Much Needed Reform to Food Aid - We Hope

© Flickr: usaid.africa

What better way to end the month-long hiatus than by sharing the good new on food aid reform. According Politico, NYtimes and others, the Obama administration is expecting to announce a full transition to local procurement and cash vouchers. Instead of the sending containers full of US-grown commodities across the ocean, humanitarian and development organizations would soon be able to buy the food needed in regional and local markets.

Although I've written many times here and elsewhere about this, allow me to recap why I consider this a huge deal. First of all, our current system - in-kind food aid programs - is extremely inefficient and expensive. Most of the funding goes to pay for shipping and the food often takes months to arrive to its destination. In addition, the practice of selling food aid in local markets - monetization - can reduce local prices, leaving poor farmers worse off. The type of food is often not culturally adequate, and -with few exceptions-  it provides little nutritional value as it's mostly basic staples.

Local and regional procurement - the way WFP and other international donors do food aid - is much cheaper and efficient. Reporting for NPR's Morning Edition, Dan Charles interviewed Andrew Natsios (former USAID Administrator)  on the proposed changes to Food for Peace, the main program used to distribute food aid. According Natsios, when he first proposed the local procurement at one of the food aid conference in Kansas City, he was almost physically attacked. Virulent opposition coming from the shippers and some sector of the farm lobby prevented the reform from taking place.

I had the opportunity to visit one of the Kansas City Food Aid conferences few years ago while working for a small Nicaraguan NGO that relied on some USAID programs for its operations. The one thing that stuck in my mind was the shiny showcases the shippers used to allure contractors and NGOs into hiring their services when sending food aid across the ocean. I would later learn that close to half of our food aid budget goes to pay for these services.

Few stands from the shippers, my nostrils captured the smell of salmon coming from one of the corners. I followed my nose expecting a guy giving out delicious d'œuvres to find instead an Alaskan company sampling canned wild salmon used in food aid. While quite tasty, the cost of shipping these guys to places like Somalia, Ethiopia and Bangladesh takes up to 90% of the total tab American tax payers have to pay for the program.

Later in my career I had the honor to work with the USDA in a pilot program to replace in-kind food aid. Our proposal was one of the few in Latin America and the only one used to supply rural schools with fresh fruits, vegetables and dairy from nearby farmer cooperatives. I saw the tremendous impact programs like these can have in the communities where they are implemented. One of the farmer coops we worked with was able to expand its market to other costumers. In fact, a key factor behind the famous Brazil's Zero Hunger program was its local procurement for public schools, a model similar to the current proposal.

While we are all still waiting for the official announcement from the administration, I really hope this time we get it right. It wouldn't be the first time powerful lobbying groups and a handful of humanitarian organizations get away with maintaining our current broken system. I'll keep you all posted.

Sending Cash, Not Corn

My piece advocating for food aid reform and urging the congress to switch to local and regional procurement just got published by The Morningside Post. Check it out and let me know what you think.

The End of Groundhog Day? Reforming American Food Aid

Washington DC, Th  Dec 5^th, 2012  

At a conference organized by Farm Journal last Wednesday, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said that rural districts are losing their ability to exhort political pressure on their elected officials to maintain farm bill programs. This, and the fiscal cliff debate, is drastically changing the political climate of farm bill negotiations. After decades of fruitless criticism to the way the U.S. government distributes food aid globally, international development experts are finally seeing a real opportunity to incorporate long overdue changes to American food aid programs.

The United States remains one of the few countries that continue to ship food aid across the Atlantic instead of providing cash to purchase it close to where the food is needed, a practice common in Japan, the European Union and others donors. American food aid is expensive and ineffective. The Government Accountability Office estimates that approximately 60% of the program’s funds go to shipping. In addition, it can take up to six month for the food to reach its destination –too long to adequately address emergencies. 

Following the example of other countries, the Senate version of the farm bill introduced about $200 million to ‘local and regional food procurement’ or LRP. Instead of sending containers of corn and soybeans, LRP programs provide cash to the World Food Program and NGOs to purchase the food aid close to where is needed. Compare to our current program, LRP will save over 50% in shipping, and strengthen local farmers in the developing world by increasing the demand for their crops. 

The Senate’s effort, however, is currently threatened by a House version of the farm bill that rejects the LRP program. Understanding the reluctance of the House to embrace LRP to save money and make food aid more effective requires following the money and analyzing population trends. 

The farm bill covers a wide range of issues supported by countless lobbying groups. While liberals tend to favor food stamp and conservation programs, conservative groups exhort robust political pressure for farm subsidies and crop insurance programs.  Last year alone, ‘crop production and basic processing industry’ contributed to the House agricultural committee over $2.9 million, with 70% funneled to Republican congressmen. These contributions come from larger farmers and corporations that see no benefit in purchasing grains abroad. 

Opposition to the LRP also comes from rural Congressional districts where farming is still vital to their local economies. In contrast to the Senate, many House policymakers represent these constituencies which demand strong protection against climate variability and subsidized price support for their commodities. For the most part, these districts see little logic in using taxpayer monies to buy corn not in the Mid-West but somewhere in Kenya. 

“Why is it that we don't have a farm bill?” Vilsack said. "It isn't just the differences of policy. It's the fact that rural America with a shrinking population is becoming less and less relevant to the politics of this country.” According to the Department of Agriculture, over half of rural counties are seeing negative population growth in the past five years. As young people move to cities, farmers’ priorities are becoming less significant to policymakers.

While the issue of reforming the food aid has become a “Groundhog Day” among development circles, it seems that the fundamental changes in the political environment may allow the LRP to become law once for all. With the growing fiscal pressures the momentum is on the side of those opposing farm subsidies and supporting more efficient approaches to food aid. 

Food for Thought

The Food for Thought blog from the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, has been publishing excellent commentaries on  international food security and nutrition. Check them out below:

Coding for Hunger: Not Development as Usual. By Dr. Maura O'Neill,  chief innovation officer and senior counselor to the administrator at USAID.
Biotechnology and Africa’s Strategic Interests. By Calestous Juma, Professor at Harvard University
Post-Harvest Technology Solutions: Think Big, Start Small, Scale Fast. By Alexandra Spieldoch, Coordinator of the Network of Women Ministers and Leaders in Agriculture within Women Organizing for Change in Agriculture & Natural Resource Management.
Tackling Poverty with Nutrition Innovations. By Dr. Manfred Eggersdorfer, Senior Vice-President Nutrition Science & Advocacy at DSM Nutritional Products.
More Scientific Advancements In Agriculture Show Strong Potential to Help Increase Farmers’ Yields. By Dr. Robert T. Fraley, Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer at Monsanto Company. 

You’re on top of it: Land Rights in Mozambique

When you read about Mozambique’s agricultural potential it’s hard not to get a sense that the projections are too optimistic. You read about the Beira and the Nancala corridors and their vast swats unused land and wonder why haven’t those corridors become the bread basket of the region already? Why is it that with the growing urban demand, the increasing international commodity prices and the improvements in infrastructure, Mozambique’s agriculture remains stuck on first gear?

It may be the soils – something must be wrong with the soils – you ponder. But then you cross the border into South Africa and the green revolution hits you in the face. (see Google maps for a satellite image). Literally less than a mile away from the border post, the grounds are green with sugar cane crops irrigated with center-pivot systems (those long skeletons that form perfect circles and that are easily confused with the work of a UFO when seen from above). You continue driving and then you see plantains stretching for miles in neatly organized rows. As if this wasn’t enough, suddenly the landscape gets peppered by orange dots on both sides of the highway: citrus season is at its peak and you can buy a whole sack for less than three dollars.

Soils, unlike Colombians, don’t need a visa to cross the border so the bottleneck keeping agriculture below its potential has to be something else. You think about water but then you recall the huge floods this country has faced in the past, so the rivers and their abundant water are definitely there. What about the war, or colonialism, or just culture – aren’t people ‘happy’ just being subsistence farmers? The answer is definitely no, otherwise you wouldn’t hear parent talk about how they want their kids doing something else. And sure, the war and colonialism did affect agriculture quite a bit.

However, you may be standing on top of a more satisfactory answer: the land and specifically its property laws. Well, it turns out that in Mozambique the land belongs to the Mozambicans (aka the government). Instead of buying land, you essentially get a permit to farm it for a fixed amount of years. If land is let fallow, the government has all the right to take it away from you. And even if you are growing bountiful crops, you don’t have legal ownership of the land.

So is that why land in Mozambique remains so underdeveloped? I think it’s definitely a big contributing factor. And it seems that USAID also agrees. Their new version of the Feed the Future Initiative – the so called “Agriculture and Food Security Alliance” is all about partnering with the private sector to give the extra incentive needed to invest here. Mozambique makes part of the second group of countries that will be joining the program. On top of that, the government is finalizing the PNISA, the operationalization document of the agricultural strategy and the action plan for the CADAAP.

Given this willingness to address the bottlenecks related to the disincentives the private sector faces when investing in Mozambique, it seems that the country is heading in the right direction. Although it’s not clear is the actual property law will change, there is definitely a lot of pressure to make it more investor friendly with amendments, tax breaks, and import waivers.

This, of course, has its critics. Chief among them is the Joseph Hanlon, an expert on Mozambique who argued in a recent Guardian article that the private sector approach is incompatible with one that promotes small holder farmers. Although he didn’t call it neocolonialism, he portrayed it as an unwelcome entrenchment of global agro-corporations, scrambling for the last swaps of arable land.

What the author forgets to mention is that an approach in which you incentivized agricultural investments, while supporting small holder farmers is exactly what Brazil did – one of the top five world agricultural producers nowadays and a success story in reducing rural poverty. While Mozambique is far from becoming a global agriculture player, it seems that the country is finally now heading in the right direction.

Mozambique Thought Series: Sopa do Planos – (Strategies soup)

This is the first one of a series of reflections about my internship in Mozambique. I apologies to readers as the blog has been quite neglected in the past couple months. However, time permitting, I intend to get back to my normal posting habits. Tell me what you think!

Try the following: google ‘Mozambique government strategy’, grab a shield, and hit enter. You will be bombarded with hundreds of official government documents, detailing strategies to… you name it – from reducing poverty and malnutrition to promoting culture and sovereignty. For newcomers to the country – such as me – these documents are a solid proof that the government is serious about the issues of your choice. My issue is food security and nutrition and if you read the PAMRDC (the government’s strategy to combat malnutrition or ‘the bible’ as I call it), the essence of integrated development emerges clearly. You look in detailed and find out that all the Lancet interventions of their maternal and child healthseries are included and you cannot content your happiness. In other countries where REACH operates, such level of government commitment is years in the future. But then you take a copy of your bible to a meeting with a provincial ministry director and he says “PAMR….what”?

Yes, Mozambique has a soup of strategies that seek to satisfy different audiences -especially donors- but when it comes to implementation these lofty strategies often fail to reach the ground. So here is my own exercise to navigate this endless list of documents:  


The country’s development strategy is set in the PQG – a five year plan – and the PARPA. The former is presented to voters and the later to international donors. In addition to those, pretty much every ministry has its plan, and for cross-sectorial interventions such as nutrition, gender, and others, you also have development plans.

But those are just the key ingredients for the soup’s stock. What really makes the soup tasty (or terrible for that matter) are the local strategies. For that, every provincial and district office has a multi-year strategy and the yearly PES (economic and social plans). Moreover, large NGO have projects that completely overshadow the organizational capacity of these local governments and their respective plans. Not only there is little coordination between the NGO’s project and the PES, but also such projects provide little capacity to local governments, and in occasions living things worse off when the project ends.

Another very significant challenge is that cross-sectorial issues at national and local level have little legal and budgetary power. Since these strategies rely on a coordinated approach, they quickly become bureaucratic orphans as none of the ministries likes to take a leadership role in their implementation. And while the country has SETSAN - an agency mandated with the coordination of food security and nutrition interventions among ministries – petty turf wars have left the agency toothless and inefficient – a comment I will often hear outside the formal meeting settings.

So what now? Well, stay tuned for the next post. Something tells me that after all this soup may serve well to Mozambique’s outstanding cuisine.  

Clemens' False Dichotomy about Debates in Development

A couple weeks ago I had the opportunity to attend  NYU's conference “Debates in Development.”
The agenda included Yaw Nyarko and William Easterly from NYU's Development Research Institute, Stewart Paperin, Open Society Foundations, Bernadette Wanjala, Tilburg University Development Research Institute; Andrew Rugasira, Founder and Chairman, Good African Coffee; Abhijit Banerjee, MIT's Poverty Lab, and others. 

In general, with the exception of a handful of speakers, I found the conference to filled with silly generalizations about development work and a myopic need to compartmentalize development into artificial 'conflicting sides.' This was epitomized when CGD's Michael Clemens presented an artificial characterization of the debate  as a “Goal Movement” vs. “Evaluation Movement." 
First of all, his criticism of integrated development as something “we've tried and failed” is misdated and does not meet his own rigorous evaluation standards. Monitoring and evaluation techniques have evolved tremendously and are now an essential piece of development work, both at macro and micro levels. Therefore, suggesting that the misnomer “Goal Movement” is devoid of solid evaluation does not correspond with the realities of today’s development interventions.

One of the hallmark criticisms of Michael Clemens to the Millennium Village Project (MVP) is that Integrated Rural Development Projects (IRDP) have already been attempted and deemed a complete failure by a number of evaluations conducted by USAID, World Bank and others. However, Mr. Clemens fails to recognize that if he were to apply his evaluation standards to these reviews of IRDP, few if any will qualify. Most of these evaluations were conducted using ex-post assessments of macro-economic indicators. None used RCTs and few carried out the complex quantitative methodologies that he proposes to guarantee causality.

Fortunately, development M&E techniques have gained a tremendous amount of importance among academia and practitioners in recent years. Under pressure from both donors needing demonstrable impact for their constituencies, and practitioners needing more effective feedback mechanisms to understand program outcomes and impacts, today most development projects allocate a significant amount of program resources -10 to20%- to M&E. Also at their disposal, practitioners have a well-stocked toolbox of quantitative and qualitative methodologies to monitor and measure development outcomes. As argued by Dr. Woolcock and other, a ‘mixed method approach’ using qualitative and quantitative methods simultaneously, is the best way to understand project impact. 

Hence, suggesting the differences between the “Goal Movement” and the “Evaluation Movement” are 'irreconcilable' is simply baseless. Most bilateral and multilateral development interventions and even the initiatives by small NGOs and civil organizations considered evaluation essential to their programs’ successful implementation. Therefore, Clemens’ artificial grouping of the development debate is a false dichotomy: simply put the ‘evaluation side’ will be an orphan without having something to evaluate.

Moreover, the development community, or as he call it the ‘Goal Movement’ has made tremendous advances in strengthening institutions and policy, and developing tools and technologies since the 70s and 80s when IRDPs were commonplace (See other post about promising trends in Africa). These recent developments have enabled practitioners to fine-tune interventions by getting more accurate data and by addressing contextual issues (institutional support, local government etc.) that often impede the success of otherwise adequate interventions. Thanks to that work, today there is a robust body of evidence from development and other disciplines demonstrating the strong synergies created between economic, health, nutrition, and agriculture.

Finally, the issues Mr. Clemens list as the characteristics of the ‘Evaluation movement,’ namely; testing questions, failure is required, local outcomes, and clear accountability, are all part of the ‘Goal Movement.’ The early history of development is filled with examples in which development interventions have failed spectacularly and where local outcomes have been at the front and center of the projects.

Evidently, I was very disappointed with Mr. Clemens presentation. The language he used – calling MV’s Development Harvest 'a masterpiece of misrepresentation,' and his insistence on maintaining false dichotomies add little value to development debates. I'm not completely sold on the MV model. However, I truly believe that as African nations continue to experience economic growth and improvements in governance, they will need models on which to base interventions to attend the needs of their long-neglected rural communities. MV can play an important role in showcasing governments how to do this - the same way cooperation among nations and regions within countries have done for centuries. 


But instead of offering doable alternatives on how to tackle poverty, Mr. Clemens' contributions distract the public with hyperbole that can damage the credibility of very important and proven interventions that should instead be scaled up. 

Crop Profile: Maya Nut (Ojoche) Local Solutions to Hunger

Hola reader,

I'm finally back from a short trip to Nicaragua and after catching up with the usual work that piles up while abroad, I wanted to blog about some exciting things happening in agriculture and the food security debate, foreign aid, and my garden.

But first, I wanted to tell you about Ramon, or Ojoche as he likes to be called in Nicaragua. Ojoche is a tropical tree endemic to most areas in Meso America. The nut of this tree was used by the Mayas as a source of food rich in protein, fiber and vitamins. Today, organization such as The Equilibrium Fund are promoting the use of Ojoche -Maya Nut- as a local, sustainable solution to chronic malnutrition so prevalent in the many areas Central American Altiplano and as a economic alternative in underserved rural communities.

Ojoche has many benefits. First, the trees already grow naturally in most Central American countries and its nut is consumed by some individuals. For those areas where there aren't any trees, seedlings can grow fairly quickly. Second, the nut can be grounded and its flour used to make bread, tortillas, cookies, and many more recipes. As mentioned above, Ojoche's nutritional content is quite high, serving as a viable solution to the food needs of families leaving in these communities. Finally, the nut is part of forest, protecting water basins, feeding wildlife, and supporting an endangered biodiversity.

In addition to these benefits, the nut can be sold in the form of flour, generating much needed income in communities left behind in the road to progress. I hope we can start promoting the use of the nut in the areas where Fabretto, the organization i work for, runs its programs. I envision a local women coop that collects and process the nuts and then sells it to the local school for its lunch program. In this model, one addresses some of the immediate food needs and perhaps more importantly, generates local revenue sources. This new income has the potential to fundamentally change the economic structure of these communities by generating revenue for poor families who often time have little money to meet their most basic necessities.


Anyway, i could keep going on about how this is the type of development approach that must complement, if not replace, the effort of those in power calling the foreign aid shots in Washington. By the way, If your are going to be in DC in November, make sure you stop by the World Bank's Development Marketplace awards to see the Equilibrium Fund showcase its support of grassroots organizations promoting the use of Ojoche Nicaragua.

Finally, for those Hispanoparlantes, below you will find a great video about the use of Ojoche in Guatemala

Episodio 45 from Caminos del Asombro on Vimeo.

People for development

That's right, the cute pictures cost People Magazine $14m and all of it (as far as i know) is going towards development....or at least organizations that work on issues of international development, especially global health endeavors .

Through their very own Jolie-Pitt Foundations (no website), funds will be used to help organizations such as International Finance Facility for Immunization, UNITAID, Advance Market Commitments, Debt2Health, Product Red and others.

Putting aside the international debate over aid effectiveness, I think is great that Vivienne and Knox (the babies' names) will be contributing to the work of these organizations. More important though, this move is part of a larger trend in which traditional mechanisms for development are being replaced or complemented by the collaborative efforts of unlikely partners. The timing couldn't be better, the challenges posed by the food crisis need creative and exhaustive approaches. I hope to see more Brads and Jolies as well as Bills and Melindas, the little they can do will be appreciated by many.

PS. Keep watching Babel in your PC!

My neighbor’s Plot

Summer is finally here and the garden is blooming. The tomatoes can't be happier with the temperature nearing the hundreds and my butterfly bush is about to flower. It feels great to be able to escape from the urban setting and get some dirt under your nails and look at the zucchinis grow by the inches everyday. Sundays remind me the Mingas of our ancestors as everybody is working in their plots, yet one way or another we’re all connected. There is an strong sense of collaboration and cooperation: Tools are borrow and lend, seeds and plants exchanged, and advices and suggestions given. I particularly enjoy asking question to older people as their answers always become stories, filled with anecdotes, characters, and places from other times. They love to tell them and I love to hear them.

My neighbor farmed for decades in Louisiana. He grew sugar cane, tobacco and other cash crops. Eventually, as his family move to Washington looking for better opportunities and his hands were not as strong to carry the hoe anymore, he realized it was time to go elsewhere. He didn’t want to leave his beloved farm, where his parent and his grandparents had also farmed. Humans have always been extremely attached to land and family making the decision of choosing one from the other extremely difficult. With great sadness, he left Louisiana about a decade ago. Not used to the busy life of the city and the tied schedule of his children, his body complain everyday about the lack of sun, soil, and water; about the lack of the smell of fertilizer, the harvest…

One fathers day, a couple years ago, his daughter rented a plot at our community garden for him. With the excuse of shopping at Costco, his family took their dad to the garden where a plot filled with weeds was waiting anxiously for him. He couldn’t be happier. Today, his plot is one of the best ones. Clean like a whistle you cannot find a plant that hasn’t been purposely sow. The straight rows of kales, mustards, and collars along with peas, beans, and squashes make the most beautiful display of the colors of nature. Everyday, he waters his plants early in the morning, looks for white flies in the chard, and pick the tomatoes before they’re too ripe. Looking forward for the next day, my neighbor found in the garden, that needed peace that was missing since he left his farm a decade ago. Ask him about anything, more than likely, he’ll tell you the story a lot better that my words can describe.

Back in Washington

Hello faithful readers,
I’m very sorry it’s been so long since my last entry, but I haven’t, till now, find the energy to write a post. I gotta tell you that I had a lot of time in my hands, but I was in a no-agriculture mood, meaning no blogging. Now, as a wait for my computer to arrive, the energy came from somewhere, and it bothers me because I don’t know where. I’ve been waiting all mourning for the fricking UPS truck to arrive cause they didn’t give me any time estimate until I just fell asleep washing comedy central and CNN en espanol. All of the sudden, my new fancy unmanageable cell phone starts to vibrate in my pocket, thinking the guy on the other line is my dear friend from UPS waiting to tell me he is outside my doorstep, I rush to answer. “Hello??” no one was there. Ran outside, same traffic, not even one of the brown-awkward trucks you always see when not expecting a package. But then, I felt like writing. I try to call back whoever call me, but a answer machine reply. Not wasting any drop of this sudden energy stream, I turned on the computer ASAP, and here I am.

Ok, sorry for these nonsense and now let me tell you what’s been happening since I came back from Nicaragua two weeks ago.

First, pleasant weather. Sure, call it global warming but it is still pleasant here in the capital of the US and A (yes I finally saw Borat and laugh like I hadn’t done in a long time). I feel guilty for enjoying what will turn out to be a catastrophe for my grandsons and perhaps my sons and daughters. But coming out from the infernal heat of Managua, a not so drastic change in climate is sincerely appreciated.

A seven pound pile of mail, mostly rubbish, was waiting for me. It was neatly organized by my patient parents, who had manage to group the letters that seem important: verizon, American express, bank of America, geico, direct TV, t-mobile, and, say hi to the new member of payees, Fanny Mae. Yeah, although there is going to be prosecution to its top executives for their accounting creativity, that didn’t prevent them from sending me the first invoice to pay back my student loan. Back in school, I though they were grants won for my ethnic background, my exceptional need, and my surprising school performance. Well turns out they weren’t. But that ok, I hear of friends that came out of college with five digits loans, and my interest are not that bad. Yet, my group of payees is waiting for some immediate attention.

Attention that will probably be better attended with my new computer (if it comes) and a Quicken Software. That’s one of my new year resolution: to get better at personal finances. My old computer, the one that die in Nicaragua, will be sent to Dell for a out-of-guaranty maintenance…how cool is that. I think they realize that the same problem occurs in many of their computers so they felt sorry or something and will fix it for FREE!!. Sweet, two computer for my office.

Despite the carrots on the above pic, my lovely plot at the community is depressing. It feel weird because the weather is nice, like early fall, but all the plants are gone. They’re wilted, soggy, and brown, yet the sun is out an I feel comfortable wearing a shirt. But that’s ok. I think the ground needs a break. In the meantime I’m planning to bring more leave mulch to compost on top of the beds. I’m also getting from a nearby local stable some manure mix with straw to warm up the herb spiral and the celery…I been told some plant can survive the winter like that.

In terms of career I finally made the decision to wait until fall 08 to start a master program. I really like the field experience of Nicaragua, and more of it will create stronger foundations for a postgraduate study. In this regard I’ll be applying to a couple fellowships with international components. We’ll see.

So, in conclusion I’m happy to be back and share time with my family. Although there is one missing, their warm will keep me comfortable from the sure to come winter storms.

Write, email, comment. Is always good to know you’re out there.

Best,

Rafa

“Me gusta ir con el verano muy lejospara volver donde mi madre (y padre) en inviernoy ver los perros (y gatos) que jamás me olvidarony los abrazos que me dan mis hermanos (nas),
me gusta, me gusta”
Facundo Cabral no soy de aqui