Feedstuffs / By SALLY SCHUFF, Feedstuffs Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Two of America's senior statesmen -- former U.S. Sen. George McGovern and Bob Dole -- last week laid out a vision for a global nutrition program that could help boost U.S. food exports while targeting food aid to school children in the world's neediest countries.
The two men -- each of whom have career-long credentials in domestic hunger relief and have been their parties' nominee for President -- testified before the Senate Agriculture Committee in support of a U.S. initiative to United Nation's (UN) Food & Agriculture Organization in Rome, would be modeled after the U.S. school lunch program, which annually feeds 27 million children.
John Gordley, a Washington lobbyist for the American Soybean Assn. (ASA), was immediately enthusiastic about the proposal and predicted it would receive strong political support from U.S. agricultural and food organizations.
ASA actively has pushed for more food aid donations to address oversupplies and falling prices, but Gordley said the new proposal refines traditional food aid by targeting it to a school lunch program. "It adds justification and rationale to food aid," he said.
"We are foursquare behind this proposal ... and we're going to find a way to work with the USDA (U.S. Department of Agriculture) and Congress to put whatever legislation is needed through the next Congress and next Administration," said Gordley.
The McGovern-Dole concept, which was first discussed in Washington earlier this year, got a major jumpstart from President Bill Clinton during the recent Okinawa, Japan, G8 meeting (story, p. 3). As part of a broader global educational initiative, Clinton announced July 23 that the U.S. would launch a $300 million global school lunch pilot project. Food purchases and funds for the start-up project will come from the Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC) authority in the current federal fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30.
In announcing the pilot program, Gene Sperling, Clinton's top economic adviser, said the $300 million contribution would come in the form of excess U.S. commodities -- primarily in the form of donations of corn, wheat, soybeans and non-fat dry milk. Donations would be made under Section 416(b) of the program of the Agricultural Act of 1949, which provides for overseas donations of commodities in CCC's inventory to carry out assistance programs in developing and friendly countries, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman testified.
Sperling said the goal of this year's pilot program is to start up a school lunch and breakfast feeding program for 9 million children in selected developing countries.
Glickman said the $300 million for the first year would cover costs of the food and transportation. He told the committee USDA would take care to avoid displacing commercial sales and said some of the donated commodities could be monetized -- sold -- by recipient organizations to pay costs of managing the program, buying local foodstuffs more familiar to local tastes or for buying processing, cooking and storage equipment for the school lunch program.
The first-year pilot will be coordinated through the UN's World Food Program and private voluntary organizations that are "on the ground" currently in countries that will receive aid in the pilot program.
Sperling characterized the U.S. pilot project as "a down payment" on the broader, long-term program envisioned by McGovern and Dole that would eventually include participation by many developed countries. The cost estimate for the long-term program aimed at providing a school lunch to some 300 million children around the world is $3 billion a year, with the U.S. paying for 25%, or $750 million.
The McGovern-Dole concept drew strong bipartisan support at the July 27 hearing -- although many tactical questions remain before it can be crafted into a program.
Senate Agriculture Committee chair Dick Lugar (R., Ind.), also a key supporter of domestic nutrition programs, said, "It is a remarkable idea -- in terms of our own humanitarian interest as well as our foreign policy."
"If the infrastructure is done right, if we are thoughtful about modeling the American school lunch program around the world, this is an extraordinary opportunity for American influence," said Lugar, who also serves on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Sen. Dick Durbin (D., Ill.), said he intended to introduce legislation July 27 that would allow for the use of unspent Economic Enhancement Program (EEP) funds to be redirected to the global feeding program.
Rep. Jim McGovern (D., Maine), is leading support in the House.
The National Farmers Union is on record in support of the concept, said McGovern.
Dole told Feedstuffs that "Nobody disagrees with the concept, but we've got a lot of work to do. It is a great idea. We need to get cooperation of other states, and we need to make certain we don't disrupt markets in other countries." He credited McGovern "as the spear-carrier" but said "the rest of us are right behind him."
Glickman told reporters he believes there is "good, strong bipartisan support in Congress for both the pilot program and the long-term program, but people want to know it will be managed well -- some focus to it -- and there will be oversight to it."
Glickman said he is convinced that distributing the commodities through non-governmental organizations that are working within the recipient countries will help prevent abuses of a "top down program." He said he doubted such a massive long-term program could operate without new authority from Congress, and he predicted that authority might be included in the 2002 farm bill. Meanwhile, the U.S. can operate short term on existing authority or in separate, smaller pieces of legislation, he said.
Copyright 2000, The Miller Publishing Company, a company of Rural Press Ltd.:
