ActionAid Testifies to Congress on the Current Food Crisis

ActionAid USA Executive Director Peter O’Driscoll was invited by the Hunger Caucus of the US House of Representatives to give testimony on “Agricultural Development and Long Term Solutions to the Food Crisis,” on Thursday June 5 in the Rayburn House Office Building. Representatives Earl Pomeroy (ND-at large), Jerry Moran (KS-01), Jim McGovern (MA-03) and Jo Ann Emerson (MO-08) co-chaired the briefing.

His remarks emphasized ActionAid’s conviction that the current global food price crisis is the outcome of a set of agricultural and trade liberalization policies that have failed to deliver on the fundamental purpose of the global food system—to provide adequate nutrition to a growing population. O’Driscoll affirmed that “after 25 years of the adjustment-liberalization paradigm, it is now clear that the market’s ‘invisible hand’ simply will not hold out enough food to hungry people without responsible regulation and targeted investments from accountable governments and international institutions.”

The testimony gave ActionAid the opportunity to emphasize that the United States Congress can play a critical role in charting a new course for agriculture over the next quarter century that will recognize its importance not only for food production but also for poverty alleviation and social development. Through legislative direction on U.S. food policy and foreign assistance, as well as through responsible oversight of the Executive Branch’s approach to international trade and finance, Congress can help change the direction of agricultural development policy.

Specifically, ActionAid called on Congress to:

  • Consider more significant reform of U.S. food aid policies, switching from expensive shipment of commodities to local and regional purchase procedures that stimulate agricultural production in and around areas affected by chronic hunger.
  • Work for immediate appropriation of new funds to invest in smallholder agriculture, with special emphasis on women farmers, to stimulate or reactivate local production for local consumption, and to facilitate access to agricultural extension, credit, value-adding technologies, and marketing support.
  • Focus on both adaptation and mitigation in the pending deliberations on climate legislation. Such legislation should create new revenue to help fund the costs of adaptation to climate change in developing countries, which the United Nations Development Program estimates at $86 billion per year by 2015.
  • Pay immediate attention to the impact of rapidly expanding biofuel production on food availability and market access for small producers. The U.S. Government should reconsider its role in driving international demand for biofuels, which has contributed to the recent increase in food prices.
  • Promote new international trade policies, encouraging support for developing country proposals to protect the sectors of their economies that are crucial for food production and agricultural development.
  • Fulfill its oversight role on international lending policies, pushing for an end to restrictive conditionalities that compromise the capacity of developing countries to develop their agricultural sectors. Specifically, this oversight should sustain the right of developing countries to adopt plans of action to regain their food self-sufficiency and secure their people’s right to food, through measures such as the establishment of strategic grain reserves, land reform programs, and other investments and subsidies to stimulate sustainable, resilient smallholder agriculture.

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