in 

forming one of the first SILC group in her village. Through this 

group she learned the basics of managing finance and recordkeeping as well as the importance of good nutrition. 

With greater financial knowledge and now access to capital, 

Misozi took out a small loan from her group and she invested in 

a bun-making business. She succeeded, paid off the loan and took 

out a bigger loan, this time to buy chickens. Loans after loans to 

date, Misozi has her own grocery store and is now raising cattle. 

With the money she earned, now her diet for herself and her children includes eggs, chicken, and vegetables which make for a much 

healthier diet. And also she now can afford the tuition for her children to go to school. 

More than 80 percent of SILC members are women, and participation is slowly changing their own perceptions about their ability 

to contribute to household expenses. SILC groups are also an important channel to distribute nutrition related messaging and also 

to enable these small farmers to diversify their livelihood, increase 

their income, and support healthier diets. 

The second point is the importance of the Global Food Security 

Act on nutrition. I want to thank Chairman Smith and also other 

sponsors of this bill because it elevates the importance of nutrition, 

making it a cornerstone in food security programming. This bill 

prioritizes vulnerable small-scale producers providing more transparency and helping the poor become more resilient. 

5

The third and final point is that we believe that the U.S. must 

continue to focus on nutrition and make it a vital part of any food 

security and agriculture work. We urge the United States to participate in the Nutrition for Growth Summit in Rio next summer 

to exercise global leadership. We also advocate for continued support for development funding in Food for Peace as for its contribution to all the factors that improve nutrition. Thank you very 

much. 

[The prepared statement of Ms. Woo follows:]

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Mr. SMITH. Dr. Woo, thank you very much for your testimony. 

Without objection, your full statement will be made part of the 

record as well as that of our other distinguished witnesses. Mr. 

Hong? 

STATEMENT OF MR. DAVID HONG, DIRECTOR OF GLOBAL 

POLICY, ONE ACRE FUND 

Mr. HONG. Thank you, Chairman Smith, Ranking Member Bass, 

Congresswoman McCollum and distinguished members of the subcommittee. Feeding a population of 9 billion people by 2050 is one 

of the greatest, if not the greatest, challenges facing humanity. We 

will need to produce at least 60 percent more food than we do 

today, and most of that increased production will need to come 

from the 2.5 billion people that work on small farms around the 

world. 

Today these smallholder farmers are the single largest group of 

the world’s population living in poverty. They live in remote areas 

and do not have access to basic agricultural tools and trainings. As 

a result, they struggle to grow enough to feed their families and 

face an annual hunger season of meal skipping and meal substitution. 

In the future, these hungry farmers have the potential to dramatically increase their yields, not just to feed themselves and 

their families but to feed the world. Agriculture yields in Africa for 

most staple food crops could be two to four times what they are 

today. And best of all, we know exactly what we need to do to help 

smallholder farmers achieve these yield increases. 

One Acre Fund is an agriculture organization that has developed 

an operating model to help smallholder farmers run profitable businesses. We are unique in several ways. First, we only serve 

smallholder farmers, primarily in east Africa, who typically farm 

on one acre of land or less. Second, we are technically a nonprofit 

but we operate like a business. Farmers pay for our products and 

services. And third, we have intentionally built a scalable model 

and we are growing fast. We serve over 300,000 smallholder farmers in Kenya, Rwanda, Burundi, and Tanzania, and we plan to 

serve 1 million farmers by 2020. 

We offer farmers a simple four-part operating model. First, we 

offer financing for farm inputs such as hybrid seed and fertilizer. 

We only finance productive assets. Farmers organize themselves 

into groups and are jointly liable to repay their loans, which is 

similar to microfinance. 

Second, we distribute seed, fertilizer and other products such as 

tree seeds and solar lights within walking distance. Smallholder 

farmers live in remote and isolated areas so getting products and 

services close to where they live is critical. 

Third, we offer training on modern agricultural techniques. Many 

farmers don’t know how to apply fertilizer or how to plant in rows 

with the correct spacing, and we offer interactive, in-person 

trainings throughout the agriculture season. 

And fourth, we offer market facilitation to help farmers maximize their profits from harvest sales. Just after harvest the market 

is flooded with crop surpluses, driving prices down. With proper 

15

training on safe storage, farmers can wait to sell their crops until 

market prices increase. 

This operating model has proven impact. On average, farmers 

working with One Acre Fund increase their profits on supported 

activities by 57 percent, or about $128. And for a farmer living on 

less than $2 a day, this is a significant amount of money. 

According to our data, farmers invest their income gains in new 

businesses, productive assets for the farm such as livestock, and 

school fees for their children. An important aspect of our model is 

our flexible repayment system. Farmers can repay their loan at 

any time in any amount throughout the entire growing season as 

long as they repay in full by harvest. In 2014, I am pleased to report that the average repayment rate was 99 percent, and in two 

countries 100 percent of clients repaid their loans. 

Farmer repayment enables us to move toward financial sustainability in our field operations. Seventy-four percent of our field expenses were covered by farmer repayment in 2014 and the nature 

of our business model stretches donor dollars to achieve more impact. Every dollar in grant funding that we receive generates approximately $3 in additional farmer income. 

In a constrained budget environment, it is even more critical for 

development organizations to maximize efficiency and impact. We 

are working hard to achieve financial sustainability in our field operations so that we can use donor resources to leverage even greater impact at a global scale. For example, in 2012, USAID Kenya 

awarded One Acre Fund with $31⁄2 million to significantly scale up 

our Kenya operations. Over a 3-year period we delivered agriculture loans to nearly 277,000 farm families, the majority of whom 

were women, and we achieved repayment rates of 99 percent. 

One Acre Fund has demonstrated that it is possible to help hungry farmers become successful business people, with surplus production that they can bring to local markets. Smallholder farmers 

are the answer to our global food security challenge. When they 

have access to basic tools and technologies they thrive. 

Thank you, Chairman Smith, Ranking Member Bass, and subcommittee members for the opportunity to discuss our work and for 

putting global food security high on the development agenda. As 

you know, making progress on agriculture, food security, and nutrition is imperative to the health and wellbeing of future generations. May we not let them down. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Hong follows:]

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Mr. SMITH. Thank you, Mr. Hong, very much. 

Mr. Thurow. 

STATEMENT OF MR. ROGER THUROW, SENIOR FELLOW, GLOBAL AGRICULTURE AND FOOD, THE CHICAGO COUNCIL ON 

GLOBAL AFFAIRS 

Mr. THUROW. Thank you, Chairman Smith, Ranking Member 

Bass, distinguished members of the subcommittee, for inviting me 

to testify today on the vital subjects of global food security and nutrition. Nourishing the world in the face of population, climate, and 

scarce resource pressures is a great challenge of our time. 

I have been investigating and writing about this challenge for 

many years, first as a reporter and foreign correspondent with the 

Wall Street Journal, and now as an author of two books, with a 

third on the way, on global food security on nutrition, as a senior 

fellow for the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. 

In my first book, ‘‘Enough: Why the World’s Poorest Starve in an 

Age of Plenty,’’ I and my co-author Scott Kilman explored how we 

had brought hunger with us into the 21st century; how the neglect 

of agriculture development and nutrition in the post-green revolution years resulted in increasing levels of hunger and malnutrition, 

particularly among smallholder farmers themselves, creating this 

cruel irony: The hungriest people in the world are farmers. Hungry 

farmers. What an awful, shameful oxymoron. 

In my next book, The Last Hunger Season, I set out to illuminate 

the lives of these smallholder farmers. There are hundreds of millions of them in the developing world, as we have heard the majority of them are women, and their importance for securing our global food chain. The more they succeed in feeding their families and 

neighbors through sustainable agriculture development through efforts like Feed the Future, the more we will succeed in our great 

challenge to nourish the world. 

At this point let me note that the Chicago Council has recommended the authorization of U.S. global food security efforts like 

Feed the Future and appreciates the work of the chairman, the 

ranking member, and others in their endeavors of this on that 

front. 

In my reporting, I followed four smallholder farmers in western 

Kenya for 1 year, this in 2011. The transformation of their lives 

when they finally had access to the essential elements of farming—

better quality seeds, small doses of fertilizer, training, storage, and 

the financing to pay for it all—was remarkable. One of the families 

had a tenfold increase in their harvest in one season. 

They were the Biketis—father Sanet, mother Zipporah, and their 

four children. They were in desperate shape when I first met them. 

Their youngest child, David, was manifestly malnourished. They 

were in the middle of their hunger season, this period of profound 

depravation when food is rationed and meals shrink. In the previous planting season they had no access to fertilizer or seeds and 

they could only plant 1/4 of an acre. Their harvest was meager. 

Only two 100-kilogram bags of corn, which is their staple food. 

That barely lasted 2 months and then they plunged into their hunger season. 

19

The next year, joining the One Acre Fund, they then had this access to the essential elements of farming. They were able to plant 

one full acre, and their harvest was a magnificent 20 bags of corn—

two tons. With that tenfold increase, they had more than enough 

to conquer their hunger season and they now had a surplus for the 

first time in their lives which they could use for school fees, for necessary medicine, for construction of a small house with a metal roof 

that didn’t leak in the rain anymore, and most importantly, they 

could afford a second planting season with a wide array of vegetables to diversify their diets and greatly improve their nutrition. 

From Zipporah I learned that the deepest depth of misery during 

the hunger season was to be a mother unable to properly nourish 

her children, which brings me to my current reporting on the importance of good nutrition in the 1,000 days, the time, as we have 

heard, from when a woman becomes pregnant to the second birthday of her child. This is the most important time of human development. For what happens in those 1,000 days, the foundation of 

healthy physical development to rapid growth of brain and cognitive skills, determines to a large extent the course of a child’s 

life—the ability to grow, learn, work, succeed. And by extension, 

the long term health, stability, and prosperity of the societies in 

which the children and which all of us live. 

Good nutrition is the cornerstone of this growth. It is the vital 

fuel of the 1,000 days. Any disruption in nutrition during this time 

can lead to stunting—physical, mental, or both. Today, one in every 

four children in the world is stunted. A child who is stunted is sentenced to a life of underachievement, diminished performance in 

school, lower productivity and wages in the workplace, more health 

problems throughout life, a greater propensity for chronic diseases 

like diabetes and heart problems. 

The impact, the cost, ripple throughout society, from the individual, to the family, to the community, to the nation, to the entire 

world. The cumulative toll of all this stunts the world economy by 

as much as 5 percent. For you see, a stunted child in Africa or Asia 

or here in the Americas is a stunted child everywhere. 

In my reporting, I am following moms and their children 

throughout the 1,000 days in four parts of the world: India, Uganda, Guatemala—countries which face immense challenges of malnutrition and stunting—and in Chicago. Why Chicago? Because the 

issue of good nutrition is not just something that is over there 

somewhere, it is also vital right here in the United States. Good 

nutrition in the 1,000 days is crucial for the success of American 

children in school and later in the workplace here as healthy adults 

who are contributing the nation’s productivity and growth. 

Nutrition and all that supports it—clean water, sanitation, hygiene, healthcare, agriculture—are essential components of global 

food security. In development work, all these elements must come 

together at once at the same time. 

And finally, here is where the United States Government can, 

and should, lead with congressional action to authorize legislation 

that commits the U.S. to a long term global food nutrition security 

strategy with the success of smallholder farmers at the center, with 

policies that strengthen nutrition-smart agriculture development 

and that expand access to and spur the consumption of healthy 

20

foods, and food aid and social protection programs with the focus 

on the crucial importance of the 1,000 days. 

For that is where it all begins, and it is where our actions on 

global food security and where American leadership and agriculture development and improved nutrition around the world has 

its greatest impact. Thank you again for this opportunity to testify. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Thurow follows:]

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Mr. SMITH. Mr. Thurow, thank you so much. I look forward to 

reading your book. 

Mr. THUROW. Thank you. 

Mr. SMITH. When will it be published? 

Mr. THUROW. Next May, hopefully Mother’s Day. 

Mr. SMITH. Very good. That is fantastic. 

Mr. THUROW. Good timing, we hope. 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you, appreciate it. I will yield to Ms. Bass. 

Ms. BASS. Thank you. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, as 

always, for holding this hearing on food security. 

As defined by the U.N., food security is a situation that exists 

when people have access to sufficient amounts of safe and nutritious food for normal growth and development. In contrast, food insecurity may be caused by the unavailability of food, insufficient 

purchasing power, inappropriate food distribution, or inadequate 

use of food at the household level. 

While the primary means of addressing acute food insecurity 

worldwide has been humanitarian intervention, this is costly and, 

by nature, reactive. As such, the development of a long term policy, 

which Mr. Thurow was just talking about, to enhance food security 

at the macro level which would also lead to economic growth, 

should be a goal of U.S. foreign assistance and collaboration with 

our global partners. 

The U.S. is the world’s largest food aid donor spending an average of $2 billion on food aid programs from 2006 to 2013, and a 

majority of this spending was for emergency food needs. It has 

been supplemented since 2010 with annual outlays of $900 million 

for nutrition and agricultural development programs under the 

Feed the Future initiative. 

Additionally, the U.S. has sought to address emergency food assistance under two primary programs—Title II of the Food for 

Peace Act, and the Emergency Food Security Program under the 

Foreign Assistance Act of 1961. We had a hearing earlier today 

where we were talking about the Food for Peace program and making reforms to that program, and I wanted to get your opinions 

about that for any of the panelists. 

I believe that when I was coming in I was listening to Dr. Woo 

talk about Feed the Future. I have had the opportunity to visit 

Tanzania, Ethiopia, and Kenya, and see for myself firsthand dramatic changes in watching farmers, as Mr. Hong described, go from 

being subsistence farmers to actually having excess, being able to 

sell their produce and developing their villages, buying trucks, 

farm tools, school uniforms and really transforming their communities. 

So I wanted to get your opinions about what should be done with 

our current Food for Peace program, how it should be reformed. 

And Mr. Thurow, you mentioned in broad terms policy changes 

that should take place, but you might provide some specific examples as well. 

Mr. THUROW. Sure. Carolyn, do you want to start? 

Ms. WOO. Yes. Ranking Member Bass, thank you very much. We 

also heard about the hearing that you had, but of course we were 

on our way here and did not have the details of it. 

25

But one point we want to make for Food for Peace is that it is 

very important to protect the development piece of it. Now all the 

things that we are talking about, all these interventions of how to 

help farmers increase their productivity, change their farming 

practices, build up their livelihoods, and change nutrition practices, 

those things happen through the development portion. And if we 

don’t invest in that portion we will just have greater and greater 

emergencies and more people who would be needing help in an 

emergency situation. So I think the development aspect of it is absolutely critical for these type of long term, sustainable interventions. Thank you. 

Ms. BASS. Mr. Hong. 

Mr. HONG. Yes, I am reminded of an example. When countries 

invest in agricultural development you can have very different results. So in southern Ethiopia the government invested heavily in 

social protection measures and agriculture development for their 

farmers, and during the Horn of Africa food crisis the communities 

in Somalia faced severe famine and had to be supplemented by food 

aid from abroad. And this community in southern Ethiopia were 

fine because of the earlier investments. And so the long term nature of this is really important and cannot be stressed more and 

so that is why we want to focus on agriculture development. 

Mr. THUROW. Yes, I would agree with everything, I think, particularly on Food for Peace and the broader food aid arena that 

again with this irony that a lot of the beneficiaries of Food for 

Peace are farmers themselves and smallholder farmers. 

So that agriculture development piece of this is really crucial so 

that these smallholder farmers have the ability to grow enough 

food to feed themselves, their neighbors, eventually their countries 

and the continent of Africa, and so that they then won’t be in the 

position of needing this assistance; that they want to be self-sufficient themselves. 

And that is what I have seen, and certainly what David would 

see with his farmers and with Catholic Relief and all the work that 

they do, is these farmers want to be independent. They want to be 

able to feed their families. The Food for Peace and the assistance 

is great in times of need and emergency, but it is that long term, 

sustainable agriculture development that is also a really key component of it. 

Ms. BASS. Well, is there any more that you think that we should 

do with Feed the Future? How it should be expanded, what needs 

to be changed, reformed, anything? 

Ms. WOO. I just want to say I think Feed the Future could increase its emphasis on smallholder farming. I think currently it 

deals with farmers with some assets, and again it is really for people at the bottom. And once you invest in them and you have these 

long term practices it increases resilience. 

And the other thing is too that development assistance now allows us to address the potential impact of climate. If it is two degrees warmer, if water is being scarce, we are actually looking 

ahead to prevent consequences to these farmers. 

Ms. BASS. Thank you. Anyone else? 

Mr. THUROW. I would say that also the emphasis on smallholder 

farmers, but that nutrition is the cornerstone and at the center of 

26

not only all agriculture efforts but all development efforts. And I 

believe that USAID, in this all-encompassing program of development assistance, has an emphasis on nutrition at the center. And 

through that and particularly the emphasis on nutrition and nutritious value of the crops and nutrition education that then goes 

along with the programs that then becomes a great benefit for the 

women, the women farmers. Because what I have seen in my reporting, if they would also have experience, is that when the farmers fail and they are in this hunger season, the women and the 

women farmers feel that they are failing on two fronts. They are 

failing as farmers because they are not successful in growing 

enough to feed their families, and they are failing as mothers because they are having malnourished hungry children. 

Ms. BASS. Thank you. Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you very much, Ms. Bass. 

Let me just ask, Dr. Woo, first to you, assuming the reins of CRS 

as you did, and so effectively, you came with a background as being 

a dean of a school of business. I think your testimony and your 

leadership demonstrates that you believe that the more businesslike the efforts are to meet the huge humanitarian needs and making it sustainable the better. 

And I am wondering if you could just, you mentioned in Zambia, 

for example, that smallholder farmers, you have helped them with 

the balance between the harnessing agriculture for consumption 

and for income through engagement with markets, and you might 

want to expand upon that if you would. 

Mr. Thurow, you make a very good point, as does Mr. Hong, 

about agriculture yields: In Africa, for most staple crops could be 

two to four times what they are today. That is huge. What a capacity to build out towards. And then you point out, Mr. Thurow that 

better quality seeds, small doses of fertilizer, training, and storage, 

and financing to pay for it all—it was remarkable when you talked 

about the Kenyan farmers who in a year increased their yield tenfold in their harvest. I mean that is spectacular with just some discipline. 

And in answering the question or elaborating on that if you 

could, we have learned the hard way what too much fertilizer, too 

much pesticide does to people. It gets into the food chain. It gets 

into our bodies. It has devastating impacts on children especially. 

And I am wondering if those lessons learned by what we have experienced and other Western countries with overuse of fertilizer 

and pesticide, the best practices are being utilized in places like Africa and other developing countries. 

Let me also, Dr. Woo, if you would speak to the issue of resilience. We got hit by Hurricane Sandy a couple of years ago—and 

I had meeting, I missed our hearing earlier, with the full committee, because I was chairing a meeting with FEMA on people 

who still have not been anywhere near made whole. 

South Carolina is experiencing it—every one of our states go 

through it—California with its drought. Resilience. Maybe you 

want you spend a little time on how that could be built into the 

better crop that can withstand less rainfall, for example. 

And then on the first 1,000 days of life, Mr. Thurow, I was at 

some of the scaling up meetings at the U.N. in 2010, and actually 

27

joined seven first ladies of Africa where they spoke, really, with unbelievable enthusiasm about how, like you have pointed out and 

now your new book will, I am sure, further elaborate on it, how 

stunting can almost disappear. 

And I was in Guatemala the day they signed an agreement with 

USAID and met with the Speaker the day they were actually signing on, because stunting is as you know a big problem in Guatemala as it is in many parts of Africa particularly in Nigeria. 

But this idea of the first 1,000 days of life—I like to cross-reference work that I do. I wrote the Combating Autism Act, the 2000 

law, the 2013 and the 2010 versions. NIH has found, and they have 

three major studies to prove it that if enough folic acid is provided 

in the first month, not the second, third or fourth—it is good, but 

it is not determinative—but in the first month, it reduces the risk 

of autism by 40 percent. 

And we know tens of millions of kids and young people in Africa, 

according to the World Health Organization, are autistic or at least 

on the spectrum. And it seems to me that if that is included, as 

I am sure it is, all this great outcome for a modest micronutrient 

investment which could be made during those first 1,000 days. So 

if you might want to elaborate on that as well. But start with Dr. 

Woo. 

Ms. WOO. Yes, Chairman, I think you asked me two question. 

One is the business approach, the second one is about resilience. 

Let me begin with resilience. The cornerstone of adjusting resilience is really two things. One is to reduce exposure to any type 

of natural or manmade disasters, the second one is how do you 

help people rebound? 

So rebounding is very easy to understand. If you lost all your 

crops to a flood and you have no more seeds that is a problem. You 

cannot rebound, right. And so you start with the first one and that 

is if it is natural disaster, say for example, anticipating floods, anticipating drought, you could actually use seeds which are droughtresistant, flood-resistant. You can change irrigation practices and 

so on, but you have to look ahead. 

And also there are also natural disasters such as storms. In 

those situations you could have pre-planning, you could have structures which could withstand various type of issues. So resilience is 

looking at those two things. Reducing exposure in different contexts, and secondly is increasing the ability to rebound. And diversifying crops, for example, is a way to rebound because then you 

are not all vulnerable to the same set of effects. 

Let me go into the business model because it is also a way of 

achieving resilience. It has now become very much the common 

thread that we undertake our programming, particularly in agriculture. For us to have the effect which address several billion 

smallholder farmers, we have to use approach which is scalable 

and then sustainable, and we cannot do that on the basis of just 

government funding or philanthropy. We have to find ways where 

it creates a return, it creates a benefit so that the people who want 

those benefits will sustain this. 

So for a smallholder farmer program it is really what we call 

Pathway to Prosperity. What does that pathway look like? It starts 

with people who are vulnerable. They grow things where there is 

28

no market. They grow it poorly. For example, the quality is really 

poor, and also their growing practices are not good. The overuse of 

fertilizers, for example, their land can be very degraded. They may 

not have the tools and the knowledge to manage all of those things 

correctly. 

So the first step is really diagnosing whether people are growing 

the right things with the right input in the right way on the right 

land. I mean, as simple as that. That is usually agriculture, but 

where we also come in is what we call the smart skills. 

So in fact it is a chapter from American agriculture. The first one 

is forming co-ops. Each individual farm is very hard to deal with, 

particularly when you have one acre, so the formation of communities of co-ops, so that whole grouping skills. The second one is a 

knowledge in finance and budgeting, because now we expose them 

because they have this scale to market. 

How do we enable them to achieve certification so that they 

could sell to various stores and so on? So also marketing skills and 

negotiating skills so that we are connecting to the formal market. 

And before they have all of these assets how do they generate their 

capital? And so One Acre Fund is one of those sources. 

And I think you are reaching 1 million farmers, right? 

Mr. HONG. We hope to. 

Ms. WOO. You hope to. Well, we are talking 1 billion farmers, all 

right, and so where do they find the capital to take this journey? 

That is why savings group is very important so that they don’t borrow from an outsider but they borrow within themselves. So when 

20 people pool their resources they could, like this lady I just 

talked about, started with a baking business, then a chicken business, then a grocery store and then buying cattle. 

So how we accumulate that capital and then eventually form people into co-ops that they have that type of group skills, the finance 

skills, the marketing skills, the negotiation, certification, in order 

eventually to connect with markets. So that is the whole business 

model associated with all of this transformation. 

Mr. HONG. Yes, thank you, Chairman Smith. So you asked two 

questions. One was around the yield gaps and one was around resilience, so I will talk about resilience first. 

One of the things that we have seen that is truly impressive with 

many smaller farmers is they are incredibly good at mitigating 

risk. And as they gain more income they diversify their assets right 

away. They buy a cow, they buy chickens, they are able to sell 

milk, eggs, things like that. So if there is a crop failure they have 

other things to sell on the market and other ways to make money. 

One of the things that happened a few years ago is in Kenya 

there was a disease called maize lethal necrosis disease, MLND, 

and it was spreading. It is a virus and it would devastate entire 

fields. And so we offered a package, an alternative package of local 

staple crops like sorghum and millet and orange-fleshed sweet potatoes to try to help farmers mitigate against this type of risk. 

We also offer things like drought-tolerant seed in our program as 

well as crop insurance for many of the farmers we work with. On 

yield gaps it is no secret that the soils in sub-Saharan Africa are 

incredibly depleted. They require nitrogen from sometimes inorganic fertilizer to develop anything. So for us, we teach farmers to 

29

microdose to prevent leaching. So they use very small scoops of fertilizer, they target it, and through that they are able to increase 

their productivity. 

And so I will just pass on to Roger. 

Mr. THUROW. Yes, and I will just follow up on that. That what 

you see in the field with smallholder farmers all over and say the 

ones at the One Acre Fund, this little scoop that they use it is basically the size of a thimble. They provide one that is nice and plastic, but if they don’t have that or that one goes lost or something, 

they basically just have a Coca-Cola bottle cap or a beer cap which 

they somehow affix to a little stick and that is their dosage of fertilizer. One of those per maize seed that they put in the ground, 

a third for beans. 

And so you see them bending over very carefully, close to the 

ground particularly on the beans where they have a cap of this, 

and it is just a third in this one and a third in the next one. Backbreaking work because they are bending over so far to do that. 

And fertilizer, as it is for farmers in the United States, I mean, 

it is the most expensive component of their farming. They don’t 

want to waste anything, so the microdosing. And then also other 

innovations with composting, some conservation agriculture and 

things that goes along, so there is other ideas that are then also 

starting to spread. 

And then just one point on the resilience. The crop diversity, I 

think, is really important. So in terms of Feed the Future or of 

other agriculture development programs, the diversity of and kind 

of shifting away somewhat or including in the work is just not an 

overreliance on the staple crops. So the corn, the rice, the wheat, 

the beans, but also these orphan crops—the millet, the sorghum, 

sweet potatoes—all sorts of local greens and vegetables that we 

don’t know anything about but they know really well because that 

has been growing around them for a long time. 

And then the question on the 1,000 days. And the folic acid is 

crucial, starting at the time that you mentioned and kind of 

throughout the pregnancy. And what I found with a lot of the 

moms and the expecting moms, and particularly in Uganda, India, 

and Guatemala, is the reliability of the access to those kind of supplements, so the folic acid and the iron tablets that they make that 

they take. Whereas, here and Europe and the developed world that 

is part of the prenatal checkups and everything that you get and 

somebody is checking and making sure that they are being taken 

and things. 

There, when they go to the clinic there may be a shortage of 

them, so they are told, well, you get them the next time you come 

back. Well, who knows when the next time is going to be when 

they come back because it is a distance that they have to go to, 

there is probably a little expense with getting there. They will take 

them, it may make them feel funny and so they will say I was feeling better before I was taking these pills. So the knowledge that 

then goes along with it. So it is this whole integrated aspect. But 

it is folic acid, it is the iron, it is the zinc, it is the vitamin A, all 

these things that are essential and that we take for granted but 

are really key. 

30

And as you said in your opening comments, Chairman, there is 

no greater investment in this whole field than in the 1,000 days. 

And investment in innovation, what is going on with the delivery 

systems of these fortified, of these supplements and fortifications, 

and efforts like even one initiative that I am following is the moms 

in Uganda are doing this. They are growing orange-fleshed sweet 

potatoes and high-iron beans. 

So the idea is that you let the crops do the work for you. There 

is the vitamin A or the beta-carotene that then becomes the vitamin A in the orange-fleshed sweet potatoes and in beans which already have an iron content. Through breeding you raise the iron 

content a little bit. And so they are just into foods that they are 

eating four or five, six times a week, they are getting those supplements and some of the important minerals that they need. 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you. Ms. McCollum. 

Ms. MCCOLLUM. Thank you, Mr. Chair. When you were talking 

about sometimes taking the supplements and not feeling well, I 

turned to Karen. I said, yes, iron can do a number on you when 

you are pregnant. 

Mr. THUROW. That is what my wife——

Ms. MCCOLLUM. So if you don’t understand that that is going to 

happen, if it hasn’t been described that it will pass after a week 

or so, you might be sorely tempted to say this might have been a 

nice idea but it is not for me. 

Mr. THUROW. Right. 

Ms. MCCOLLUM. The first time I had an opportunity to really see 

CRS in full action was in Malawi and I was at a seed fair. And 

it was absolutely amazing. There was training, there was nutrition, 

there was the talk about doing more diversity and that and it was 

just absolutely wonderful. And I think for me, no pun intended, but 

was some of the seeds of what I think people have come up with 

Feed the Future because it was so inclusive and it was so holistic 

at the fair. 

I just had an opportunity to be in Senegal recently where there 

was a Feed the Future project that was taking place with rice, but 

along with it there was work on granting not permanent title to 

land but 99 years for the title to the land so that people could feel 

that they could make the investment, and your neighbor next to 

you also was having a title. 

So the whole idea of about community pulling together. 

The training and the co-op is something which Land O’Lakes 

from Minnesota does a lot in it, so I think we know what all the 

pieces are and that is why I am so proud of the legislation here 

that we are all supporting about Feed the Future. 

But I want to turn this a little bit, and I hadn’t planned on asking this question, but the question of resilience, and the way that 

you folks answered it, and then the question of pesticides and 

using less of them. GMOs are very, very controversial. Very controversial in Africa. I do not support people not being able to harvest seeds and replant them. 

I want to make it very, very clear that I think that there are 

GMOs that can serve a higher purpose. When I was in Bangladesh 

they were working on something with rice so it would absorb less 

31

arsenic. In Bangladesh they have also worked on an eggplant that 

needs less pesticides. 

Can you maybe address for us how we have a rational conversation, especially with what is facing Africa with wheat rust, into the 

future. We have a rational conversation about how we use science 

to improve the quality of lives and resiliency in crops and take the 

conversation that direction, knowing that some of us do support 

farmers being able to collect their seeds, not being into a whole 

cycle of buying one particular product line from seed to storage. 

Could you maybe help us with that? Because as we talk about 

it here, our African colleagues in the parliaments are shaking their 

heads saying, well, if it is not good for the United States why 

would I want it here? How did we get so confused on what Norman 

Borlaug started working on? Who wants to take that on? 

Mr. THUROW. Well, that is a good point that you mentioned Dr. 

Borlaug at the end, because he basically, all the work that he did 

in the seeds and the breeding that he did, and of course that was 

with the conventional breeding and he wasn’t thinking about 

GMOs and things at that time. And none of them were patented. 

I mean he wasn’t developing these to make money himself. It was 

an impression of these seeds as a public good, the research as a 

public good. So it is a very good point you make of that they can 

serve a higher purpose. 

And so I think one of the things that has happened is there has 

been too many dogmatic positions and hardline thinking on this. 

They are either good or they are the best thing to come along, and 

kind of no middle ground in between. And I have seen some of the 

debates in Africa and they are precisely confused like that. And 

they have a great saying in Africa that when the elephants fight 

it is the grass that gets trampled. 

And so the fight in the GMO realm between the United States 

and Europe and the other developed world countries that are debating this thing and the contretemps that are going on over that 

it then creates this state that for in Africa for them to have a reasoned debate on these things, what their own scientists say, what 

their farmers say, has become very difficult. 

So yes, to kind of take the dogmatic positions out of there. And 

then, but I think this whole notion of this research and development for a public good that seeds, drought-resistant seeds, could be 

transformational for a lot of smallholder farmers. And not only 

drought-resistant seeds, but particularly with the climate change 

that the smallholder farmers that we are all talking about and that 

you know very well are on the front lines of climate change, they 

are going to bear the brunt of whatever changes are coming. They 

are the ones that are going to need to adapt to that. And so again 

this notion of this research and things is for the public good, I 

think is really good. 

Mr. HONG. Yes. I mean, I think one of the things that we have 

found are technology beyond GMOs. When you just think about hybrid seed that is available on the market, for many farmers they 

don’t have access to technology that has already been developed. So 

what we are trying to push for is to have research institutions like 

the CGIAR system that Borlaug worked for at CIMMYT and some 

of these other centers, make those varieties available to farmers. 

32

I mean, in all the countries where we work GMOs are illegal in 

every place, and so it is not even an issue for us right now. What 

we are talking about are just simple hybrid seeds that do need to 

be repurchased every year, but farmers are still able to use informal seeds if they like. They can choose whatever they want. And 

I think for us it is really about farmer choice and farmer autonomy 

and having them have the array of choices that are available to 

many of the farmers in developed countries. So for us that is where 

we are coming from. 

Mr. THUROW. I was just going to add that in terms of the hybrid 

seeds, there is so much development and advances that can be 

made when you talk about the yield gaps in Africa that can be 

made up just on the existing seeds, existing standard, non-controversial breeding that goes on that there is just a wide opportunity there. 

Ms. WOO. So I just want to address this on four dimensions. The 

first one is the economic concerns associated with it, which is if you 

cannot access your own seeds and you have to depend on a very 

large producer that is a major issue. And we with the Catholic 

Church are concerned about that. 

But one of the things we have to remember is that actually there 

is a lot of locally available and publicly available hybrids, as some 

of our colleagues said. So, and also it is a balance between how 

much is the farmer dependent on that. If the farmer has diversified 

crops and not as completely dependent on one provider of those 

seeds, and also if it is locally available at the right price and also 

publicly available materials. 

But there is the first question which is the economic control that 

they lose or that they could gain in different ways. The second one 

is you mention irrational fears, and I am not able to address that 

but I just want to say that we have dealt with enough change in 

behavior. There are demonstration plots, for example. There are a 

lot of farmer agents which go out there to assist people in making 

changes, and you never just turn over your plot to completely to 

a new thing. And so there are rational vehicles to help people incrementally observe the effect, but there is always an irrational 

part of it, but where there are rational vehicles that can be undertaken. 

But the third thing, I think there is a lot of politics in the discussion of GMOs and they exceed us actually, government to government, regulatory bodies, people who set standards and so on. But 

the fourth thing I want to say is that in some situations GMOs 

would be a major contribution, but in other situations in a lot of 

the work that we do we have not bumped up against that as a 

major hindrance or obstacle in making progress. 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you. Mr. Meadows. 

Mr. MEADOWS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you to the 

group for your testimony, and I am going in there in just a little 

bit. Having been in Kenya working with some local farmers, and 

when we talk about farming I come from an agricultural district 

of North Carolina. When you tell them you are going to meet with 

farmers in Africa they don’t comprehend that it is a 1-acre little 

piece of property that they may be growing maize on and the struggles that many of the farmers have. 

33

And I guess so I would ask you this, is as we look at the aid—

and I am proud to work with Chairman Smith and Ranking Member Bass on a number of issues. But getting beyond just humanitarian relief, which is what you are talking about, is actually making it sustainable and reliable, how do we fight back about the corruption, the potential for manipulation with whether it be on a 

tribal basis or on a government basis within those communities? 

Because that is a real problem as being there on the ground we can 

talk about a lot of those things, but it really are those issues that 

undermine the very nature of what we are trying to do. 

Dr. Woo, do you have any thoughts on that? 

Ms. WOO. Not the whole answer but I just want to say, so our 

partners, we work with about 550 Catholic organizations in the 

field, and so that is one way to work with partners where we understand their culture. We understand the workings. It is not as 

conducive to corruption issues, a third party payment. 

Mr. MEADOWS. Right. 

Ms. WOO. At the end it is within the Church structure, so that 

is how we generally deal with those issues. We are audited all the 

time by the U.S. Government, right, I mean, and so we have very 

strict policies in our financial administration, how those things 

to——

Mr. MEADOWS. And I am not suggesting—please don’t take it 

that I am suggesting that you are involved in that. It is really more 

at a local level there that——

Ms. WOO. And so the key, really, is the local partners you work 

with are very important. Are they partners that have accountability to the people there? And there are different levels of accountability. And so if it is parishes and dioceses and so on, there 

is a structure there. So that is how we bypass some of the corruption issue. 

Mr. MEADOWS. Okay, let me ask a different question then is because I know that there were some farmers that would be growing 

beans or maize and truly to provide for their family. Government 

programs, and I am speaking specifically here about Kenya, would 

come in and encourage them to grow other types of products which 

would provide a better yield, supposedly, financially. And yet the 

component was to sell back to the government of which they didn’t 

get paid for that for 6 or 9 months, 12 months, and it breaks up 

this cycle. 

How do we make sure that the monies that would go forward 

here and the training and education don’t get hijacked, and I want 

to say that in a polite way, hijacked into other areas that really 

make farmers grow hungry? Any thoughts on that from any of the 

panel? Or am I wrong with that? Is that not happening or do you 

see that happening? 

Ms. WOO. Oh, I think the compromise of that how incentives 

could create behaviors—this is not part of the program—is very 

much a part of many different development programs. And I think 

where we see it is community advocacy, community voice. How you 

build up the ability of that community to speak up for itself is very 

important, and how it has access to government ministries itself, 

and how again using a co-op structure for it to be able to identify 

these issues and have a vehicle to speak up. It happens not just 

34

in agriculture. It happens in mining, for example, where local communities, their rights to land, the proper use of that land and so 

on is an issue. And there is really, advocacy is what we see as an 

important empowerment, a piece. 

Mr. MEADOWS. Okay. Mr. Thurow? 

Mr. THUROW. Yes, I was going to say that the advocacy, the community nature of this, so particularly among the women and women’s empowerment. Because when they feel that they can speak up 

and that they are being heard, they become a whirlwind of force 

and they don’t put up with a lot of the stuff then that governments 

or middlemen or others are doing because they can see through 

that. 

And yes, they are all, there is, with just the farmers in the field 

and their families, this fed-up of they are hearing things that there 

should be services provided by the government. They are not there. 

If they are there is some kind of corruption or strings attached that 

you mention. 

But I think the important thing is that the more self-sustaining 

these farmers become, that these smallholder farmers become, that 

they are able themselves to exercise the choices that David talks 

about. What kind of seed, I know what kind of seed I want. I know 

my soil conditions. I know my altitude conditions. I know what 

seeds are working here. That they can act on that themselves. And 

the more empowered they become through abandoning and conquering the hunger season by being able to effectuate their own 

independence as farmers, I think, makes a tremendous difference. 

Mr. MEADOWS. Okay. I will yield back, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. SMITH. Okay. Mr. Clawson. 

Ms. WOO. I will just add to say that that is why programming 

is not just directed at individual farmers or individual families, it 

has to address communities and how communities in our case is 

connected up whether it is through the Church structure or 

through government ministry, otherwise the individual voice is not 

enough to overcome that. 

Mr. CLAWSON. Thank you for coming today. Real quick, an observation. You can think on it. Maybe we will talk another time, because we have got to go vote. 

It seems to me that if you look at poverty-stricken countries either in Asia, southeast Asia, or Africa, the model or the choice for 

poor folks is usually one of the two. Subsistence farming—and folks 

like you help them innovate, do better, one acre, et cetera, all that 

is great of course—or go to the city. And you have got some bad 

choices in the city, usually, if you show up from the country with 

a sack of rice and that is it. Okay. And when we speak about how 

to get out of that trap we usually don’t talk about a middle kind 

of model. 

And so just one thing for you all to think about, when people 

come here and ask for our help and our funds, I always think of 

small villages that learn how to make brooms for factories in Cambodia or Thailand or some other micro-manufacturing that grows 

into bigger manufacturing so that you are not either micro-farming 

your way to eat or—God forbid—prostitution in the big city. That 

there is actually something where folks learn business skills that 

35

could also help them for the modern world and make a little 

money. 

So we don’t have time to answer that, but if you will come back 

sometime. I think we miss the only real model out of this, and that 

is not farming your way out and that is not everybody go to the 

city, but let’s try to make some things that people will buy. But I 

appreciate everything you all are doing because I think it is wonderful. 

Ms. WOO. I just want to say in the Pathway to Prosperity we 

have actually a vehicles that allow people to do post-harvest production which is what you are talking about. 

Mr. CLAWSON. With credit? Because if there is no credit those 

models never work. But you and I should talk another day, so I can 

go vote. 

Ms. WOO. Yes, so it is like canning, juicing, and washing and so 

on. 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you, Mr. Clawson. Let me just ask one final 

question. I have many more, but we do have a series of votes. 

With regards to wastage, the big emphasis obviously is on building up capacity and increasing yield, but how do we mitigate wastage? I saw a UNEP suggestion or estimation of $1 trillion worth 

of waste, one in four calories worldwide. In the U.S. 30 to 40 percent of our food supply is wasted. It is less so in Africa, but it is 

for other reasons, it is mostly because of storage. And we know 

that the MCC build feeder roads in Senegal, for example, to help 

the rice get to market, and I am just wondering how much, are we 

putting enough emphasis on that side of the coin? 

Mr. HONG. Yes, I think that is a fundamental part of our program. When I say market facilitation, part of that is how do we 

minimize food loss and maximize farm profits. So one of the things 

that we offer farmers are these bags that are hermetically sealed 

storage bags so you can store your grain for months, maybe even 

years at a time. They are developed at Purdue and they are great 

technology. They only cost a few dollars. So things like that and 

training farmers on how to store at home so they can safely store 

those crops are fundamental to post-harvest storage. 

Mr. THUROW. Yes, I was going to say that storage and storage 

innovation, I think, in this whole realm of agriculture development 

in addition to really emphasizing nutrition, but the storage and 

eliminating waste is the next holy grail of what needs to happen 

particularly with innovation. 

And David mentioned Purdue, but a lot of the universities and 

a lot of the research institutions here and elsewhere in the world 

and in the developing countries themselves are looking at precisely 

that question, because all the hard work that these farmers put 

into their crops and growing throughout the planting season and 

then have a third or half of their crops not even make it out of the 

field and onto the plate. Here in this country what is wasted is food 

that is prepared to be eaten and then not eaten or thrown away. 

There it doesn’t even get to the point of being prepared for consumption. 

Ms. WOO. So I just want to say there are four causes of food 

waste in Africa. Number one is people grow things that other peoVerDate 0ct 09 2002 13:22 Nov 12, 2015 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00039 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 F:\WORK\_AGH\100715\96908 SHIRL
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ple do not want. They are not high quality. They are harvested too 

early. They were rotted or whatever it is. Number one. 

Number two is the storage issue, that you want it but you want 

a storage to be careful so that it is not infested by pests or mold 

or whatever it is. The third thing is that there are no roads to take 

it to market so you have to sell to each other. The fourth is, even 

when you have roads, smallholder farmers are not sophisticated 

enough to engage a formal market. So it needs special assistance 

and building up that capacity. So I think that those are the four 

causes of food waste in Africa. 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you. Thank you, all three, for your great testimony, for your leadership on these important issues. It does help 

this subcommittee, and by extension the full committee and the 

Congress to do a better job. We are pushing very hard to get this 

legislation passed. It has already passed the Foreign Affairs Committee, which there is one other committee that needs to consider 

it and I am sure they will. So again thank you for your leadership. 

It is extraordinary. The hearing is adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 1:53 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.] 

(37)

A P P E N D I X 

MATERIAL SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD

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MATERIAL SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD BY THE HONORABLE CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, 

A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF NEW JERSEY, AND CHAIRMAN, 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON AFRICA, GLOBAL HEALTH, GLOBAL HUMAN RIGHTS, AND INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS


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