19 June 2008

Former U.S. Aid Chief Says Agriculture Is Africa's Biggest Need

Andrew Natsios calls for realigned spending priorities

Former USAID chief Andrew Natsios (Hudson Institute)

By Phillip Kurata
Staff Writer

Washington -- The former chief of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), Andrew Natsios, says foreign assistance for Africa and other areas of chronic malnutrition needs to be refocused on agricultural development.

Speaking recently at the Hudson Institute in Washington about rising global food prices, the former USAID administrator said that two U.S. interest groups, one representing the environmental movement and the other U.S. farmers, have opposed U.S. agricultural assistance to poor farmers in Africa and developing countries elsewhere.

"The environmental community says: 'We can't trust you with more money for agriculture.  You'll buy fertilizer with it and poison the soil.  You'll salinate the soil with irrigation projects.  You will use pesticides and, most seriously, you will use genetically engineered seeds,'" Natsios said.

As a result of their lobbying in the U.S. Congress, environmental groups have been effective in curtailing U.S. assistance to African agriculture, Natsios said.

The other group that has resisted spending money on African agricultural development is the U.S. farm lobby, which he said is motivated by a desire to prevent competition for U.S. farmers.  "That is ridiculous, but that is the perception, so congressmen from those areas are reluctant to put money into the U.S. budget for that," he said.

About 1 percent of U.S. foreign aid goes for agricultural development, down from about 25 percent in 1980.

Natsios praised President Bush for his enthusiastic support of a provision in legislation that allocates up to 25 percent of U.S. food aid for local purchase of food.

"It is the first time that any president has proposed anything like that.  It's a very important reform because we could use local purchase to stimulate agricultural markets," Natsios said.  The provision was part of the U.S. farm bill, which was enacted June 19.

Natsios headed USAID from 2001 to 2005.  Now, he teaches at Georgetown University in Washington.

Speaking at the same forum with Natsios, political scientist Robert Paarlberg said rich countries that grant developmental assistance have a cultural bias against science-based agriculture.

"Our culture has turned against science-based farming that gave us all this prosperity.  We idealize a pre-modern form of agriculture where we do away with synthetic fertilizer use.  We cut back other forms of chemicals, and we don't endanger the environment with irrigation dams.  We go back to traditional farming and heirloom seed varieties and organic techniques and we stay away from genetically engineered seeds," he said.

Paarlberg, the author of Starved for Science: How Biotechnology Is Being Kept Out of Africa, said the bias against investment in agriculture also stems from the belief that the private markets, not governments, are the engines for economic development.  Proponents of this view have played influential roles in the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank since the 1980s, Paarlberg said.  The World Bank, as a consequence, has veered away from making loans to build rural roads, rural power, rural infrastructure and agricultural schools in favor of making loans for policy reform, he said.

"They neglected to study the example of the green revolution in India, which was done through the public sector and private philanthropical organizations.  Multinational corporations and private business played almost no role at all," he said.

The scholar said that in five years to six years, biotechnology companies, such as DuPont and Monsanto, will put on the market genetically altered corn that produces greater yields in drought conditions.

"It'll be wonderful in Iowa, but they are not the farmers who really need drought-resistant corn.  The most needy are small growers in eastern and southern Africa.  Who is going to move that drought corn to African farmers?" Paarlberg asked.  He said that USAID and the World Bank ought to be involved in this project, but at present the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, a private charity, is the main organization doing it.