Plan to end global hunger needs support

In the fight against global poverty, the United States has a history of punching far below its weight. Government efforts, however well-intentioned, are spread across multiple agencies, without enough coordination.

Nothing drives this home like the way we’ve approached hunger. U.S. officials too often have thrown food at the problem, flooding local markets with cheap imports and bankrupting local farmers our development dollars aim to support.

But this month, in one of his first presidential swings at poverty, President Barack Obama sounded every bit like the real deal: a heavyweight. He didn’t just announce plans to provide $448 million in immediate assistance to the world’s poor. He said he wants to double support for agricultural development to more than $1 billion “so that we are giving people the tools they need to lift themselves out of poverty.”

The president didn’t stop there. In remarks otherwise tempered with the shared responsibilities of a global effort to forge economic recovery, Obama made clear who was going to light the way for the nearly 1 billion people living on little more than a dollar a day.

“The United States is ready to lead in this endeavor,” he declared after the G-20 summit.

I almost stood up and cheered. Then I remembered. Now comes the hard part. We Americans must support Congress and urge our legislators to back leadership with action.

Dozens of Georgians are traveling to Washington next week to do just that. They’ll join hundreds of volunteer activists at a national conference sponsored by Atlanta-based CARE. Many will get a crash course in effective messaging and then put their new skills to the ultimate test: face-to-face meetings with members of Congress. These envoys in the war on poverty will push for not only a greater investment in programs that strike at the roots of poverty but also reforms to a food aid system that sometimes does more harm than good.

Because for all the hope he has brought, Obama surely knows that the devil is in the details. History is littered with leaders who talked tough in the face of poverty but lacked a coherent plan.

Fortunately, this time, there’s already a strong one on the table. Earlier this year, a broad coalition of aid, advocacy and religious organizations unveiled the “Roadmap to End Global Hunger.”

It would provide greater flexibility in emergencies, relying more on cash-based assistance that can be molded to local needs and less on food purchased in the United States and shipped across the world.

The road map also calls for ramped-up technical assistance, expanded nutrition programs and a quadrupling of investments in market-based approaches that make low-income farmers more profitable.

It would target women, who make up 70 percent of the small farmers in sub-Saharan Africa and 60 percent worldwide. A hunger coordinator in the White House would be accountable for integrating all U.S. policies related to global hunger.

Big pieces of the plan are contained in the Global Food Security Act, authored by Sens. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) and Robert Casey (D-Penn.). And similar legislation is expected in the House soon.

As we make the push to secure agricultural production in Asia, Africa and Latin America, there will be skeptics, to be sure. I can hear them now: Is now really the best time? Shouldn’t we help the poor at home first? Isn’t the money just a Band-Aid?

As Obama told the world, sharing our knowledge — and in some cases our cash — “is not just charity. These are future markets for all countries, and future drivers of growth.”

That means helping launch more village savings and loans in Malawi, where women have turned the tiniest of loans into thriving farms. That means training Vietnamese farmers to diversify with soybeans and beehives so they aren’t one disaster away from hunger. And that means developing markets for the pineapple growers of Ghana, where modest improvements in the appearance and quality of the fruit have opened the door to sales in Europe.

Unfortunately, these gains might be overwhelmed by the global economic meltdown expected to push 50 million more people into extreme poverty by the end of the year. But any setbacks don’t have to be permanent.

Crisis has given birth to opportunity. And we can’t afford to waste it.

Helene D. Gayle is president and CEO of Atlanta-based CARE.