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Today, Congressman Jim McGovern (MA-02), Ranking Member of the House Agriculture Subcommittee on Nutrition, delivered the following statement at the House Agriculture Committee hearing reviewing U.S. International Food Aid Programs led by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).

“Investing in these programs is also an investment in our national security,” Congressman McGovern said. “It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know that when people can actually put food on the table for their children, make a living off the land and see a future for their family, they are less likely to take up arms against us or their neighbors.

“We can be proud of these programs. We should be providing both USDA and USAID more support,” McGovern added. “And I urge all my colleagues on this panel to go and see first-hand the incredible diversity and success of our international food aid programs.  They will make you wave the flag.”

Congressman McGovern has seen firsthand how U.S. food aid has helped communities around the world. In his statement, he highlighted his trips to see these programs in action in South America and Africa and renewed his call for Congress to strengthen its investment in the international food aid programs led by USDA and USAID.

The full text of Congressman McGovern’s statement is below.

As Prepared For Delivery:

“I want to thank the Chairman and Ranking Member and our witnesses today for recognizing the importance of our international food aid and nutrition. 

“When I travel to other countries, I try to make a point of seeing first-hand some of our international food aid programs.  So I know what I’m talking about when I say that they are impressive.  I’ve been doing this for a number of years.  In 2003, on my second trip to Colombia, I went to see a school feeding program, a pilot program that would later become a model for the George McGovern-Robert Dole International Food for Education and Child Nutrition, in an area where tens of thousands of internally displaced Colombians were living on the outskirts of Bogota. 

“I remember standing in the school yard of this elementary school with U.S. Ambassador Anne Patterson when we were approached by the grandmother of one of students. She came up to us and she thanked us for providing these meals. She asked us to tell the American people, to tell the American president, that if it weren’t for the support of this school and these meals, she would likely have had to let her son join one of the guerrilla or paramilitary groups, just so he would get fed.  But now, she could send her son to school, she could make sure that he received two good meals each day, and the armed actors weren’t going to get him; he had a chance to make something better of himself.

“In 2007, I traveled to Africa, specifically to see our food aid programs in all their diversity.  In remote Diri Dawa, Ethiopia ,we saw a combination of USAID and USDA-supported programs diversify seeds and food crops, help support a milk cooperative, better manage water and the use of fertilizer, and benefit from targeted drip irrigation.  This community was in the middle of as desolate an area as I’ve ever seen, but the community was a sea of green and productive land.  The program was a partnership between U.S. Food for Peace, Catholic Relief Services and the local Catholic Archdiocese.

“These programs in Ethiopia became models for what we now call resilience – helping communities become self-sufficient and better able to withstand both the economic and the weather shocks that so afflict that region.  When the most recent famine hit the Horn of Africa, these villages did not fail; they did not fall into hunger and starvation; they did not lose their livelihoods.  And these successful programs served as the models for the creation of Feed the Future and the strengthening of our Food for Peace developmental programs.

“I’ve worked closely with USDA and USAID to improve our programs, make them more efficient, more effective and better able to incorporate nutrition and resilience into every aspect of their programming.  I admire how USDA and USAID now track and monitor our programs, so much more oversight than in the past.

“Our response in November 2013 to Typhoon Haiyan that hit the Philippines is probably the clearest demonstration to how effective and how improved our emergency response programs now are.       

“Investing in these programs is also an investment in our national security. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know that when people can actually put food on the table for their children, make a living off the land and see a future for their family, they are less likely to take up arms against us or their neighbors.

“We can be proud of these programs.  We should be providing both USDA and USAID more support. And I urge all my colleagues on this panel to go and see first-hand the incredible diversity and success of our international food aid programs.  They will make you wave the flag.”

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