Investment in Agriculture to Alleviate Food Insecurity

INVESTMENT IN AGRICULTURE

Investment in Agriculture to Alleviate Food Insecurity

Caroline E. Duke

Legacy 4-H Club

Collin County 4-H

Investment in Agriculture to Alleviate Food Insecurity

Stop a minute and think about what you had for dinner last night. Some of you might have grabbed a burger at a fast food restaurant, some of you might have dined at a fine restaurant,while some of you may have sat down to Mom's home cooking. Regardless of what you had to eat, you probably had something to eat and in amounts to make you feel full. You also probably didn’t have to worry too much about where it was coming from or how to pay for it. Consider yourself one of the world's fortunate. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO, IFAD and WFP, 2015), globally 795 million people or about 11% of the population in 2015, were unable to meet their dietary energy requirements. They are chronically hungry and suffer from not having enough food to lead a healthy, active --they are the food insecure. According to the World Food Programme, the typically person impacted is a female farmer, living in a rural area of Asia or Africa (United Nations World Food Programme, 2015).

By the numbers, the world produces enough food for everyone globally (FAO, IFAD and WFP, 2014), so why are there so many hungry people? The causes of food insecurity are complex and interrelated. They can be summarized as poverty, climate and weather changes, war and displacement, unstable markets, food waste and a lack of investment in agriculture. According to the World Bank, public investment in agricultural is one of the best ways to reduce poverty across the developing world (World Bank, 2007). This is especially true in Africa where two-thirds of Africans depend on farming for their incomes (World Bank, 2007). When able to take their harvest to market, farmers make money and can afford to send their children to school and purchase food, ultimately freeing their communities from poverty. This ‘multiplier effect’, initiated by agricultural growth, is the reason that investments in agriculture are estimated to be around two to four times more effective in reducing poverty than growth generated from other sectors (World Food Bank, 2007). My goal today is to share real life examples of how American tax dollar investments in agriculture are working to alleviate global hunger.

Feed the Future is the U.S. government's global hunger and food security initiative. Administered by the United States' Agency for International Development (USAID), its goal is to unlock the potential of agricultureto reduce hunger, extreme poverty and malnutrition globally. One of its many projects,the International Sorghum and Millet Collaborative Research Support Program or INTSORMIL, was established in 1979 with thegoal of "creating human and technological capital to solve problems constraining sorghum and millet production, marketing and utilization." (USAID 2011). Over its thirty four year lifetime, starting in 1979 and ending in 2013, USAID investedover $98 million into INTSORMIL, supporting eighteen American Principal Investigatorswho collaborated with personnel in twenty one countries in Africa and Central America (Learning from Success, 2013).

Why invest in sorghum? Most Americans haven't a clue what sorghum is. If they do, it is because they are eating gluten free, have seen it on the menu at an upscale restaurant, or grew up feeding it to their livestock. However in developing countries, sorghum is used as a staple food ingredient because of its ability to grow under drought conditions (Awika and Rooney, 2004).

Dr. Lloyd Rooney is a Professor Emeritus of Texas A&M University's Soil and Crop Science Department where his forty seven year career was dedicated to research and teaching with the objective of improving cereal crop food quality and utilization. He was on the front lines of fighting food insecurity through the use of agriculture research and was a principle investigator on the INTSORMIL project since its inception. Dr. Rooney's research focused on helping plant breeders identify new cultivars of wheat, corn, sorghum and millet with improved food quality characteristics (Rooney, personal communication, 2016). For example, by studying the genotypes and phenotypes of corn varieties, he was able to define the characteristics of food grade corn. Food grade corn is better for processing into foods and has a higher return of investment for farmers. If you've eaten a tortilla, Cheetos™ or Doritos ™, Dr. Rooney probably touched the wheat or corn variety it was made from and potentially the process by which it was made. These are all examples of how investment in agriculture helps improve the yields and quality of the cereal crops in the United States. These principles can and have been applied by Dr. Rooney and his team towards solving food insecurity on a global basis.

Over the thirty three years course of his work with INTSORMIL, Dr. Rooney's program was awarded over $2.3MM for research activities and graduate student education in the area of post harvest technology of sorghum and millet (Regents' Professor Service Award Nomination, 2004; Rooney, personal communication, 2016). Much like he had done with wheat and corn in the United States, he worked to identify quality characteristics leading to improved cultivars of sorghum and millet in both Sub-Saharan Africa and Central America. In the West African county of Mali, he worked with breeders to identify varieties with quality attributes that fit the needs of the Malian farmer and food processor. For example, the women of the village remove the outer bran layer of the sorghum by pounding it with a wooden club. This is hard work so it was important that new varieties did not make this process more difficult. In another example, if the porridge made from new varieties of sorghum was sticky, it would be rejected by the farmers and consumer. Methods were developed to ensure the new sorghum varieties would not cause sticky porridge or thicker brans(Rooney, personal communication, 2016).

In South Africa, corn had become a major food staple because the people preferred white flour over the darker flour of traditional sorghum varieties. Unfortunately, this had a negative impact on food security because corn is less drought tolerant than sorghum (Rooney,2010). Dr. Rooney helped breeders develop a white-tan sorghum whose flour was similar to corn flour in its color and texture and had improved milling yields and mold resistance than traditional sorghum. .(Rooney, n.d.). This has helped curb and in some cases reverse the cultivation of corn in South Africa. Additionally, the white-tan varieties have been successfully used in Central America as value added varieties.

Perhaps more important than the basic research done to improve yields and food quality, INTSORMIL funding goes to educate scientists from supported countries as well as educate farmers and producers through workshops held in the various impacted counties. During the course of the INTSORMIL Collaborative Support Program , over 1200 graduate students were trained by INTSORMIL and over 4000 participants attended INTSORMIL sponsored conferences and workshops in the impacted countries (USAID 2011). In his career, Dr. Rooney mentored over 75 Masters and 50 Ph.D. students, many of these international students from various countries in Africa, South and Central America as well as Mexico. Many of these students returned to their homelands to help solve their local food insecurity issues by applying the agriculture and food quality technologies taught in the United States. (Rooney, personal communication, 2016).

In 2009 at the G-8 Summit in Italy, President Obama urged a global response to help unlock the power of agriculture to pave a path out of poverty. As a result, countries committed more than $22 billion towards investment in agricultural development and food security, of which $3.5 billion over three years was committed by the United States (USAID 2016). In 2016, the USAID's budget to support Feed the Future was$978 million (USAID, 2016). It is sometimes hard to understand how our tax dollars are 'invested' and what those investments actually reap. Hopefully by showing some real life examples from my grandfather, Dr Rooney's career, you have gained a better appreciation of how the United States' investments in agriculture are benefitting the global food insecure as well as the American farmer.

Thank you, are there any questions?

References

Awika, Joseph, M. and Lloyd W. Rooney (2004). Sorghum phytochemicals and their potential impact on human health. Phytochemistry 65(2004): 1199-1221.

FAO, IFAD and WFP. (2014). The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2014. Strengthening the enabling environment for food security and nutrition. Rome, FAO.

FAO, IFAD and WFP. (2015). The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2015. Meeting the 2015 international hunger targets: taking stock of uneven progress. Rome, FAO.

INTSORMIL (2011). Sorghum, Millet and Other Grains CRSP 2011 ANNUAL REPORT INTSORMIL Publication 11-01.

Learning from Success: INTSORMIL 1979-2013. (2013).CRSPs. Retrieved 08 January 2017, from

Regents' Professor Service Award. (2004). Nomination of Dr. Lloyd Rooney. Nominated by The Agriculture Program, The Texas A&M University System,. July 2004

Rooney, Lloyd W., (n.d.). Market Development for White Sorghum. Retrieved 08 January 2017, from

Rooney, Lloyd W., (2010). Virtues of Sorghum: Utilization and Supply Chain Management. INTSORMIL Presentations.Paper 28. Retrieved 10 January 2017, from

United Nations World Food Programme (2015). - Fighting Hunger Worldwide.Wfp.org. Retrieved 03 January 2016, from

USAID (2015). Budget. Retrieved January 10, 2016 from

USAID (2011). INTSORMIL: More Than 30 Years of Excellence Retrieved 08 January 2017, from

USAID (2016). Agriculture and Food Security. Retrieved 08 January 2017 from

World Bank. (2007). World Development Report, 2008Agriculture for Development. (2007) The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development / The World Bank:Washington DC. DOI: 10.1596/978-0-8213-7233-3.

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