Media Coverage

This section includes media coverage of the Global Agricultural Development Initiative and the report, Renewing American Leadership in the Fight Against Global Hunger and Poverty.

U.S. Will Focus on Long-term Ag Development
Jerry Hagstrom
Agweek, October 5, 2009

At a United Nations event on global food security on Sept. 20, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pledged a long-term U.S. commitment to agricultural development in the Third World, but there still are many questions about how it will operate.

Others present at the U.N. conference included former Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman, who now is president of the Motion Picture Association of America, but has been involved in a Chicago Council of Global Affairs project urging the U.S. government to take a greater role in overseas agricultural development.


Agriculture Co's See Business Opportunity in Food Aid
Reuters, September 22, 2009

U.S. agricultural business giants said that working to create sustainable production around the world will not only bring food to millions of starving people, but it's ultimately a lucrative source of revenue for their companies. Deere & Co, along with Archer Daniels Midland Co, DuPont Co, and Monsanto Co, competitors in the agricultural industry, have founded The Global Harvest Initiative with the goal of doubling agricultural output by 2050 to meet rising world demand.

Much of the blame on the failure to combat global hunger is because U.S. politicians, business leaders and others have not made it a priority, said Dan Glickman, former U.S. Secretary of Agriculture.


G8 Focus on Hunger and Food Production Is Good for Trade
Truth About Trade & Technology, July 10, 2009

Why support increased food production to reduce hunger if there is no shortage of grain? The answer is that 70 percent of the world’s poorest people live in rural areas, mostly on farms. Subsistence farmers with no off-farm employment are not plugged into national markets, much less international ones. A report from the Chicago Council on Global Affairs titled “Renewing American Leadership in the Fight Against Global Hunger and Poverty” explained, “The source of these problems is not fluctuating food prices on the world market, but low productivity on the farm.” Their problems must be addressed at home with improved seeds, including biotechnology, fertilizer, pesticides and basic farm equipment. Once they can feed themselves, then they need access to urban consumer demand to join the market economy.


Behind the G8 Food Security Initiative: Gates Foundation Role
Seattle Times, July 10, 2009

The Gates Foundation has also funded policy studies and advocacy campaigns. It gave nearly $1 million to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs to fund a project on the U.S. role in global agricultural development, and Gates Foundation Senior Fellow Catherine Bertini co-authored the report.

At the beginning of the Obama Administration, the Chicago Council released the report with recommendations for a new policy on agriculture as a way to restore the United States "as a force for positive change in the world."

The report, "Renewing American Leadership in the Fight Against Hunger and Poverty: The Chicago Initiative on Global Agricultural Development," made five recommendations and more than 20 specific suggestions, calling for a renewed U.S. commitment to alleviating global poverty through agricultural development in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. The recommendations include increasing support for agricultural education, research, including genetic engineering, and infrastructure.


G8 Shifts Focus from Food Aid to Farming
The Financial Times, July 6, 2009

The G8 countries will this week announce a "food security initiative", committing more than $12bn for agricultural development over the next three years, in a move that signals a further shift from food aid to long-term investments in farming in the developing world. The US and Japan will provide the bulk of the funding, with $3bn-$4bn each, with the rest coming from Europe and Canada, according to United Nations officials and Group of Eight diplomats briefed on the "L'Aquila Food Security Initiative". Officials said it would more than triple spending.


Seeds of Change
Gourmet, July 1, 2009

With her much-touted White House garden and repeated references to steamed broccoli, Michelle Obama has very publicly set out to change the way America eats. But when it comes to national food policy, it may be a former first lady whose impact proves more profound in the long run. Earlier this month, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton used the announcement of this year's World Food Prize winner to herald the administration's new foreign policy approach to tackling global hunger. "The issue of chronic hunger and food security is at the top of the agenda," Clinton told the crowd of some 500 who had gathered in the regal Benjamin Franklin Room at the U.S. State Department on June 11. "For too long," she continued, "our primary response has been to send emergency aid when the crisis is at its worst. This saves lives, but it doesn't address hunger's root causes."


Durbin: U.S. Should Step It Up with Aid
AgWeek, April 13, 2009

On the heels of President Obama's promise to the G20 countries to double U.S. aid for agriculture in developing countries to $1 billion, Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin, D-Ill., and development advocates said April 7 in Chicago that Congress should renew U.S. leadership in worldwide agricultural development and food security and made clear that Midwestern universities and businesses would play a role in that development.

Reacting to global concerns about the availability of food, especially for poor people during last year's high prices and this year's recession, Obama promised at the G20 meeting in London that he would ask Congress for the money, but he did not provide details on how he would convince Congress to provide the money, on how it would be spent or how long the funding would last.

The Chicago Council on Global Affairs, with funding from the Gates Foundation, already had conducted a study calling for a renewal of U.S. leadership in global agricultural development, particularly in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa.

The study, which was chaired by former Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman and former U.N. World Food Program executive director Catherine Bertini, said, "Renewed American engagement would signal a dramatic shift in America's relations with the developing world."


One in Seven People Go Hungry Each Day
Talk Radio News Service, March 24, 2009

At a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on "Alleviating Global Hunger: Challenges and Catherine Bertini, executive director of the World Food Program, said that "If we are to be leaders in this area, then we can see many benefits for the United States. We can see national security benefits because we see that hunger and poverty have become political flash points; that many countries have had food riots, and that those have helped unseat at least two governments in this world in the last year." She went on to explain that it is a moral responsibility for Americans to help our sisters and brothers from around the world who are hungry and that it will restore American standing and leadership in the world.

Daniel Glickman, former United States Secretary of Agriculture, stated that "By acting decisively and in our own national interest, our country can play a central role in saving millions if not tens of millions of lives in the poorest nations of the world, as we did during the Green Revolution." Glickman used an analogy from the movie Schindler's list and stating that, "If you save one life, you save the entire world." He went on to state that there is a prescription to make people self reliant so that they can become productive citizens and get themselves out of poverty and out of malnutrition.


U.S. Lawmakers Consider Steps to Ease Hunger
Voice of America, March 24, 2009

U.S. lawmakers are considering legislation to ease global hunger, a problem that experts say has national security implications for the United States. The issue was the focus of a hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Tuesday. The chairman of the committee, Democrat John Kerry of Massachusetts, says hunger is one of the greatest diplomatic and moral challenges the world faces… Catherine Bertini, former Executive Director of the United Nations' World Food Program, agrees. "We see this as a wonderful way to restore American standing and leadership in the world through showing the world how important these issues are. And finally, of course, we see this as a moral responsibility for Americans to help our sisters and brothers from around the world who are hungry," she said. Bertini says hunger and poverty have triggered food riots and instability in many countries, so helping to alleviate global hunger could benefit U.S. national security. Bertini helped draft legislative recommendations on alleviating global hunger in a report released by the nonpartisan Chicago Council on Global Affairs. She served as task force co-chairman with former U.S. Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman.


Kerry Focuses Commitment on Global Food Crisis
The Boston Globe, March 24, 2009

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee, under the gavel of chairman John F. Kerry, is holding a hearing today on what the United States can do to help alleviate the global food crisis.

"We're faced with two disasters--soaring food prices leaving millions hungry every year and an ailing economy. The challenges are overwhelming, but we have to do much more than send emergency food aid to countries facing scarcity," Kerry said in a statement.

"We live in a world where nearly one billion people suffer from chronic food insecurity," Senator Richard Lugar, the panel's ranking Republican, added,. "Hungry people are desperate people, and desperation often sows the seeds of conflict and extremism."


Helping Foreign Farmers to Help Themselves
CQ Weekly, March 15, 2009

American food aid has long been a simple thing, at least structurally speaking: Take surplus crops grown in the United States and send them to countries where people are hungry but don't have the capacity to produce all their own food.

But that equation is about to be shaken up, to judge by the consensus emerging among policy makers and experts on world hunger. In the past month, an array of lawmakers and experts from across the political spectrum have proposed legislation and policy shifts designed to advance agriculture development -- teaching other nations to cultivate more and better so they may be weaned off U.S. assistance -- to the forefront of the food aid agenda. The flurry of recommendations is timed to influence the writing of the federal budget and spending plans for fiscal 2010, which starts in October, in the hopes of winning over an Obama administration that hasn't yet indicated a strong stance on the question.


Chicago Council on Global Affairs Presses Obama Administration to Invest Better in Ending Poverty
Chicago Tribune, February 26, 2009

The U.S. can help end poverty for more than 270 million people in the world's poorest regions before 2020 by investing in agricultural development programs that encourage local growth and sustainability, according to a report Wednesday by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs.


Experts Urge US to Help Agriculture Development in Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia
Voice of America, February 26, 2009

A group of specialists committed to foreign assistance is proposing a renewed U.S. commitment to agricultural development in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. The recommendations were presented Wednesday by the Chicago Council of Global Affairs.


US Should Help Poor Nations Farm their own Food
The Weekly Times (Australia), February 26, 2009

The US needs to do much more to help some of the poorest regions in the world feed themselves rather than just focus on food donations, according to a new report. The core cause behind rampant hunger and the scarcity of food in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, The Chicago Council on Global Affairs said in a 230-page report, is "low productivity" on farms at a time when US development assistance continues to dwindle.



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