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MODERNIZING U.S. INTERNATIONAL FOOD AID:

REACHING MORE FOR LESS

HEARING

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED THIRTEENTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

JUNE 12, 2013

Serial No. 113–61

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 

TOM MARINO, Pennsylvania 

JEFF DUNCAN, South Carolina 

ADAM KINZINGER, Illinois 

MO BROOKS, Alabama 

TOM COTTON, Arkansas 

PAUL COOK, California 

GEORGE HOLDING, North Carolina 

RANDY K. WEBER SR., Texas 

SCOTT PERRY, Pennsylvania 

STEVE STOCKMAN, Texas 

RON DESANTIS, Florida 

TREY RADEL, Florida 

DOUG COLLINS, Georgia 

MARK MEADOWS, North Carolina 

TED S. YOHO, Florida 

LUKE MESSER, Indiana 

ELIOT L. ENGEL, New York 

ENI F.H. FALEOMAVAEGA, American 

Samoa 

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 

JUAN VARGAS, California 

BRADLEY S. SCHNEIDER, Illinois 

JOSEPH P. KENNEDY III, Massachusetts 

AMI BERA, California 

ALAN S. LOWENTHAL, California 

GRACE MENG, New York 

LOIS FRANKEL, Florida 

TULSI GABBARD, Hawaii 

JOAQUIN CASTRO, Texas

AMY PORTER, Chief of Staff THOMAS SHEEHY, Staff Director

JASON STEINBAUM, Democratic Staff Director 

(III)

C O N T E N T S 

Page

WITNESSES 

The Honorable Andrew Natsios, executive professor, The George H.W. Bush 

School of Government and Public Service, Texas A&M University (former 

Administrator of the United States Agency for International Development) ..................................................................................................................... 4

The Honorable Dan Glickman, executive director, Aspen Institute Congressional Program (former Secretary of Agriculture) ............................................. 14

LETTERS, STATEMENTS, ETC., SUBMITTED FOR THE HEARING 

The Honorable Andrew Natsios: Prepared statement .......................................... 6

The Honorable Dan Glickman: Prepared statement ............................................. 16

APPENDIX 

Hearing notice .......................................................................................................... 54

Hearing minutes ...................................................................................................... 55

The Honorable Adam Kinzinger, a Representative in Congress from the State 

of Illinois: Material submitted for the record .................................................... 57

Written responses from the Honorable Andrew Natsios to questions submitted 

for the record by the Honorable Luke Messer, a Representative in Congress 

from the State of Indiana .................................................................................... 58

(1)

MODERNIZING U.S. INTERNATIONAL FOOD 

AID: REACHING MORE FOR LESS 

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 12, 2013

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS,

Washington, DC. 

The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10 o’clock a.m., in 

room 2172 Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Edward Royce 

(chairman of the committee) presiding. 

Chairman ROYCE. This committee will come to order. If we could 

ask all of the members to take their seats. 

Today we meet to discuss bringing more flexibility and more efficiency and, at the end of the day, more effectiveness to U.S. international food aid. It was 60 years ago during the Eisenhower administration that the U.S. Government set up a system to buy surplus food and then to donate it overseas. 

In an effort to bolster domestic farmers and to assist shippers, 

this was mandated to be U.S. grown and U.S. shipped, and decades 

ago that may have made some sense. But farm markets have 

changed substantially since the policy was set in the Eisenhower 

administration. 

Food prices and U.S. agricultural exports have reached historic 

highs. In fact, the past 4 years have been the strongest in history 

for agricultural exports. Food aid now accounts for less than 1⁄2 percent of net farm income, and this farm subsidy can no longer be 

defended. 

Another impediment to an effective, efficient program is the requirement that 50 percent of U.S. food aid be shipped on U.S. flag 

vessels. Decades ago, this cargo preference was seen as a way to 

ensure a reserve of ships and crew for the U.S. Navy in times of 

war. 

But by restricting competition to the few U.S. flag ships still sailing, the majority of which do not meet the Maritime Administration’s age-based criteria. Cargo preference adds $140 million in 

transportation costs each year, and delivery times are lengthened 

by many, many months, which in times of emergency, in times of 

famine, doesn’t make a lot of sense. 

On average, only about two to four U.S. flag carriers place bids 

per food shipment, making the system prone to manipulation. Due 

to a complex set of holding companies, most of these American vessels are in fact foreign-owned. They are foreign-owned. 

As one witness will testify today, in the past decade 50 percent 

of the food aid budget has been eaten up by transportation costs. 

2

Fifty percent of the food aid budget eaten up by transportation 

costs. 

Today, the U.S. flag requirement simply serves the interests of 

a handful of companies. In fact, the Pentagon has determined that 

an easing of cargo preference requirements would have, in their 

view, no tangible effect upon U.S. maritime security. 

Perhaps the worst abuse of the U.S. food aid program is monetization, the process by which Washington supplies American commodities to private groups to then be sold overseas. The Government Accountability Office called monetization inherently inefficient and found that it resulted in a net loss of $219 million over 

3 years. Worse, dumping commodities often destroys local markets, 

putting local farmers out of business while increasing the dependency on food aid that we would like to see end. That is why you 

have seen some countries like Rwanda shut down this easily 

abused practice. 

Given our fiscal constraints, we must be prepared to do more 

with less. We must replace entitlements for a few with tools that 

would provide more flexibility, more efficiency, more effectiveness, 

and we can do this in a bipartisan way. 

I am encouraged that President Obama has proposed to loosen 

the restrictions on U.S.-bought commodities, so that more food can 

be brought closer to a crisis. With the farm bill scheduled for floor 

consideration this month, members will have a chance to advance 

these common sense reforms. 

In recent years, there has been a lot of focus in Washington on 

foreign assistance reform. In my eyes, this food aid reform proposal 

is an acid test. If Congress can’t agree to help more people in less 

time and at less cost, then there is little hope for broader foreign 

aid reform. And I hope we can do better than that. 

But I will now turn to our ranking member, Mr. Engel, from 

New York for his opening remarks. 

Mr. ENGEL. Well, thank you. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for holding this very timely hearing and for your 

leadership in tackling the issue of food aid reform. We have been 

working together on this, and we see these things in exactly the 

same way, and I think that is very, very important. 

Administrator Natsios, welcome. 

Secretary Glickman, it is great to have you back where you belong. For many years, you served in this body as a member of the 

House and very distinguished—in a very distinguished way, and 

then as Agriculture Secretary, of course, and we are all aware of 

the good work that you have done through the years. And so welcome to you as well. 

Since 1954, the Food for Peace Program has fed more than 1 billion people around the world and saved countless lives. This reflects the compassion and generosity of the American people, and 

it is something that we should all be proud of. However, despite its 

great success, Food for Peace is now showing its age and is in urgent need of reform. One of the key problems with the current system is that it takes too long to deliver U.S.-grown food aid, an average of 130 days. That is a long time. 

By purchasing food in the recipient country or region, we can cut 

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fore it is too late. Hunger pangs shouldn’t be subject to shipping 

schedules. In addition, it is very expensive to transport the food 

from the U.S. heartland to recipient countries. In fact, shipping, 

transportation, and handling costs accounts for approximately half 

of the food aid budget. We can save hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars by purchasing food aid closer to the destination countries. 

And, thirdly, the current system sometimes harms agricultural 

markets in the countries we are trying to help. This is the result 

of a somewhat bizarre process called monetization in which nongovernmental organizations sell U.S. commodities overseas in order 

to fund other development projects. Doesn’t make any sense to me. 

In my travels to Haiti, I have seen firsthand how the sale of 

American rice under this well-intentioned program has driven local 

rice farmers out of business, thus making it harder for Haitians to 

feed themselves. Monetization is also exceedingly wasteful. According to the GAO, at least 25 cents of every dollar is lost during this 

process. I commend the President, I commend the administration 

for its food aid reform proposal, and I am pleased to support it, 

along with Chairman Royce, whom I also commend. 

In this time of increasing political polarization, I think it is a testament to the strength of good ideas and common sense, and this 

plan has garnered bipartisan support on Capitol Hill and from 

groups as disparate at the Heritage Foundation and Oxfam. And 

on this committee particularly, the chairman and I have worked together to promote bipartisanship. And this is another example of 

bipartisanship and it is all good. 

Sometimes it seems that we lose sight of why we have a food aid 

program in the first place. It isn’t to subsidize growers, shippers, 

or NGOs. It is to prevent men, women, and children in the developing world from starving to death. 

For those who worry about the impact of this proposal on the 

farm community, there is a reason why Cargill, the National Farmers Union, and other ag interests have expressed support for additional flexibility in our food aid programs. 

Mr. Chairman, the easy thing is to do nothing on the issue of 

food aid reform. But the right thing to do is to enact sensible reforms that save taxpayer money and, most importantly, save lives. 

I look forward to working with you to get some of these reforms 

implemented, and I look forward to hearing from our distinguished 

witnesses. 

I yield back the balance of my time. 

Chairman ROYCE. Thank you, Mr. Engel. 

We have two distinguished witnesses here today, Mr. Natsios—

well, we were—in the interest of time, we were going to move forward at this point, and perhaps during your 5 minutes you could 

get that 1-minute statement in, if that is all right, Mr. Sherman. 

Mr. Natsios is an executive professor at the School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University. For 6 years he 

served as Administrator of U.S. Agency for International Development. He served as U.S. Special Envoy to Sudan, and as vice president of World Vision. 

Secretary Glickman is the executive director of the Aspen Institute, the congressional program there, and he served as the U.S. 

4

Secretary of Agriculture for 6 years. And before his appointment as 

Secretary of Agriculture, he served for 18 years in the U.S. House 

of Representatives representing the fourth congressional district of 

Kansas. 

So we welcome you both. And without objection, the witnesses’ 

full prepared statements will be made part of the record. Members 

have 5 days to submit statements and questions for the record. And 

I would ask if you could summarize your statements. 

Mr. Natsios, we will begin with you. Thank you. 

STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE ANDREW NATSIOS, EXECUTIVE PROFESSOR, THE GEORGE H.W. BUSH SCHOOL OF GOVERNMENT AND PUBLIC SERVICE, TEXAS A&M UNIVERSITY 

(FORMER ADMINISTRATOR OF THE UNITED STATES AGENCY 

FOR INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT) 

Mr. NATSIOS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for the opportunity to talk about an issue close to my heart. About 10 years 

ago, when I was aid administrator, we proposed a similar reform, 

which didn’t go quite as far, because we wanted to just try it out, 

that 25 percent of Title 2 of the Food for Peace Act would be used—

could be used at the discretion of the Administrator of Aid and the 

Director of Food for Peace Office and Aid for local purchase. 

I presented the proposal to the Coalition of Food Aid, and I was 

astonished at the hostility of the reaction. When interest groups assemble around a particular law, they can get quite aggressive. 

So this is not a partisan issue. This was proposed by President 

Bush. It has been proposed by President Obama, and they don’t exactly agree with each other on a lot of issues. So given the comprehensiveness of the coalition behind this—Oxfam, the Heritage 

Foundation, there are conservators behind it, liberals behind it. 

Mr. Chairman, you have shown great leadership on this issue yourself. This is the time to approve these reforms. 

There are four arguments for this. I will make them very quickly, 

and then talk about three cautions on this. The first is it saves 

time. When I was in charge of the Somalia response during the Somalia famine of 1991/’92 in which a 1⁄4 million people died, I literally watched children die while we waited for food to arrive. It 

took 2 to 3 months. That is the thing that shocked me into realizing we needed changes to the system, but it wasn’t my place at 

that point to propose the changes. Once I became Aid Administrator, it was a different story. 

So there is a time factor. You have to order the food in the Midwest. It gets put on ships. It is shipped down the Mississippi River 

usually, depending on where it comes from in the U.S. It can go 

7,000 miles to the other side of the world. It is offloaded, put onto 

trucks, and then moved to the famine or the emergency. 

Frequently, it is through a war zone. Frequently, it is through 

a war zone. We have gone through several war zones, in some 

cases, to get the food to where it belongs. If the food is bought locally, in a local market, you can avoid a 7,000-mile supply chain. 

Amartya Sen, who won the Nobel Prize for economics—he is a 

friend of mine, a professor at Harvard, and he wrote the seminal 

work on famine economics. And he argues that that supply chain 

makes it dysfunctional to use food aid under these circumstances 

5

when there is an emergency that is right in front of us or we have 

to respond very quickly. 

People cannot wait for food aid and can’t suspend their nutritional requirements. They simply die. And I have watched too 

many people die in these emergencies over the last 23 years while 

I have been involved in humanitarian work. 

Secondly, it saves money. The cargo preference law, with one or 

two exceptions over the last 20 years, has required us to spend 

much more money to ship than it would have been if we had gone 

to a free and open market. I am a free trader, and I think if we 

open this up to competition internationally we would not have to 

spend this much on shipping. So there is a cost savings involved 

here. 

In addition, with respect to monetization, the two ranking members have mentioned the arguments—I am not going to repeat 

them, but I ran these programs when I was at World Vision, so I 

know very much the limitations. I used to sit and say, ‘‘Why are 

we doing this? This doesn’t make sense.’’

The reason NGOs do it is because it is a source of revenue to run 

programs. And I understand people would say, ‘‘Well, we have to 

run the programs, Andrew.’’ I said, ‘‘Yes, but we are damaging local 

markets, and this is not efficient.’’ We have just spent half of the 

budget getting the food to where it is going, and then we only get 

back a portion of the value of the commodity when it is auctioned 

off in local markets. 

So monetization doesn’t make sense from a financial standpoint, 

and programmatically and economically doesn’t make sense. I 

think, given the savings, we can in fact feed more people. 

And, finally, we can encourage local agriculture. The World Food 

Program, in order to provide food aid to the people in southern 

Sudan during the civil war, made arrangements with farmers in 

northern Uganda over many years to produce the food locally, grow 

the food locally, and that stimulated agricultural development and 

stimulated markets. It strengthened markets. It put more money 

in poor people’s pockets, and it was much faster and more efficient. 

We know it works because we have already tried it. This is not 

experimental. The two things—three things I would mention is 

that we should take out the requirements, but don’t put new requirements in. That is to say, there is one instance where we do 

want to be able to auction food off in local markets. 

One of the causes of famines is spikes in food prices, massive 

price increases over a short period of time. We have three or four 

times in the last 20 years intervened in markets to auction food off 

to stabilize prices. When prices go up 700 to 1,000 percent in 3 

months, if that happened in the United States we would have hungry people. In fact, some people might even die here if that happened. It happens regularly in famines. 

We want the flexibility to be able to do that, and so the decision 

as to whether or not to use market intervention should be left with 

the Director of Food for Peace at the lowest level and not put into 

law to protect interest groups in the United States. 

So I think, frankly, if we do these things, we do it right, we will 

strengthen the Food for Peace Program. It is a wonderful program. 

It is a jewel in the United States. We have saved millions of peoVerDate 0ct 09 2002 10:23 Oct 17, 2013 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00009 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 F:\WORK\_FULL\061213\81508 HFA PsN: SHIRL
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ple’s lives. The question is, can we improve the system? And the 

answer is, yes, we can. These reforms do that; I support them. 

Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Natsios follows:]


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Chairman. ROYCE. Thank you, Mr. Natsios. 

Mr. Glickman. 

STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE DAN GLICKMAN, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, ASPEN INSTITUTE CONGRESSIONAL PROGRAM (FORMER SECRETARY OF AGRICULTURE) 

Mr. GLICKMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member 

Engel, members. It is a delight to be here. I look up on the walls. 

I see Ben Gilman, Henry Hyde, Dante Fascell, Tom Lantos, and 

Clem Zablocki. Without dating myself, I served with all of these 

people. So it is just a great joy to be here at this committee room. 

First of all, it is an honor to be here with Andrew Natsios, who 

very few people can claim the fact that they have saved hundreds 

of thousands of lives, and he and his agency have done that. So, 

and the Bush administration I must commend for their great efforts in these areas, particularly in global AIDS health, TB, and 

the food part of it has been remarkable. It is bipartisan. It is one 

of the things that makes America unique and great, and it is something that we should continue to reinforce. 

I am going to—my statement talks about the great humanitarian 

needs which are increasing. We see that happening in the Middle 

East right now. The commitment is bipartisan, which we see from 

the chairman’s own bill that he has talked about with Mr. Engel, 

Congresswoman Bass, and others. And we see a consensus growing 

on issues that Andrew talked about, which are need for greater 

flexibility, using cash transfers and food vouchers where appropriate, but supplying commodities in those cases where it is appropriate, not a one size fits all situation, great efficiency. 

We talked about the losses that are in the current way we do 

business, and greater impact is achieved by having this more flexibility. But I thought I would talk a little bit about the agriculture 

side of this picture because of the impact on American farmers and 

ranchers and what this all means. 

And as a former USDA Secretary, it is critical to underscore the 

benefits of food aid reform to agriculture. So we started this program in part because of big surpluses and the American moral desire to help the rest of the world, and those two facts work together. 

More than 60 years later, U.S. agriculture productivity remains 

high. In 2002, agriculture was one of four categories with a U.S. 

trade surplus. Changes in U.S. agricultural policy and rising consumer demand outside of our country, where 95 percent of the people live, ensure that commodities not needed for American consumption now flow quickly into thriving global markets. 

That means that food aid procurements have become an increasingly smaller proportion of U.S. overall commercial agriculture 

sales. From 2002 to 2011, the Food for Peace Program procured 

less than 1 percent of the total food that was exported from the 

United States. The volume of food assistance provided by the U.S. 

has been steadily declining over time due to higher food prices and 

lower overall appropriations for the program. 

From 2002 to 2011, the purchases of U.S. food aid by the U.S. 

Government declined from 5 million to 1.8 million metric tons. 

Given these changes, the future interests of U.S. agriculture are 

15

less in the provision of U.S. food aid and, to a greater extent, in 

the development of stable, thriving economies that can create new 

markets for American business and new consumers for American 

products and developing stronger economies and bringing these 

countries out of poverty. 

The opportunities for American farmers for overseas are no 

longer on our soil but dependent on purchases and trade with countries overseas. Developing countries accounted for 97 percent of 

global population growth in 2012, and it is anticipated that nearly 

all future population growth will be in the world’s less developed 

economies. 

So it is firmly in the interest of American farmers to support 

greater efficiencies and flexibility within our food aid system, so 

that we can provide more food to more people and support the local 

and regional agricultural development systems of future trading 

partners. This would promote the well-being and health of populations and potential future consumers, opening up new trade and 

investment opportunities for U.S. agribusiness. 

As the chairman mentioned, both the National Farmers Union 

and Cargill recently expressed support for food aid efforts. Cargill 

said it is time that we reassess the current program to make certain it is efficient and effective in meeting the needs and flexibility, 

and we can move people on the brink of starvation to the brink of 

development. 

For example, South Korea, once a huge recipient of U.S. food aid, 

is now America’s sixth largest trading partner and, in 2011, imported more than $4 billion worth of agriculture commodities from 

the United States. This can happen to the developing world in Africa and South Asia and Latin America, not overnight, and we realize that many of these countries, because of humanitarian desires 

and needs, will still need some food aid. There is no question about 

it. But we need to transition ourselves to building their economies, 

so that they can buy more from us. 

In conclusion, the world has long possessed the collective resources and knowledge to end global hunger. What has often been 

lacking is the political will and sustained leadership at the highest 

levels of government. I think we now have broad agreement on 

what needs to be done to improve our food aid programs, and we 

must seize the opportunity. 

With your leadership, with the leadership of the Obama administration, the historic leadership of the Bush administration, I am 

confident that we can modernize these programs, make them much 

more flexible to help the world, to help the humanitarian needs of 

people overseas, and to help America’s farmers and ranchers as 

well. 

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Glickman follows:]

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Chairman ROYCE. Let me go to Mr. Natsios for a question about 

emergency aid to Syria that might make my point and your point 

here. The majority of food aid we have been discussing is through 

the Department of Agriculture’s Food for Peace. Now, there is a 

small separate emergency food security program that USAID set 

up. All right? 

This emergency program allows for cash resources to be used for 

local and regional purchases of food and food vouchers. And as I 

understand it, if not for the flexibility of that program, USAID 

would not have been able to launch a rapid food response to the 

Syrian crisis, and here is why: Because it is a very stark contrast. 

The first shipment, U.S. food shipment, just arrived in the region 

in Syria. Just arrived 2 weeks ago. That is 2 years after the crisis 

began. But even with this shipment, it is now the case that trucking it in to the population in need, because of the difficulties of 

doing that, it is not conceivable to move major portions of food by 

truck into those regions on a daily basis, because there is a daily 

assault by the Syrian military unit. So that isn’t likely to happen. 

So this old structure, you know, frankly, comes 2 years late. And 

now the food aid is in country, but how do you get it to the region 

most in need, to those most in need? 

So with a more flexible program, it seems to me, we have been 

able to respond quickly, we have been able to maintain access and 

help keep local markets running and reduce the probability of aid 

dependency over the long term, but I would like to just ask you for 

your thoughts on that, Mr. Natsios. 

Mr. NATSIOS. Well, this goes back, Mr. Chairman, to this comment of Amartya Sen that when you have a 7,000-mile supply 

chain a lot of things can happen along the way. It is not just in 

the country. We had pirates in Somalia steal or take two ships. 

They pirated two ships of food aid from the World Food Program 

over a number of years, and we never saw it. Another shipment of 

food sank in a storm. 

The warehouses down in Galveston, we were crossing our fingers 

when Hurricane Katrina—it barely missed those warehouses. We 

would have had people die because those warehouses had been destroyed. They weren’t, but it was very close. 

So the longer the supply chain, the more bad things can happen. 

But particularly the most serious problem we face is in civil wars 

where there is food and security. And most of the food now—82 

percent of all food from Food for Peace is now going to emergencies, 

which is usually civil wars and famines. Most famines are also an 

offshoot of civil wars. The two things are a toxic mix with each 

other. 

And what usually happens is one side sees the food coming in, 

because it is very visible. You can’t hide 100,000 tons of food. You 

can’t ship it electronically through a banking system, which you 

can do with cash, to an NGO doing local vouchers, for example. It 

is a giant red flag. And if a particular side in the civil war wants 

to starve their opponents to death, the way you do it is you blow 

up the food shipments. 

And this is not new. The Sudanese Government starved hundreds of thousands of southerners to death during the Sudanese 

civil war which killed 4 million people over 50 years. There were 

22

two civil wars, actually. And a lot of those people died of starvation 

because the government used the very long supply chain, the logical system to get food in, to simply stop the shipments. 

Mengistu did the same thing, the Marxist dictator of Ethiopia, in 

1990 and ’91, and he was blowing up our shipments of food convoys 

going into Ethiopia because he was trying to starve the Tigrayans 

and the Eritreans to death during a famine. 

And the way we in fact got around that is I, with congressional 

approval, used a couple of million dollars in the OFDA budget, 

which is a separate emergency account. It is not supposed to be 

used for food purchase. Not by law—by law we could do it—but the 

congress said that is for health and water and sanitation and shelter. The Food for Peace budget is for food. 

But in this particular case, they let us do it. We bought 20,000 

tons of sorghum in a surplus area that Mengistu did not control. 

We moved it into the famine area. We saved tens of thousands of 

people’s lives by doing that. That is where I got convinced in that 

1990 famine that this is the best way to approach this. And you, 

Mr. Chairman, have just pointed out not a 20-year-old example but 

a current example of exactly the same thing happening in Syria. 

Chairman ROYCE. And I think now we need to go to the cargo 

preference, the impact on competition there. So I am going to ask 

you a couple of questions, because USAID reports that on average 

only two to four companies respond to solicitations to ship food aid 

to begin with. How does the lack of competition among shippers impact cost, and how does it impact accountability? I am going to ask 

you those questions, and then I would also—you know, during your 

tenure at USAID, we began to become involved in a number of 

major conflicts. 

So I am going to ask you if during your tenures were any private 

U.S. flag commercial vessels called upon to protect U.S. maritime 

security during that period of time? And to your knowledge, since 

the Cargo Preference Act was enacted back in 1954, have any private U.S. flag commercial vessels ever been called upon to protect 

U.S. maritime security? 

And I will just finish with this last question: Should U.S. flag 

vessels that fail to meet the eligibility criterion for the maritime security program continue to be eligible for cargo preference? 

Mr. NATSIOS. Well, I didn’t want to start casting aspersions on 

different industries, Mr. Chairman, but I am not a supporter of the 

cargo preference law, particularly with respect to USAID. It has 

outlived its usefulness. The argument during the Cold War was 

that we needed our Merchant Marine because there was an existential threat to the survival of the United States during World 

War II and then during the Cold War. And it was real, and we 

needed to protect our domination of the world sea lanes. 

That is no longer the case. The threats to the United States are 

not of the same character. We are not facing a superpower that is 

threatening whole regions of the world. The threat now is completely different. Al-Qaeda is not threatening the sea lanes of the 

world; they are threatening terrorist acts in particular countries, 

but they are not the same kind of threat. 

And so the general justification for the cargo preference law, in 

my view, doesn’t exist anymore. And I think your questions answer 

23

themselves, Mr. Chairman. There is no justification for doing this, 

particularly when there has been such a huge decline in the 

amount of tonnage we have been able to buy, because there has 

been a big increase in food prices. And there is an argument from 

some reputable economists that we are not going to go back to the 

era of cheap food anymore. 

There has been a huge decline in the volume of food aid we have 

been able to deliver, and the principal source of most food aid in 

the international system is the U.S. Government. It is not other 

countries. We are the greatest agricultural power in the world. I 

mean, our farmers are the best in the world and the most efficient 

and the highest quality. 

But the reality is prices are going up, and so we are able to buy 

less food. We need the reforms now in order to buy more food with 

a fixed budget, given the fiscal constraints that the Federal Government is facing. So——

Chairman ROYCE. Thank you, Mr. Natsios. 

We will go to Mr. Engel. 

Mr. ENGEL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. Natsios, we often hear from opponents of food aid reform 

that the current system doesn’t need to be changed, that there is 

plenty of flexibility with the positioning, especially with the positioning of food stocks and limited cargo preference waivers that we 

have enough flexibility now. 

In your experience as USAID Administrator, do you believe that 

is the case? 

Mr. NATSIOS. No, I do not believe it. If I did, I wouldn’t have 

come all the way from Texas to testify. I wouldn’t have gotten 

President Bush to offer these reforms, which, by the way, he enthusiastically embraced when we explained them to him. And he has 

been an advocate even after he left office of these reforms. 

So I think the notion that the current system works well, the 

facts don’t support that. And I might add, it is not from one source 

that it is making this argument. The General Accounting Office 

has done a whole series of papers over two decades. 

Professor Chris Barrett, a colleague of mine at Cornell University, wrote a book some years ago about this. USAID’s internal 

studies show these reforms are necessary. OMB research shows it. 

The Center for Global Development has done an excellent brief on 

this paper, on this reform, and they have endorsed it. I mean, you 

can go through a whole series of sources all arguing reform is necessary. 

I am not aware of one single source, other than special interest 

groups, who are affected financially by these reforms, who think 

the current system works well and works to our advantage. 

Mr. ENGEL. Can you share with us an example of how the current food aid authorities hindered your ability to get food into 

emergency relief situations in a timely manner? 

Mr. NATSIOS. Yes. In Somalia, we were caught. Because the famine was connected to a civil war, the U.N. had withdrawn, the 

International Committee of the Red Cross had withdrawn, and we 

had shut down the aid mission. There was literally no one there—

this was 1991—to see what was going on until it was too late. 

24

When I realized that there was actually—I went myself because 

I heard these reports that were trickling out. And when I saw the 

conditions, I was shocked how bad things were. It took 3 months 

to ship the stuff just to port. And because there was chaos in the 

country, it took even more months to get it to the epicenter of the 

famine. 

So that specific instance was very clear, because I watched it myself on the ground. The second instance is the Ethiopian famine 

that I mentioned earlier. It didn’t become a famine because we intervened in 1990, because we used a provision of OFDA’s very limited budget, and we couldn’t—what we did was we took money out 

of the health budget and the water budget, which kills people if 

you don’t spend enough on it, to purchase food in one part of Ethiopia and move it to another. 

Had we had more money and more flexibility in the Food for 

Peace account, we could have done that on a much larger scale. 

More recently, the Somali famine of 2 years ago, the same thing 

happened. 

Al-Qaeda did not want the United States Government providing 

food aid, and I will tell you why. When we responded to the Aceh 

tsunami, al-Qaeda’s poll ratings collapsed. I don’t know if you know 

this, but they had a 63 percent approval rating, Bin Laden in Indonesia, before the Aceh tsunami, which took place I think in December of ’04, as I recall. Yes, ’04, December of ’04. 

After the U.S. Government’s response, which was USAID and the 

U.S. military, his poll ratings went down to 26 percent, and our 

poll ratings, which had been at 23 percent, went up to 57 percent. 

So we had a massive spike in our popularity and a massive decline 

in his popularity because of our responses. 

Now, I am not suggesting we just save people’s lives to get more 

public support, but it has a consequence when we do it. A third example would be the Syrian example that was just mentioned by the 

chairman. The Syrian Government is trying to starve the opposition into surrender. The Sudanese Government did the same thing 

in southern Sudan over 22 years of civil war. 

What did WFP do with European money, not American money 

because we couldn’t use our food aid budget for this purpose, is 

they went to northern Uganda to farmers and said, ‘‘Grow the food 

locally; we will ship it in. It is much faster and the Sudanese Government can’t stop it through Port Sudan.’’ And that is what they 

did. 

The Europeans went, and the Canadians, the biggest producer of 

food, went to 100 percent local purchase a long time ago. We are 

the last remaining outliers in this because of interest group opposition. 

Mr. ENGEL. Thank you. I would like to just quickly ask Mr. 

Glickman a question. You served as Agriculture Secretary, and 

with distinction I might add. And you mentioned in your opening 

testimony something that surprised me initially is that the agriculture community is not opposed to this reform plan resolutely. 

The National Farmers Union, as you mentioned, Cargill, and others, who are supportive of some of the President’s proposal, are 

calling for more flexibility. If you didn’t know that, you would think 

it would be counterproductive at first blush. So why is that? 

25

Mr. GLICKMAN. Well, first of all, I think the agriculture community is probably split on this subject, being honest with you. And 

I think a lot of people are either fearful of what might happen if 

we don’t have a statutory requirement that the overwhelming majority of the food aid that is sent is in commodities, because I think 

they fear that maybe with budget issues or other things it won’t 

get the same priority here in the Congress or the administration. 

But I think there is the growing recognition that we need a heck 

of a lot more flexibility. It is not all or nothing, and I think what 

the chairman is proposing, and what the administration is proposing, is just upping the amount of cash. 

Mr. ENGEL. Do you think this would have much of an impact on 

American farm income? 

Mr. GLICKMAN. No. In fact, my judgment is over the long term, 

this is a big plus for American agriculture, because it will create 

the opportunity for countries to become more self-sufficient and buy 

more things from us. And there are examples around the world, in 

Southeast Asia, and I mentioned Korea and others. It is tough in 

sub-Saharan Africa and other places to do this in the short term, 

but they desperately need us to help them become more food selfsufficient. 

If I may just say that I owe a lot of my own knowledge of this 

to Catherine Bertini, who was head of the World Food Program for 

10 years, and she and I co-chaired an effort for the Chicago Council 

on Global Affairs called Advancing Global Food Security, which I 

would encourage to the committee it could be part of the record, 

whatever you would want to do. 

And it goes into great detail about what countries can do for 

themselves. And we need a combination of cash and commodities 

with much greater flexibility. And I think when the agriculture 

community realizes that, I think you are going to see more support 

than there has been in the past. But, yes, there is clearly some 

support. 

[NOTE: The material submitted for the record by Mr. Glickman 

is not reprinted here but is available in committee records or may 

be accessed on the Internet at: http://www.thechicagocouncil.org/

UserFiles/File/GlobalAgDevelopment/Report/2013lAdvancingl

GloballFoodlSecurity.pdf (accessed 7/10/13).] 

Mr. ENGEL. Thank you, Mr. Glickman. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman ROYCE. Thank you, Mr. Engel. 

We go now to the chairman of the Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, Human Rights, and International Organizations, Mr. 

Smith of New Jersey. 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, for calling this 

very important hearing. 

Welcome to our two very distinguished witnesses who have done 

so much for so long to save lives. And having worked with Mr. 

Natsios for so long when he was doing emergency help for refugees 

and others, particularly getting food aid out—and I remember 

those Mengistu years. They were awful, when he used food as a 

weapon. 

I visited Banda Aceh after it was devastated by the 2004 tsunami, and you, Mr. Natsios, pointed out that the Indonesian ForVerDate 0ct 09 2002 10:23 Oct 17, 2013 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00029 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 F:\WORK\_FULL\061213\81508 HFA PsN: SHIRL
26

eign Minister asked us not to send rice. We did it anyway. And 

then you said the rice farmers were almost completely ruined. I 

would hope that you could elaborate on that, because I think that 

is a very poignant story and needs to be elaborated on. 

Secondly, you have testified that as many as 4 million people receive food aid, and you mentioned that Elliot and McKitterick said 

that as many as 10 million could be reached if we went with local 

purchase. That is a big disparity, but it also is all in one direction. 

Maybe you might want to touch on that further. 

And the response time issue, which you strongly highlighted, 

USDA 130 days to purchase—to actual delivery as compared with 

56 days for local purchase, a whopping 74-day time when people 

could be literally starving. I wonder if you could perhaps elaborate 

on that a little bit as well. 

And, finally, you mentioned in your testimony, with regards to 

the Food for Peace Program, when you break out the 49 percent 

savings, you have a number of variables in there. Seventeen percent, 17.6, for ocean freight; inland freight is 7.5 percent of the additional cost. Internal transport, storage, and handling is 24.3 percent. 

And my question is about local purchase. Could you define that 

more clearly for the committee, because obviously in some war-ravaged and famine-ravaged areas local purchase could be two countries away, or several countries away? Just so we have a real sense 

of accuracy about what the true savings are. 

There is no doubt that the savings are enormous, and the potential for lives saved is, in similar fashion, enormous. But just so we 

have clarity on that. 

Mr. NATSIOS. Just to answer your last question first, the data, 

which I have in a footnote, you know, in my testimony is aggregated over many years. It is not for one specific emergency. It varies very substantially. 

The food aid, for example, that went to Haiti, the costs were 

much lower. Why? Because Haiti is not too far from our coast. But 

the majority of food aid right now that we ship from the United 

States—not the majority, the overwhelming majority, 81 percent, 

goes to Africa. 

Mr. SMITH. Right. 

Mr. NATSIOS. And it goes to emergencies, not to stable areas 

where no one is shooting at you. When they shoot at you, the costs 

go up because you have to hire guards to protect the shipments 

from being looted, for example. 

Some of this cost is security, in fact, guards to prevent the warehouses from being looted in a civil war. So it depends on the area. 

The percentages will vary very substantially, but we know historically over the last 5 or 10 years where most of this aid has been 

going, and it has been going to sub-Sahara Africa. 

Now, that shifted because of what is happening in Libya now. 

Okay? So——

Mr. SMITH. If I can just be clear——

Mr. NATSIOS. Yes. 

Mr. SMITH [continuing]. The internal transport, storage, and handling, that cost is evaded when local purchase is used? Or is it 

evaded in some instances? 

27

Mr. NATSIOS. If we are shipping to Haiti, the cost is not going 

to be—the savings is not going to be as great, anywhere near as 

great. But that is not where most of the food is going. As I said, 

80 percent is going to Africa. That is much further distance away. 

If the emergency, like Liberia for example, is right on the coast 

and the food is going not too far inland, the savings will be less. 

If it goes to south Sudan or Ethiopia—Ethiopia doesn’t have its 

own port, for example, or when we had the Rwandan genocide 

going on, you have a huge number of miles for the shipments of 

food to go. 

The food that went to Darfur, we are still feeding people in those 

camps. It is very expensive to get food to Darfur. You have to go 

900 kilometers from the port to Darfur to get the food into those 

camps. 

Mr. SMITH. And where would the local procurement be for 

Darfur? 

Mr. NATSIOS. Darfur—what I would do if I were—had the authority, I would do it in northern Uganda or northern——

Mr. SMITH. But there would be some shipping costs, but it would 

be far less than——

Mr. NATSIOS. It would be far less. Exactly. 

Mr. SMITH. In terms of Banda Aceh—my time is almost out—you 

mentioned that the rice farmers were devastated. 

Mr. NATSIOS. Well, they had a choice. 

Mr. SMITH. Okay. 

Mr. NATSIOS. It wasn’t the rice farmers—it was the rice farmers 

in Haiti that were devastated, not in Indonesia. 

Mr. SMITH. Oh. It wasn’t clear from your testimony. 

Mr. NATSIOS. Right. In both cases, the Foreign Ministry asked us 

not to ship the food and we said, ‘‘We cannot ship it, but we cannot 

buy the food locally because we are not allowed to do that under 

the law.’’ And they said, ‘‘Oh, no, no, no, no. We have to have the 

food. We would prefer you to buy it locally.’’ I said, ‘‘So would we. 

But if we can’t, we will stop the shipment if you want.’’ And they 

said, ‘‘No, no, no. We need the food.’’ So we shipped it. 

It devastated the Haiti rice farmers after the earthquake which 

took place a couple of years ago. And Aceh, Indonesia, is a much 

larger market, so we did not destroy markets because the country 

is so large. But it damaged markets, and that is why, you know, 

if we had a choice we should have bought the food in Indonesia, 

which has functioning agricultural markets. 

Mr. SMITH. Well, as I saw and you saw and everyone else saw, 

the tsunami only went in 200, 300, 400 yards——

Mr. NATSIOS. That is right. 

Mr. SMITH [continuing]. And after that it was totally untouched. 

Mr. NATSIOS. Exactly. 

Mr. SMITH. Okay. I am not out of time. On the response time, 

130 days versus 56, 74 days, a huge improvement. That is a tremendous savings of time, which means life. Thank you for emphasizing that in your testimony. 

Mr. NATSIOS. Yes. 

Chairman ROYCE. Mr. Sherman of California. 

Mr. SHERMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

28

So far every minute in this room has been spent advocating food 

aid reform. If every minute had been spent up until now trashing 

food aid reform, I would spend my 5 minutes promoting it. But that 

is not the case. 

There are strong arguments for food aid reform. They were summarized well in the opening statements of the chairman and the 

ranking member. 

I believe one of the witnesses has testified that all of the questioning of reform has come from special interests, so this will be 

a new experience for you, since we will spend a few minutes. As 

to me being a special interest, I have zero farms in my district, I 

have zero ports in my district, I have zero ships in my district, and 

my state pretty much doesn’t grow anything you would want to 

ship in food aid because oranges are really not part of our disaster 

relief program. 

But the fact is that there are some arguments on the other side. 

The one place, though, where there are no arguments is you can’t 

let people starve in a disaster because of an inflexible statute. But 

much of our food aid could continue to be American-produced without that eventually happening. 

Now, we are told that we have the lion’s share of agricultural 

production; therefore, we provide the lion’s share of food aid. Well, 

if food aid is no longer food aid, food aid is just money to spend 

in northern Uganda, yen can be spent there as well as dollars, 

Euros are accepted with the same glee, and the real pressure 

should be, and is not really put by the United States on our European and Japanese friends, to provide their share of food aid now 

that food aid is money to be spent locally. 

As to shipping, I think it would be wrong to blame the 2-year 

delay in sending food to Syria on American ships. Most of that 

delay is not the speed of the ships. The current system of preferences may be very impaired, may be close to useless, but that 

doesn’t mean our choices abolish it or preserve it. 

We ought to give a preference only to U.S.-owned, U.S.-crewed 

ships that are not available to the military—and that may not be 

important to the military—but one thing we haven’t talked about 

here is our trade deficit, our need for U.S. jobs. 

You know, every part of the government could save money if we 

didn’t make them buy American, and then we would have a lot 

fewer jobs. Now, I am reluctant to give the State Department flexibility in any issue involving U.S. jobs and our trade deficit because 

they are almost hostile to even talking about the trade deficit. 

The last time I quizzed them they said there is no relationship 

between the trade deficit and U.S. jobs, so we need statutory formulas so that State will give due credit to U.S. jobs in shipping 

and agriculture. Otherwise, they will just give it lip service and 

say, ‘‘Well, they looked at it and then they hired the cheapest ship 

with zero U.S. sailors aboard.’’ And I think that given the size of 

the U.S. trade deficit, we should never have a discussion of international financial transactions that doesn’t include looking at the 

trade deficit. 

Let us see, we also have to take a look at the possible negative 

effect on the local market. If you go into northern Uganda, you 

don’t automatically create new food. You are buying food that was 

29

going to be sold in Kampala, and now you are buying it and sending it into Sudan. 

Maybe that is a good thing long term, because it gives farmers 

the money to improve their farms, or maybe it causes a famine or 

at least higher prices in urban Uganda. So we need to look at both 

the positive and negative effects on local markets. 

Finally, and I do have a question in here somewhere, our Indonesian experience demonstrated that where there is American food 

going to disaster victims—and everybody knows it is American food 

and it is grown in America, it has got an American flag on the 

bag—that we get a response that is helpful. 

Are we going to see a flag on a bag if the food inside isn’t grown 

in America? And are we going to see those who carry out the food 

aid find it even more convenient to obscure the fact that they have 

anything to do with the United States because they are more popular with those they have to work with and more immune from terrorist attack if they say all of this stuff is coming from Europeans 

and Canadians? Mr. Glickman? 

Mr. GLICKMAN. Okay. I will start this because—one is, under the 

President’s proposal, 55 percent of the food aid that would be going 

would be required to be in the form of commodities, and that is the 

first year. They had no language on what future years would be. 

I think they probably should have put in some language on that. 

And then under the chairman’s issue, he is not changing the percentage in a revolutionary way. So all we are trying to do is to provide more flexibility, so that local food purchases——

Mr. SHERMAN. But my question was, what do we lose in Indonesia if the food isn’t from the United States? 

Mr. GLICKMAN. I can’t answer that. The only thing I can tell you 

is that when I was Secretary, I was very much involved in both 

ways to both trade out and give out our excess and surplus commodities because we were growing way more than we could consume in this country. 

Those days are over, and the supply-demand lines in the future 

will not be anywhere like they were in the past. So given that, I 

do agree with you that to the extent possible we need to make sure 

we use all relevant means to let folks know that the aid is coming 

from America. And my judgment is the overwhelming percentage 

of the aid is still going to be in the form of commodities, because 

of humanitarian needs that both Mr. Natsios and the chairman 

have talked about. 

But at the same time, commodities are not suitable for everybody 

every place, and we should not be statutorily prevented from offering other ways of providing assistance. So I just think that this is 

a much more modern way to get our food and our aid into these 

desperate places that need it. That is my judgment. 

Mr. SHERMAN. Thank you. My time has expired. 

Mr. NATSIOS. Could I just add something with respect to Indonesia——

Mr. SHERMAN. Mr. Natsios. 

Mr. NATSIOS [continuing]. And the branding campaign? I put in 

place when I was Aid Administrator the branding campaign that 

says, ‘‘U.S. Aid from the American People.’’ So I am very familiar 

with it, very proud of it, but no one would argue that we should 

30

only provide aid if we get credit for it, because a lot of the aid we 

provide makes the difference between whether people live or die. 

You don’t kill children in order to get better public diplomacy. In 

fact, if people actually knew the reality, they might say, ‘‘Wait a 

second. You denied us aid in order to get credit for it?’’ That doesn’t 

make any sense. And I know, Congressman, that is not what you 

are suggesting, but we don’t want—we want to understand the purpose of this program, by statute, is to provide humanitarian assistance. Public diplomacy is an offshoot of it, and a good offshoot. 

Mr. SHERMAN. When we see al-Qaeda affiliated ‘‘humanitarian 

organizations’’ distributing aid that is actually paid for by the 

American people, because they get their hands on the bag, we have 

got a big problem for the American people. 

My time has expired. 

Mr. NATSIOS. Well, let me just answer that. The increase in our 

poll ratings in Indonesia, the dramatic improvement, and alQaeda’s collapse in the poll ratings, took place before one bag of 

any U.S. food arrived. It took place over a 3-month period, and that 

is how long it took to ship the food from the United States. 

So the data that I quoted to you, which is widely publicized, but 

it is in several reports that this happened, took place before any 

food aid arrived. And principally, as the chairman pointed out, or 

I guess it was Congressman Smith pointed out, this was not principally a food emergency because the Aceh tsunami came in a few 

hundred feet, killed a lot of people, and then it departed. But it 

didn’t destroy the agricultural system of Indonesia, and so it wasn’t 

principally a food emergency. We did send some food in. 

But in the branding campaign, every NGO, every contractor, 

every partner of the U.S. has to put a big brand on the thing ‘‘U.S. 

Aid from the American People,’’ red, white, and blue. And it is required. And we did this deliberately, and we also run some public 

service announcements on the media to show what we are doing. 

So there are ways, without putting the flag on every single bag, 

of making it clear to everyone where the aid is coming from. And 

I can give you other examples, if you are interested, in other areas 

of the world where there was no food aid involved and yet there 

was a huge increase in American approval ratings because of our 

aid program. Nothing to do with food. 

Chairman ROYCE. Let us go to Mr. Kinzinger. 

Mr. KINZINGER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am limited to 5 

minutes, so I am going to cut you guys off at 5 minutes, so that 

this is fair. 

I want to tag on to what Mr. Sherman was saying on that. 

Speaking very honestly, food aid, the reason we do it is for national 

defense. It is for defense policy. That is how I see it. I see, you 

know, foreign aid is—there is compassionate reasons, of course, but 

it is all really in interest of furthering American goals. 

One of the concerns I have, and it was mentioned, so I don’t want 

to keep rehacking this to death, is not only, will we lose the ability 

to put the American flag—I have a picture, by the way, here. This 

is what the—and you are very familiar with it, being involved, that 

this is what food aid looks like. It says, ‘‘From the American People, USAID.’’ It makes it very clear that that is directly American 

product. 

31

If we subcontract this out to a country that doesn’t—as Mr. Sherman was saying, does have these huge surpluses of agricultural 

goods, and, in many cases, we may actually be driving up the local 

commodity price for that local nation, and it comes out in the form 

of a voucher with no real obvious, you know, anything. 

And even if we do come around and say, ‘‘Okay. Well, we are 

going to have a way to put an American flag on this, so that they 

know, do we really want an American flag on commodities not 

grown in the United States?’’ with a different kind of maybe grain 

that is not up to an American standard, you know. 

And I think there is also a huge point of pride from an American 

perspective in terms of this was grown here and now we are feeding you with it. And so I just want to—I will give you another 

chance, and I am going to keep you guys very short on that, because, again, I want this to be fair back and forth. But I think we 

are losing, and it is a concern I have. 

And I am not fully decided on where to go on this, but I think 

we are losing a very impactful thing that we do, which is put right 

in front of the people of Afghanistan or Darfur, or wherever, that 

this is a gift grown in and from the American people. So I will give 

you another 15 to 20 seconds to address that, if you want. 

Mr. NATSIOS. Congressman, if you could put up that picture of 

the food voucher——

Mr. KINZINGER. Yes. 

Mr. NATSIOS [continuing]. It says on it, ‘‘U.S. Aid from the American People’’ on the right side. 

Mr. KINZINGER. Yes. But it is not quite the same as a bag with 

food. 

Mr. NATSIOS. We might want to make it a little bit bigger, but 

the point is it is there. And many of those bags actually don’t get 

in the hands of the people at the retail level who get the food. They 

get it in cans or in bags that they bring themselves. So they may 

never even see the bag. It depends. It depends on the circumstance. 

The other thing is, the NGOs that have trucks or vehicles bought 

with U.S. Government money, which is very often in these emergencies, has to have a thing on it that says, ‘‘U.S. Aid from the 

American People.’’ Everything has to be branded. In fact, some people are getting tired of the level of branding, because we are everywhere. I mean, there are tens of thousands of these projects all—

in fact, hundreds of thousands of these projects all over the world, 

not including food aid, that has that branding campaign. It is very 

clear in these emergencies where it is coming from. 

Even if the bag itself doesn’t have it on it——

Mr. KINZINGER. Just do this in 15 seconds, Congressman. 

Mr. NATSIOS. Sure. 

Mr. GLICKMAN. One is, my belief is a majority of food aid will 

continue to be in the form of commodities, just not statutorily required to have almost all of it because I think it—when you go—

like I spent time in Tanzania, Mozambique, and Kenya, and other 

places, where it is just clear from the people on the ground, from 

USAID and the World Food Program, and others, that they need 

the flexibility to do both. 

But I don’t see a day where we will not be giving food aid in the 

commodity form. I just think the majority. 

32

Second of all, you talk about national security. The main thing 

for national security is to build these economies up, so that they 

become more stable. They get these people out of poverty so that 

they can have an economic system that works, like in South Korea, 

where they used to depend almost entirely on food aid, and now 

they are one of our biggest customers. That is a big thing. 

And the third thing is just supply and demand. We just don’t 

have the food to give anymore. It is not in the quantities that we 

used to have, and that is going to continue. It will no longer——

Mr. KINZINGER. Yes. But you are saying—in one breath you are 

saying, ‘‘Boy, if we cut this off, it is less than 1 percent of agricultural products.’’ In another breath you are saying, ‘‘Boy, we just 

don’t have the food to continue to do this.’’ And I don’t—those two 

are competing goals. 

Mr. GLICKMAN. Not necessarily, because one of the foundations 

behind the Food Air Program was huge surpluses in the ’50s and 

’60s. 

Mr. KINZINGER. I understand that. 

Mr. GLICKMAN. We had them even when I was Secretary, you 

know, because we had low prices and high quantities of grain. I 

still think it is in our interest to provide traditional food assistance 

during many humanitarian disasters. Cash does not work everywhere. But we have tied our hands right now. 

Mr. KINZINGER. Thank you. And I just want to add, and then I 

will be done, in terms of the situation in Syria—and I know this 

is a little off topic, but I think that delay and everything there is 

a result of an administration that really doesn’t know where it is 

going in the Middle East, and, frankly, doesn’t know where it is 

going in foreign policy. And it is sad, but I think that is a result 

of what we have seen there. 

But, with that, thank you, gentlemen, and I yield back to the 

chairman. 

Chairman ROYCE. We will go to Gerry Connolly of Virginia. 

Mr. CONNOLLY. Gee, I was agreeing with my colleague from Illinois in some of his skeptical questioning until that very last editorial comment, and now I find myself on the opposite side. 

But welcome, both of you, and thank you so much for your service. I guess I have two concerns. I completely agree that we need 

more flexibility. I completely agree that in some circumstances, 

with the best of intentions, massive commodities flooding a market 

actually depress local production, depress local prices, and can have 

the opposite—I mean, they might feed people in the short run, but 

have the opposite effect in terms of long-term self-sustainability. 

And so we don’t want to be doing that. And if we can make it better, we certainly want to do that. 

But, Mr. Natsios, I have two sets of concerns, and I ask you, Secretary Glickman, to address them as well. I was a staffer in the 

Senate Foreign Relations Committee who helped write the last foreign aid bill to become law. That was 1986. It has been 27 years 

since we passed a foreign aid authorization bill. 

There is a reason for it. The coalition up here, after the Cold 

War, has fractured. It is extremely fragile. It is extremely difficult 

to find people to be enthusiastic about a bilateral foreign aid program of any kind. And anything that peels off support is a risk. 

33

And while we may look, in an ideal world, at what is the perfect 

public policy—and this may very well be it when it comes to food 

aid—I am concerned about the downsize. And who do we replace 

those lost supporters with up here? And I wonder, having run the 

aid program, Mr. Natsios, whether you might reflect a little bit on 

that because you certainly had to deal with that. 

And the second concern—I will just put both of them on the 

table—over and above the political consequences, you talked about 

the problems of managing large bulk commodities, correctly so. Logistics are tough, theft is rampant, spoilage is a problem, ships 

sink, pirates still—it is like we are talking about the 18th century, 

but pirates still, you know, capture ships, and so forth. 

But what you didn’t address, and I want you to, now let us look 

at the downsides of cash. Mr. Kinzinger talked, correctly I think, 

about there is an opportunity cost to the American taxpayer in 

terms of people not knowing, other than the central banker, that 

the taxpayers of America have helped. 

And then there is the issue of theft. I mean, commodities you get 

take a little work, if you are going to steal them. Cash is pretty 

easy. And we do know that our—you know, with the best of intentions, again, cash transfers are not corruption-free. 

So I wonder if you could address the downsides of those two aspects of what we are talking about here, understanding it is in the 

context of general support for improving a public policy. 

Mr. GLICKMAN. Can we both get——

Mr. CONNOLLY. Absolutely. Mr. Glickman, in fact, if you want to 

go first, Secretary Glickman. You actually have protocol; you go 

first. 

Mr. GLICKMAN. Well, no. I have more here, but——

Mr. CONNOLLY. You were a full Cabinet Secretary. 

Mr. GLICKMAN [continuing]. Not much. The politics worries me a 

little bit, I will be honest with you. You know, I mean, I have been 

up here. I know what life is like, and I know the difficulties of it. 

But I would say nobody is talking about going to a cash-only system. Nobody. Not the White House; they have a 55 percent minimum on commodities. Not the chairman, whose—I think his is 

even—the flexibility with a larger amount of commodities. 

I would not support going to a cash-only system. I don’t care 

what country does it, I think that is a mistake. We have to have 

the right to move this thing around. Somebody has to make some 

judgment calls. 

What we have now is we prevent judgment from being made as 

to what the wise thing to do is on a country-by-country basis. And 

Mr. Natsios talked about that. So from the political side of it, yeah, 

I worry a little bit about that this might fray the coalition a bit. 

But, you know, I would hope that we would be looking at the 

long-term national security interest of the United States in terms 

of having stronger developing nations that could be more politically 

stable and economically stable. But we are not going to a cash-only 

system. 

Mr. NATSIOS. Let me just mention, this is not cash to developing 

countries. We are giving cash to NGOs, and probably the best-run 

U.N. agency by far is the World Food Program. By far. And that 

is my experience over 23 years. 

34

And they have the highest level of accountability of any U.N. 

agency. When we give money to WFP, we are very—we are assured 

that it will be well spent. That is not true in all U.N. agencies. I 

don’t want to get into other names, but WFP is very well run. 

The NGOs that do emergency response, the International Rescue 

Committee, CARE, Catholic Relief Services—I am going to forget 

some now—World Vision, the institution I worked for—they have, 

with respect to their cash, actually higher levels of accountability 

than the food program, because food is—it is just much easier to 

steal. 

Now, if you compare our food programs to those of many other 

countries, we have very high levels of accountability. I am not arguing that. But it is not the commodity itself, whether it is cash 

or—it is the institution through which the program is being run. 

And we have a highly developed emergency response system that 

actually works very well, and we don’t have a lot of leakage in it, 

at least in the American part of it. 

Now, in terms of the politics of this, I have heard this argument 

before, and I—you know, I at first worried about it. However, there 

is one little interesting fact. There are two other big emergency accounts. One is the Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance. That was 

my first job under President Bush 41, 23 or 24 years ago. I am dating myself now. And that budget has steadily grown over 25 years. 

There have been no cuts in it. 

The refugee account, which is something like $800- or $900 million in State, until last year or the year before had not sustained 

cuts either, even during the 1990s when there were big cuts in the 

food—in the development program of U.S. Government. Massive 

cuts. Those two accounts were not cut. 

I think the reason that they didn’t get cut is that Congress, in 

both parties, supports humanitarian assistance in emergency situations far more than they do development assistance. Senator 

Helms, Jesse Helms, when he was in the Senate said, ‘‘I would 

abolish all foreign aid except for disaster relief.’’

Patrick Buchanan, not a big supporter of foreign aid, the first 

thing when he ran for President in 1992 he said, ‘‘Abolish all foreign aid except for disaster relief.’’ So even on the very conservative 

wing of the Republican Party, even the more isolationist wing, they 

support emergency response/disaster relief because it is very popular in a bipartisan way in the Congress. That is the reason that 

the budgets have been sustained even during difficult times. 

And the final thing I would just emphasize is when President 

Bush proposed the reform, we said 25 percent. I would not support 

a requirement that we go to an entirely cash response. I don’t 

think the political support for Food for Peace is going to decline because only half of the budget goes to buy American food. 

I would support a maximum, personally, of 50 percent. We proposed 25 percent when we——

Mr. CONNOLLY. Sold. 

Mr. NATSIOS [continuing]. Learned that 75 percent would have to 

be purchased in the United States. We just want more flexibility 

in emergencies where a response through NGOs with cash and 

vouchers is a more appropriate way, given the security situation 

and the economics of what we are facing. 

35

Chairman ROYCE. The gentleman’s time has expired. 

We will go now to Mr. Perry from Pennsylvania. 

Mr. PERRY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

And thank you very much, gentlemen, for being here. First of all, 

I agree with the chairman that the current International Food Aid 

Program suffers from gross inefficiencies and that we in Congress 

absolutely must strive to do better and be better stewards of the 

taxpayers’ dollars. 

However, I would like some clarification on the oversight of proposed local purchase programs which are designed to be more cost 

effective, and this is most to—this question I think would be to Mr. 

Natsios. 

My concern is that food could be brought from a broker who 

could collect the commodity from various sources and not just from 

local area farmers. And so I wonder, how can we ensure that local 

purchase programs are actually locally and regionally grown programs, not just providing U.S. taxpayer funds to fuel our agricultural competitors? 

Mr. NATSIOS. Well, the areas in which there are emergency—because 80 percent of this food goes to civil wars, famines, disaster 

relief. These are not the most stable and prosperous countries in 

the world. Believe me, they are not our competitors. This is not 

going to Brazil or Argentina or middle income countries. It is going 

to southern Sudan, it is going to Ethiopia, to Somalia, to Syria. 

They are not our competitors. 

But you are right in terms of the risk of middlemen taking the 

money. In the first year that the World Food Program ran the local 

purchase program in northern Uganda, that is exactly what happened and they corrected the program. They corrected the problem. 

They cut out the middlemen and went directly themselves to the 

farmers. They did not use middlemen after they realized what was 

happening. So there is that risk if you don’t run it properly. 

What the intention is for USAID, and I have talked to some of 

the career officers, is to integrate this with our agriculture programs. If we have an agriculture program in Uganda, and one in 

Ethiopia, for example, one of the most food-insecure countries in 

the world, the idea would be to get the NGOs and the contractors 

that are doing the agriculture program to be integrated with our 

food local purchase program. 

It would tell them we want a system put in place, so that if we 

are facing a multi-year emergency, which happens in these famines 

often, it is not just for a few months that you distribute food. We 

would use the agriculture development funding of USAID as a way 

of producing more food for there to be local purchase. You integrate 

the two, which we wanted to do for years but we couldn’t do it because we couldn’t do the local purchase. 

But you are right, there is the risk, but the NGOs and the World 

Food Program I think have done a very good job in seeing to it that 

those risks are alleviated through good programming. 

Mr. PERRY. Certainly we know that the recipients of the food 

aren’t competitors, right? That is obvious. But it is where the food 

is coming from. Are you suggesting that the controls that are put 

in place—and you talked about Uganda in the past, so I would be 

interested to know how that was handled and if you are supporting 

36

a legislative fix or if you would be supportive or you are advocating 

for flexibility within USAID or the other organizations involved to 

do it themselves, and then how would we monitor, how would we 

ensure oversight and accountability. 

Mr. NATSIOS. Well, believe me, I had to deal with the General 

Accounting Office and the Inspector General’s Office and OMB. 

There are more levels of accountability in our Government, frankly, 

on our aid programs than any—and I say this—and I have studied 

this, and I wrote a long article about it—than any country in the 

world. 

There is far more accountability in our aid program than any 

place in the United Nations or any other developed country that 

has an aid program. There are just layers and layers and layers of 

accountability. 

Mr. PERRY. If I can just interrupt because I don’t want my time 

to expire. But I think Americans are right to be skeptical, with all 

due respect when we hear about the Food for Oil Program and you 

talk about accountability. Now, that wasn’t just simply the United 

States, but, still, I think most Americans feel that millions, if not 

billions, of dollars were lost and unaccounted for, and so I appreciate what you are talking about regarding accountability and oversight, but on some levels it seems to have been lacking. 

Mr. NATSIOS. Right. But that wasn’t an aid program. I am saying 

the aid program of USAID and the State Department, with respect 

to our 150 account. That was not—believe me, that was not a 150 

account program. If it had been, that scandal would not have taken 

place. 

Mr. PERRY. But, again, are you advocating for a legislative fix or 

for flexibility within the organization? 

Mr. NATSIOS. I think it would not be a bad idea, Mr. Chairman, 

to put language in your bill to say we would want you to integrate 

our local purchase of food aid with the agriculture program. We expect you to integrate them. That is number one. 

Number two, we would want some reporting on a regular basis 

on how the program is being run and then ask the USAID Inspector General to produce a report annually, which he will do anyway, 

but putting it in the law emphasizes it. It would focus on accountability. I don’t think it would be a bad idea at all to require an 

evaluation that would go to the committee. So I think it is well 

taken and should be put into the legislation. 

Chairman ROYCE. I think it is a good idea, Mr. Natsios. Point 

well taken. 

Mr. NATSIOS. Thank you. 

Chairman ROYCE. We go now to Karen Bass of California, ranking member of the Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, Human 

Rights, and International Operations. 

Ms. BASS. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you very 

much for your efforts in having this hearing and also in raising 

this issue. 

I am obviously working with the chairman on this piece of legislation, and so, obviously, I am supportive of it. But I want to figure 

out how to address some of the concerns of the opposition, and you 

mentioned from years ago that this was an issue, and so I am trying to get a sense of if the concerns that people are raising now 

37

are historical concerns and what your ideas might be to address 

them. 

What might replace, for example, you know, the resources that 

we use to purchase the commodities? How might we replace that 

on the U.S. side? You know, to me the idea that we have an opportunity to feed between 2 million and 4 million people, and some estimate as high as 10 million, and knowing what Feed the Future 

does in your vision, Mr. Glickman, which I am sure is shared by 

our other witness, the idea of sub-Saharan Africa one day being 

like South Korea, I think that is absolutely the model that we want 

to go for, which is increasing the capacity of countries to feed themselves and not be reliant on our food. 

So I know that there have been concerns about an opposition, 

about the loss of business from the maritime industry. We talked 

a little bit about the cargo preference law. But I wanted to ask you 

how you might address the opposition. What do we need to do? 

Mr. GLICKMAN. Well, you know, in terms of—I am not as familiar 

with the maritime issue as Andrew is, but I think you——

Ms. BASS. Okay. 

Mr. GLICKMAN [continuing]. May need some transition assistance. The administration I think has proposed something in this 

regard. I don’t know what the right numbers should be. That is a 

political decision. But I think that that is not inappropriate, to consider that, although I agree totally with what he said about the 

merits or demerits of cargo preference in this area. 

I do worry about the total appropriations. I notice that the House 

Appropriations Committee has cut back on some of these accounts, 

and so I worry about if we don’t appropriate the amount of money 

that is needed, it is going to impact these programs writ large, 

whether they are cash or commodities. 

But the other side of the coin is my judgment is humanitarian 

needs are going to increase in the future, and you see this happening with droughts and extreme flood events, and so we are 

going to have greater and greater pressure on us to provide some 

stability to areas that are going to be suffering dramatically. 

And I think that is just part of the U.S. culture and our U.S. fabric to do that. So I think ultimately Congress will respond. 

And the second thing I would point out is, I say this again, we 

are not talking about cold turkey——

Ms. BASS. Right. 

Mr. GLICKMAN [continuing]. All cash. 

Ms. BASS. Right. 

Mr. GLICKMAN. We wouldn’t ever want to do that. We may want 

to do 100 percent commodities in certain parts of the world. But 

having been—I was at a place in Mozambique where they were 

having some issues and they were getting some Food for Progress—

I mean, they were getting some Title 2 aid, and they got some 

money through the U.S. to actually create something called Food 

for Progress, working with the World Food Program where they 

were actually engaged in growing their commodities and selling 

them locally. 

We have a real opportunity here to combine humanitarian concerns with what I call appropriate development concerns, realizing 

humanitarian efforts have to be key to this effort. That is the 

38

foundational basis. And creating economies that are largely worldbased. 

Sub-Saharan Africa is largely rural agriculture, women-owned. I 

mean, but they are poised for significant development. And it is us 

in America. 

And I will tell you one quick anecdote. I was there and I was in 

Tanzania, and I was meeting with some government officials and 

they said to me, they said, ‘‘You know, you have three of the greatest people in the world in your country.’’ And I said, ‘‘Who is that?’’ 

And they said, ‘‘It is Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and George W. 

Bush.’’

Ms. BASS. Right. 

Mr. GLICKMAN. And I said, ‘‘I couldn’t find 10 people in the 

United States that would say that.’’ And I said, ‘‘Why?’’ And they 

said, ‘‘Well, Bill Clinton because of his effort to the Clinton Foundation and everything he has done. Barack Obama in part because 

he has carried on a lot of the Bush initiatives, plus, you know, his 

heritage. And George W. Bush was the greatest of all.’’ And I said, 

‘‘Why?’’ And they said, ‘‘Because he really realized the significance 

of potential in Africa, particularly when it came to health, global 

health assistance,’’ which you may have been responsible for. 

And I thought to myself, they like us here. We are——

Ms. BASS. I have found that every place I have been as well. 

Mr. GLICKMAN. You know, I mean——

Ms. BASS. Exactly what you said. 

Mr. GLICKMAN [continuing]. We have got great potential here. It 

is part of our national security areas, and so I think what we are 

trying to recommend in this area, which you and the chairman 

have agreed on, is how we can make it better. 

Ms. BASS. Right. Thank you. 

Mr. NATSIOS. I just might add that under President Bush the 

budget for all aid, not just health, all aid to Africa, went up 600 

percent in that 8 years. It was a massive increase and it was done 

deliberately. Colin Powell and I had a discussion when we started, 

President Bush endorsed it, and then there were 24 different initiatives. 

Ms. BASS. And it is well appreciated and acknowledged——

Mr. NATSIOS. Yes, it is. 

Ms. BASS [continuing]. Around the continent as I have traveled. 

Mr. NATSIOS. Exactly. Exactly. With respect to the maritime industry, let me just mention, I told you my personal opinion I don’t 

like cargo preference. I don’t think—I think the time has come to 

change it. But the proposal before you is much more accommodating than I would be. Okay? 

And there is a proposal under the compromise. The effect would 

be only six or eight ships would be affected by the proposal the way 

the compromise is written now, and there would be 240 to 320 

mariners who would be affected, and they would be eligible for a 

kind of a subsidy that is in the legislation. 

I am not an expert on the actual provisions of the law, of the proposal that President Obama has made, but USAID’s career staff 

has explained it to me and they have tried to make provision for 

it. If I had been around, I might have not been so accommodating, 

39

but they are trying to deal with the objection of interest groups in 

terms of the more narrow focus. 

Ms. BASS. You know, when I have talked to some of my colleagues who were concerned about the loss of jobs in their particular district, you know, one individual had a school for merchant 

marines, for example, and so they were concerned about that. And 

maybe it is a question of the transition, but some type of way because I see this as a long-term issue. 

And so how are we addressing the concerns, you know, of members now so that we can garner more support for it. So the six to 

eight ships, you know, again, I think maybe we could look for ways. 

Chairman ROYCE. I think we had better go to Mr. Meadows of 

North Carolina. 

Mr. MEADOWS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank each of you 

for being here today. You know, it can be said, you know, when you 

are in the middle of a budget crunch that you should take the risk 

of looking at a program that works moderately well, even though 

it may not be optimal. 

And so, obviously, we are looking at this today in the middle of 

this budget crisis. Can each one of you share with me why you feel 

like that this should be a priority this year and why these reforms 

need to be made now versus at a later date? Mr. Glickman or——

Mr. GLICKMAN. You know, I just think that you can make reforms that are not disruptive, and I think the chairman has proposed an adequate and successful way of doing that so it doesn’t 

create havoc in terms of how to administer the programs. And I 

think he is right in substantively trying to give more flexibility and 

efficiency to the way the monies are being spent. 

Based on my experience, I think that it is the right thing to do. 

We will help more people and in the process we will advance the 

long-term security interest of the United States. That is the best 

way I can tell you, and you have got the opportunity now, hopefully, in the farm bill to do it. You don’t have a farm bill up all 

that frequently. 

Mr. NATSIOS. I would make two arguments. First is that the 

world is changing. Price—food prices have dramatically increased 

over the last 4 or 5 years. There are several governments that fell 

or collapsed because of the price increases in the developing country. 

The Haitian Prime Minister resigned over price increases 3 years 

ago because of riots. There are food riots across the world when 

these price increases take place. So we know that the world is 

changing; the program isn’t changing. 

We need to find ways of making the program more efficient given 

the shift in the market and the shift in our own markets. It is 

much more expensive for us to buy food in the United States than 

it was before. The era of cheap food is over. Most economists would 

say that now, and I think that is true. 

The second thing I would say is, when we first proposed something like this under President Bush 10 years ago, we were doing 

it for the first time. No one had proposed this before anywhere with 

respect to the aid budget. We now have 10 years of experience because there was a $60 million pilot program that was in the appropriations bill for the Title 2 program, I think it was 4 years ago, 

40

5 years ago. They went through that. USDA did all of these experiments. They did all of these reports. I read the reports to write the 

testimony. 

United Nations World Food Program, which as I said is the bestrun U.N. agency by far, they have a lot of field reports on what 

mistakes they made early on, how they fixed those mistakes, and 

how the program is running now. 

So it is not as though this is new. We have a lot of research now 

as to what works and what doesn’t work and how to do this the 

right way. 

Mr. MEADOWS. Well, let us pick up there because I think that 

was a GAO report in 2008 that we—you know, we looked at that 

being part of that farm bill. And so as we see that, some 5 years 

ago that pilot program that was, you know, a local/regional pilot 

program. What would you both say are the two lessons learned 

from that, both pro and con, that we need to look at in terms of 

addressing this piece of legislation that is before us? I mean, what 

are the good points and the bad? Obviously, it wasn’t totally successful or this would be—you know, we wouldn’t be having this 

hearing. It would be a slam dunk, so——

Mr. NATSIOS. Well, I think interest groups would want the hearing held regardless of whether it was a slam dunk or not, because 

part of this debate is on the merits itself. 

Mr. MEADOWS. Sure. Sure. 

Mr. NATSIOS. Part of it is on how it affects the maritime industry 

and the shippers and, you know——

Mr. MEADOWS. Okay. But what would be the two cons? Other 

than on the maritime issue, what would be the two cons in terms 

of the implementation? Is what I am talking about. 

Mr. NATSIOS. Exactly. 

Mr. MEADOWS. And the two pros. 

Mr. NATSIOS. I think there are two things we have to watch out 

for, and I have mentioned that in my testimony. 

Mr. MEADOWS. Right. 

Mr. NATSIOS. One is you have to have agricultural scientists and 

economists working on this, not just logistics people, who will see 

the effect on local markets. If you are in the middle of an emergency—and I will give you an example—in 1992, we had the worst 

drought in 20th century in Africa, and 13 countries had a 90 percent crop loss in southern Africa. Massive crop loss. 

We intervened—I ran the program, so I remember it very well—

with 2.2 million tons of U.S. food. Had that taken place now under 

this legislation, I would still ship U.S. food. Why? Because the price 

spikes that went on in southern Africa, with drawing in food from 

all over the rest of Africa, we could not have gone to local or regional purchase under those circumstances because the crisis was 

too big. So——

Mr. MEADOWS. I am going to cut you off there and let Mr. Glickman—and then I will yield back. 

Mr. GLICKMAN. One thing. I think nobody has mentioned the 

word ‘‘nutrition,’’ which has got to be a key part of this discussion, 

how to not only get quantities of food but qualities of food. And 

some of these pilot programs have created—they purchase locally 

and they have allowed the ability to include food with higher nutriVerDate 0ct 09 2002 10:23 Oct 17, 2013 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00044 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 F:\WORK\_FULL\061213\81508 HFA PsN: SHIRL
41

ents being bought locally, and that has been a positive as well, 

which we don’t get with just bulk commodities going over. 

Mr. MEADOWS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back. 

Chairman ROYCE. Ami Bera from California. 

Mr. BERA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As I have often said, the 

best part of this committee is it is pretty non-partisan. It is Democrats and Republicans working together to go toward a common 

goal, and the conversation taking place today is a great example 

of that. 

You know, it doesn’t take a fiscal crisis—and it shouldn’t take a 

fiscal crisis—for us to look at programs and evaluate programs to 

make them more efficient and meet goals. And the goals of our food 

programs are to save lives, advance peace, advance diplomacy. So 

if we look at our Food for Peace Program, and affiliated programs, 

we should evaluate it amongst those metrics. How can we save the 

most lives? How can we be the most efficient? And, you know, I applaud both of our witnesses today for talking about that. 

When you talk about the supply chain, efficiency is going to come 

from shrinking the supply chain. And we have had Dr. Shah come, 

you know, talk about a shift in mission for USAID from just being 

a donor organization to a capacity-building organization. 

You know, my questions—and let me use an example that we 

have talked about in India. You know, India is a country that 

grows an abundance of food, but up to 40 percent of that food is 

lost to waste. It is lost to lack of infrastructure to move that food. 

It is lost to a lack of cold storage. 

And, you know, there is a great example of a USAID-funded program at my home institution which I am faculty, the University of 

California Davis, that is looking for low cost ways to improve storage and going into countries in Africa, going into countries in 

South Asia, to help them develop low cost ways to store food, to develop cold storage, and I do think that is exactly where we should 

be going. Again, moving from countries that lack capacity, helping 

them build that capacity, moving them into self-sufficient countries, and then, as Mr. Glickman, you pointed out, once they get 

there moving them into countries that are partners with us, that, 

you know, are able to consume. 

You know, I would ask both of you how—what you would advise 

this body as we want to move from just being a donor nation to 

being a capacity-building nation in our partner countries. Either 

one of you can take this. 

Mr. NATSIOS. Well, we are a capacity-building nation. We have 

done that. The question is how much we do. We used to have a program in USAID which we stopped because the quantitative measurement people insisted that we have to quantify the results of all 

programs. And I know that is popular in Congress, but my own 

view is there are things of things you can’t quantify. 

We do help countries write constitutions. How do you quantify 

technical assistance writing a constitution? The scholarship program of USAID used to train people who are in critical institutions 

in the developing world. We did 20,000 scholarships a year for master’s degrees, Ph.D.’s, and some undergraduate degrees, at the 

height of the Cold War. It was our most successful program if you 

talk to the career people. 

42

We do 900 scholarships a year now. I think we should go back 

to the scholarship program, not just randomly giving out but focus 

on a sector. If you go to rural Haiti and rural Dominican Republic, 

we had a scholarship program at my university, Texas A&M, over 

20 years actually to train people with master’s degrees in the Ministry of Agriculture in the Dominican Republic. We did not do that 

in Haiti. Go to the two countries and see what the rural areas look 

like. 

Mr. BERA. Would you suggest shifting some of our resources, 

then, to doing university-to-university exchanges? 

Mr. NATSIOS. Yes. Absolutely. We should move back to that system, which, by the way, was very successful in India. A lot of those 

high-tech centers in India were actually built in the 1950s, ’60s, 

and early ’70s with a linkages program between American universities and Indian universities funded by USAID. 

Mr. BERA. Well, again, it is certainly something that we are talking about at UC Davis, which is obviously a major agricultural university. 

Mr. GLICKMAN. Can I just say, you know, I think this is what 

Administrator Shah is attempting to do in Feed the Future Initiative, which is to provide a holistic approach to dealing with issues 

like post-harvest loss, which you have talked about, where we lose 

in many of these countries 40 percent, 50 percent, of their production. 

And so it is not all just relying on USAID when there is an emergency; somehow we have to build up these systems so they are able 

to be self-sufficient in food. And I think that that has—I think that 

in some of the countries that have been Feed the Future countries 

you have seen some significant metrics in achieving the goals that 

you have talked about. 

I might mention one other thing which doesn’t relate to this subject. The level of American commitment to agriculture research 

writ large is coming down. The rest of the world is going up. We 

face a catastrophe in the future if we don’t fund and sustain adequate funding in both basic and applied research at our universities, land grant schools, and others. 

They are the ones that are doing research here at home as well 

as around the world. And a lot of the work that they are now 

longer doing is either not being done at all, and especially as you 

deal with drought-resistant crops and the changing weather patterns, or else it is being done by universities in China and the rest 

of the world. And we are big losers if that continues. 

Mr. BERA. Great. 

Chairman. ROYCE. We go now to Mr. Yoho from Florida. 

Mr. YOHO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I appreciate your 

opening remarks, reaching more with less, and I commend you 

guys for being here. 

Mr. Natsios, you said that you have been around for a long time 

with different policies under George Bush. And as frustrating that 

the policies haven’t been enacted, and the reforms, what reforms 

would you recommend that should be implemented and—which 

ones and how? I mean, you have given kind of a list of them, but 

just—can you kind of just bullet point them and just say, ‘‘I would 

do this, this, this.’’

43

Mr. NATSIOS. Sure. First, I would phase out monetization to 

produce cash to run development programs through NGOs. That is 

a bad practice. I think we should simply move toward cash grants 

to the NGOs to do the same thing. We will basically double the efficiency of the spending of that money if we did that. 

Number two, I think we should phase out the requirement that 

50 percent of the food has to go on American ships. They could continue—there is a subsidy of some kind that they are talking about 

in the compromise, and all of that. 

The third change is that we should allow I think it should be—

no more than 50 percent of the Food for Peace budget, in the judgment of the Food for Peace Director and the Administrator of 

USAID, can be used—doesn’t have to be, can be used for local purchase of food aid. 

Some years you may want to use the whole 50 percent; some 

years you may not want to use that much. It depends on the kind—

if it is Syria and southern Sudan, you may want to use the whole 

50 percent. If it is a more stable thing, in a country that has security, for example, as Haiti or Indonesia, where there isn’t the same 

circumstance, maybe the percentage would go down. 

Mr. YOHO. Okay. 

Mr. NATSIOS. But I think those three changes would have a profound effect on the flexibility and the efficiency of our program. 

Mr. YOHO. Mr. Glickman, do you have anything to add to that? 

Mr. GLICKMAN. No. I concur. 

Mr. YOHO. Okay. My next question is, you mentioned that we 

were late to the table in helping other countries grow their own 

food. What policies would we need to reform to fix this and to create it to be more effective? You brought up Canada is doing a lot 

better job in Uganda, or several of the other countries? 

Mr. NATSIOS. Yes. Let me say something controversial, and I—

I always say something outrageous at every——

Mr. YOHO. It is all right. We are in Congress; don’t worry about 

it. 

Mr. NATSIOS [continuing]. Every hearing. Okay? When Peter 

McPherson, the USAID Administrator under Ronald Reagan and 

considered one of the most revered and able USAID administrators 

by the career staff, left USAID, the budget for agriculture was $1.2 

billion, for agricultural development, not food aid. This has nothing 

to do with food aid. 

See, what we are talking about today in food is the emergency 

side. That is 10 percent of USAID’s budget. The other 90 percent 

goes for long-term development. Okay? So the long-term development program for agriculture was $1.2 billion. When I arrived in 

2001, the budget for agricultural development was $250 million, 

and that is in 2001 dollars, which are not the same as 1985 dollars. 

Okay? 

So what happened? I am quoting Norman Borlaug, who won the 

Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 for creating the Green Revolution in 

Asia. He probably saved 1 billion people’s lives, if you read his obituary. He also taught at my university, Texas A&M. He was one of 

my heroes, and he is a friend of mine. Okay? 

We wrote an article on this issue today for The Wall Street Journal 6 or 7 years ago. Dr. Borlaug gave a speech and he said the 

44

environmental movement—the more radical, not the mainstream 

environment—said fertilizer is bad, pesticide is bad, irrigation is 

bad, we should go back to basically organic agriculture. 

Now, it is easy for Americans to say that, but you cannot grow 

more food unless you put nitrogen back in the soil. What happened 

is the environmental groups, the more radical ones, went to Congress and said, ‘‘AID is doing all of this modern agriculture stuff. 

It is a bad idea. Cut the budget.’’ And they did. 

I think many people realized in the environmental movement 

that that is a disaster, and they have changed their position. And 

I support—President Obama’s major initiative in foreign aid is the 

Feed the Future Program, which is not a food aid program. It is 

an effort to grow more food through agricultural development. 

Mr. YOHO. Okay. Mr. Glickman, do you have anything to add to 

that? 

Mr. GLICKMAN. No. The number of agriculture specialists within 

USAID went down about the same precipitous level as the funding 

went down. And so I would just say that, you know, the ‘‘teach the 

man to fish’’ has been the philosophy of the Feed the Future Initiative. And hopefully with the adequate resources, and with the research world involved with it, we can actually change their lives. 

Mr. YOHO. Okay. You mentioned also a list of acronyms and 

NGOs that provide food aid. Would it be more—wouldn’t it be wise 

to eliminate some of these and streamline it to make it more efficient to get our food aid out? Because it is almost like you could 

pick up a can with all of the alphabet letters in there and any four 

letters would be an acronym for one of the agencies we have or programs. 

If there are some that you could recommend eliminating, I am 

out of time here, if you could submit them in writing, both of you, 

just say if we could combine these and eliminate them, or just 

streamline them, it would be a lot more efficient. 

And I appreciate your time, and I yield back my negative time. 

Mr. WILSON [presiding]. Thank you, Mr. Yoho. 

We proceed to Mr. Lowenthal of California. 

Mr. LOWENTHAL. Thank you, Mr. Chairperson. I want to compliment the chair and also the ranking member Bass for—to support the development of local sustainable food concerns. But I still 

have some of the same concerns, and I need to be reassured. 

I think you have already said it, but I need to hear more about 

it, that Mr. Perry raised, I think Mr. Meadows raised, about what 

mechanisms are really going to be proposed that ensure that the 

funds are used to purchase food locally. How will we monitor these 

brokers who will collect the commodities from various sources and 

not just local farmers? 

And as you pointed out before, if a broker country in Uganda or 

Nigeria is aggregating, let us say, imported Russian wheat or Brazilian soybeans, how will we know that? And even going further, 

we heard in this committee, the Subcommittee on Europe, Eurasia, 

on the threat of China’s unsafe consumables, we learned about the 

health risks of unsafe food produced in China. 

We have got to be really sure that we are not going to be spending money on food that is cheaper from countries with very low 

food safety standards. How are we going to know that, as we move 

45

in this direction, that we are really not going to lower the standards as the—I like the goal; I am just not really yet feeling comfortable that we have in place the mechanisms. 

Mr. NATSIOS. Let me just reassure you, Congressman. There is 

a program now. It was started by the Congress. The international 

affairs committees, as opposed to the agriculture committees, have 

supported this idea for some time now. OMB got tired of proposing 

this reform every single year and getting it killed in the Congress 

through the agriculture committees. 

So what they did was they went to the appropriators and the 

international affairs/foreign ops committees and said, ‘‘Would you 

consider a separate line item called the Local Purchase Cash 

Voucher Initiative?’’ It is $375 million. It has been a very big success. It does exactly what you just mentioned. In other words, it 

does what this would allow Title 2 to be used for. 

So we already have 5 years of experience doing exactly the same 

thing. All the proposal is is to extend this to Title 2, to this particular account. So what you can do—and I am not at USAID anymore. If I were USAID Administrator, I could send them to you tomorrow. But I am sure if you asked USAID, they would do it. 

We have evaluations and Inspector General reports of how that 

money was spent in that account. The oversight systems that are 

in place for that account will be used because it is the same office 

running both programs. It is the Food for Peace Office that would 

be running both programs. They have already put in place those 

systems for the $375 million program that has existed for—I think 

it was passed in 2009 for the first year, or maybe—I think it was 

2009. 

So we already have it in place. It is simply a matter of extending 

the authority to use the same systems that are already in place for 

Title 2. 

Mr. GLICKMAN. You know, Mr. Kinzinger made a point that I 

think is worthwhile repeating right now. And your concerns are 

well-founded, but, you know, this is a national security interest 

issue for the United States. How we deal with humanitarian disasters and how we stabilize the economies in the developing world, 

one-third of all members of the United Nations are in Africa alone. 

We are talking about 30 percent, actually. I mean, this is a big, 

powerful political force. 

And, by and large, we have to look at our American relationship 

for that part of the world in a strategic way as well. In my judgment, we can be more helpful, it is in our interest, and it is better 

for the economies of both the United States and the rest of the 

world if we give more flexibility to these accounts. I mean, it is a 

part of our national security interest as well. 

And we are not talking about a revolution here. I repeat that. 

This is what I call a necessary incremental step to give more flexibility to people on the ground. 

Mr. LOWENTHAL. Thank you, and I yield back my time. 

Mr. WILSON. Thank you very much, and I now yield to myself. 

And I would like to thank both of you for being here today. The 

Aspen Institute makes such a difference. 

And, Mr. Natsios, I have just gotten back from Afghanistan, and 

I am always impressed to see throughout the country in front of 

46

schools, clinics, roads, there will be signs, and it has the clasped 

hands with the U.S. flag and an Afghan flag. And what is impressive to me is that those signs are very rustic. And so if the people 

didn’t appreciate the USAID projects, they know how to take the 

sign down. 

So I just—you know, and it is so sad to me that we hear people 

in that country don’t appreciate what we are doing. You know, to 

see the little girls going to school with the white scarves, the little 

guys going to school with baseball caps, that I know are not indigenous to Afghanistan, there is so much good, and USAID has been 

in the forefront. So I want to congratulate you on helping set this 

up. 

Additionally, with Public Law 480, we stamp the U.S. flag from 

the American people on the bag. I have seen the residual of that. 

And when I saw in Darfur, it was heartwarming to see the shelters 

that were made, very primitive, but yet they were made out of the 

bags. And that was their home. 

But it just—as an American citizen, I felt very good about that. 

And I also had the opportunity in Muzaffarabad, Pakistan, for 

earthquake relief to see the same from the American people. It was 

very heartwarming. 

But under a cash-based program, how could we have a benefit, 

a hearts and minds benefit, which is so important trying to reverse, 

as you indicated in Indonesia, a negative view to positive? Because 

it seems like to me that there would be concern—by having foreign 

source commodities under a U.S. flag, there is a danger of reputation, safety, quality of the product. 

How can we see that wiring funds would be more benefit than 

what we have—a program that works? 

Mr. NATSIOS. Well, Congressman, in some countries where there 

is a civil war going on in which we are taking sides—Iraq, Afghanistan—those signs are a target for our enemies. Al-Qaeda murdered 

the headmasters of 50 schools that we rebuilt in Afghanistan because they were USAID schools or U.S. Government schools, and 

because they had the logo on them. So they are also a target, unfortunately, in civil wars. 

And so some places we have to, for safety’s sake, say don’t use 

the logo and the flag, because if you do you are going to get the 

people killed in the war, if we are not—if we are participants in 

some way in what is going on. 

The same thing happened in Iraq. Now, what we chose to do in 

both cases and several other countries is we found another way, 

without specifying a specific school, we did radio and TV ads, particularly radio ads because almost all of these countries, including 

Afghanistan, that is where people get most of their news and we 

did spot radio ads. They are very inexpensive. They cost a couple 

of dollars to do them, and we talk about our program without putting a target on the building that can get the headmaster killed. 

And we did some surveys afterwards in the Palestinian areas, for 

example, in Gaza and West Bank, to see the difference after we did 

the ads. And we went from a 5-percent name recognition to 55 percent in a matter of 3 months using these ads. So we like the ads 

on the projects themselves, but in some cases when it is a security 

47

risk to do it, an even more effective way is to do radio ads. And 

we have done that. 

And, you know, if we tell people the food aid program is being 

run through the U.S. Government on a radio ad, which we have 

done sometimes in some places, then you have the option of an alternate way of getting the brand of the American people out there 

or acknowledging the American people. It doesn’t have to be on the 

project itself, is what I am saying. 

Mr. LOWENTHAL. Mr. Glickman? 

Mr. GLICKMAN. Like was said before, a majority of this aid is 

going to continue to be in the form of commodities, not cash. Cash 

just—there may be some more cash in certain parts of the world 

because of flexibility. 

The other thing I would tell you is that one of the most successful foreign aid initiatives that I have ever seen is the Global Health 

Initiative that took place. And that was a multi-faceted effort to try 

to immunize people, teach them about the prevention of disease, 

and U.S. got a huge amount of credit in that appropriately. And 

that one didn’t have the flag and the bags on it, but it shows you 

you can accomplish your objectives in a multitude of different ways. 

Mr. WILSON. Thank you very much. 

And we now proceed to Congressman Jeff Duncan of South Carolina. 

Mr. DUNCAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. You look good in the 

chair, by the way. We have already heard concerns over the practice of monetization of the commodities by the NGOs for the purpose of raising cash. So I am not going to go there, but I am concerned about that. 

I think we have a responsibility to be good stewards of the American tax dollars, and I believe that the majority of Americans would 

agree with this type of foreign aid. Now, they may not agree with 

giving F–16s to Egypt, or M1–A1 tanks, but I think they agree 

with feeding the needy and starving, famine-stricken people of 

places like Darfur. 

However, I am concerned that we are considering taking a transparent, reliable, accountable, and highly efficient program that has 

worked well for almost 60 years with strong bipartisan support and 

are replacing it with a black box program that operates without 

congressional statutory limitations and without real accountability. 

So how is wiring cash to someone in a developing country a good 

idea instead of giving them wholesome, nutritious commodities 

grown by hardworking Americans? And is the risk of diverting 

cash-based assistance from its intended purpose greater than it 

would be for commodity food aid? And I will ask Mr. Natsios that. 

Mr. NATSIOS. Well, first, Congressman, this is not a black ops 

program. We have been running the program for 5 years now with 

a $375 million appropriation from Congress. We already run the 

program, and it is not a black ops program. And it is not wiring 

money to people in developing countries. It is giving money to 

NGOs that are very responsible. 

The Catholic Church runs Catholic Relief Services. World Vision 

is run by the evangelical churches, and Samaritan’s Purse. I was 

just in South Carolina, as a matter of fact, to speak to a retreat 

of Samaritan’s Purse. They distribute some of these—they run 

48

some of these programs. And that is who would be getting the 

money, not black ops programs, and——

Mr. DUNCAN. I said ‘‘black box,’’ but that is fine. Let me ask you 

this. We already see that——

Mr. NATSIOS. Black box. I am sorry. 

Mr. DUNCAN [continuing]. NGOs have taken this food and sold 

it for cash purposes. And I am not saying they don’t use that cash 

for good intentions. That is absolutely not what I am saying. Samaritan’s Purse and other groups like that do tremendous work. 

But I think we need to make sure that as good stewards of American tax dollars that the NGOs are doing with the money what 

they are supposed to do, or doing with the food what they are supposed to be doing with it. And we also need to make sure that this 

money doesn’t find its way to the hands of the dictators around the 

world that have been notorious for lining their own pockets with 

U.S. foreign aid. That is documented. 

And so I would just ask, what sort of accountability measures are 

in place to make sure that these NGOs, which I believe a lot more 

NGOs will be created, should be convert this to a cash-only system? 

What mechanisms were in place to make sure that those dollars 

are accounted for? 

Mr. NATSIOS. Well, the first thing is—I am not sure, Congressman, you were here when I mentioned this. I have actually done 

some research since I left USAID. We have more levels of accountability on our USAID program run by USAID and State than any 

donor government. And it is not just the Inspector General of 

USAID. It is the OMB has a whole set of accountability systems 

separate from the Inspector General, and then there is the General 

Accounting Office. 

General Accounting Office, on the food program, has done more 

research than probably any institution in the United States on this, 

a whole series of reports. So there are already very high levels of 

accountability on this program. 

That same level of accountability would be applied to this as it 

is now, because it is easy—I have to tell you, I have watched food 

aid get stolen before. Food aid can get stolen, and it can get 

abused, and it has been before in emergencies. I can give you specific examples. I don’t want to embarrass any institutions here 

now, but there have been scandals over food aid being misused. 

So if you think food aid somehow is immune from abuse, but a 

cash grant to an NGO can be misused, I can just tell you from my 

personal experience there is risk in both circumstances. And the 

way you avoid that risk is put very strong accountability systems 

in place, which I have to say Administrator Shah—I don’t agree 

with some of the things he has done, but he has put a whole bunch 

of new systems in place. 

The money is being tracked, but, you know, we are in very risky 

circumstances. If you are in Somalia where there is no government, 

there is no functioning government, and there hasn’t been for 20 

years. And al-Qaeda is everywhere in Somalia, and they don’t like 

us. I don’t have to tell you that. 

Mr. DUNCAN. Well, I would just reclaim my time because I am 

almost out. But we just want to make sure that, as the stewards 

of taxpayer dollars, that it doesn’t fall in the hands of al-Qaeda, it 

49

doesn’t fall in the hands of rogue dictators, Joseph Kony, or anyone 

else. 

I understand you mentioned southern Sudan and buying food in 

Uganda. Uganda has its own issues. And so, you know, I want to 

try to support American jobs, American farmers, American agriculture, American commodities, American maritime. I like the 

American bag on the product that is delivered. All of those are good 

things. They are good I guess ambassadorship-type things for 

America. But graft and corruption does take place. 

And the chairman just got back from Afghanistan. You know, I 

went over there and investigated the fuel theft and graft that was 

going on in Afghanistan, the hospital plus-ups, and American dollars being spent on a hospital there in Kabul, the Afghan-Kabul 

banking system money. 

So we need to make sure that the right accountability and checks 

and balances and transparency is in place, and that is all I am saying. As we move forward on this, we need to make sure that those 

systems are in place, that American tax dollars aren’t lining the 

pockets of dictators or going to fund terrorists that don’t like us 

very much. 

Mr. DUNCAN. I have got 2 seconds. 

Mr. GLICKMAN. I think your concerns are well-founded. I would 

point out that we are not talking about changing this from an allcommodity to an all-cash system. We already commit a little bit of 

cash. We want to give more flexibility for that, but it is still going 

to be largely commodity-driven, even under the changes that the 

chairman has proposed. 

Mr. DUNCAN. I yield back. 

Mr. WILSON. Thank you, Mr. Duncan. You have done so well. As 

we proceed to Mr. Deutch, you will now be presiding. Thank you. 

Mr. DEUTCH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Welcome to the new 

chairman. 

I appreciate, Mr. Chairman, your holding this hearing today, and 

I would like to thank our distinguished witnesses for coming and 

for staying and for answering all of these questions. As an outspoken supporter of U.S. foreign aid, I believe that providing food 

aid not only aids in the fight against global hunger but also stabilizes critical regions in the world, in turn providing a low-cost opportunity to bolster our efforts to protect our national security as 

well. 

And like my friend, the chairman, I support American maritime 

and American agriculture and American jobs, and I also support 

American values. And the proposed food aid reform I believe 

strengthens our foreign policy by reducing costs, by maximizing efficiency, and, most importantly, by ensuring that a minimum of 2–

4 million more people will receive U.S. food aid. I understand that 

there is hesitancy among many of our colleagues to support change 

at this time, but it is good policy and I support it. 

And I would like to ask our witnesses, given that we have seen 

in our pilot program that we have already—we have seen the ability to increase the number of lives that we save, if you could address the concern that some of my colleagues have raised, that if 

we move forward with reform like this, the United States isn’t 

going to get the credit or may not get the credit that it deserves. 

50

Can you speak to that, please? Mr. Natsios first. 

Mr. NATSIOS. U.S. Aid from the American People, the regulations 

for branding which we call the branding campaign, I put in place 

when I was USAID Administrator. And I did that because of the 

threat of al-Qaeda and the change of the world. We were facing a 

threat that was very psychological in many respects and we wanted 

to show what we were doing. 

We did not have those regulations in place to the degree before. 

We also used red, white, and blue. I know those regulations thoroughly. Everything we do, every NGO project, every contractor 

project, has to be branded. And I don’t mean just food bags. If you 

go into a project and you see the headquarters, if it is a school 

being built, if it is a health clinic, if it is commodities that are 

being distributed through the health system, not food, has to have 

the brand on it. 

So it is thorough and complete. I have to say, the NGOs were 

very upset when we put them in place. They said, ‘‘We will be targeted, you know, we object to this,’’ because they like to put their 

own brand on stuff, to be very frank with you. But everybody has 

accommodated themselves to it now. 

It is very difficult for people not to know, under the existing 

rules, that this comes from the American people. You don’t have to 

have it in every single thing, but we—so if only half the bags have 

it on it, people will still know United States is where the resources 

are coming from. 

Mr. DEUTCH. And if we—again, just consistent with the values 

that the chairman and Ms. Bass and I and the other members of 

our committee all share, if reforms—if we don’t enact some reform 

here, will it impact America’s ability to continue to be a leader in 

providing food assistance, particularly to the most vulnerable populations in the world? Secretary Glickman. 

Mr. GLICKMAN. My answer is yes, but it has to be combined with 

the kind of reforms that Administrator Shah is doing in the Feed 

the Future Initiative and other things to build self-sufficiency, education, training, all sorts of other things, responsible research, all 

of that stuff. But, you know, my experience is anecdotal, but I go 

back—I don’t know if you were here. 

I was talking with government officials in Tanzania. They know 

how valuable America has been in a variety of areas, from agriculture to health to other places. They know the commitment we 

have made to the developing world from the Bush era to the 

present. And I think this augments that, enhances that, but it 

doesn’t eliminate—I think people are afraid that we are going to 

absolutely close down the shop of providing commodities and only 

go to another way of doing business. That is not the case at all. 

We are going to keep as a foundation what we are doing, providing food assistance in humanitarian cases where needed. But we 

are going to give ourselves the flexibility to help build local purchasing, nutrition, other kinds of things that will build self-sufficiency. 

Mr. DEUTCH. And what will the benefits—or what benefits will 

enure to us if the perception globally is that the United States is 

modifying its program in a way to help address the needs of an additional 2 million or 3 million or 4 million people? 

51

Mr. NATSIOS. Well, let me just say, when we go out—the Food 

for Peace officers and the USAID agricultural officers go out and 

work with the NGOs to buy the food locally, they are going to know 

there are Americans buying the food. Don’t you think that will 

make the farmers happy in terms of the United States? We keep 

thinking it is only the recipients, but the people who are going to—

we are going to buy the food from locally, they are going to be tied 

to the United States. They are going to see our aid program in a 

much more favorable light. 

So we should see this as a whole, not as—just in terms of the 

beneficiary. The beneficiaries are not going to be just the people 

who are going to be eating, but the people who are going to be 

growing the food with assistance from the United States Government. And that will help us across the world. 

The biggest example of our success story in terms of our aid program is the shift in public opinion polls in sub-Sahara Africa when 

President Bush increased aid by 600 percent. I mean, he was not 

popular in some areas of the world. I don’t need to tell you that. 

I am a Republican, okay? To say that I know that in sub-Sahara 

Africa he had 70, 80, 90 percent approval ratings. He is a very popular—when he visited Ghana when they opened that big road up, 

he was treated as a conquering hero when he came. This is after 

he left office. 

So why is that? Because the African people know what we did. 

And the United States is popular because our aid program, in my 

view, is the best image of the Unites States we want to project 

around the world. 

Mr. DEUTCH. I appreciate that. And, Mr. Chairman, I don’t know 

if Secretary Glickman wanted additional time. Okay. I appreciate 

it, and I yield back. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman. ROYCE [presiding]. All right. I thank the gentleman 

from Florida. 

In closing, let me just make a quick observation here and that 

is that one of the more confounding arguments against reform is 

that moving toward a more flexible, efficient, effective system will 

make it vulnerable to cuts. That is kind of a conundrum, to hear 

that argument, but in the current budgetary environment I believe 

the opposite is true. 

Why should the Congress, why should the American people, continue to provide up to $2 billion to support a program that is anything less than stellar if we can make it stellar? We can do better. 

And we must do better. And we have before us a bipartisan proposal that will enable us to reach more people in less time at less 

expense. That is the point. We can save lives and reduce the deficit. How can you argue with that? 

So I plan to support reform, and I hope my colleagues will do the 

same, and we greatly appreciate the time and expertise of our two 

witnesses here today. Thank you for coming all the way. 

We stand adjourned. 

Mr. NATSIOS. Thank you for your leadership on this issue, Congressman. 

Chairman. ROYCE. Thank you, Mr. Natsios. 

Thank you, Mr. Glickman. 

[Whereupon, at 12:08 p.m., the committee was adjourned.] 

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