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David Casavant of Hampden is the state coalition lead for the Maine Chapter of Catholic Relief Services.
I was pleased to see an article and a column recently in the Bangor Daily News regarding the Farm Bill. The current efforts to reauthorize the five-year omnibus bill are worthwhile undertakings. At the end of June, in my role as a member of the Maine Chapter of Catholic Relief Services (CRS), I was grateful for the opportunity to visit each of the offices of our congressional delegation and be assured of their support for its reauthorization.
That CRS would be interested in the Farm Bill points to yet another dimension of its importance. The Farm Bill authorizes international relief and development efforts. Funding for emergency relief and resiliency programming is directed to the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), which provide assistance in the form of U.S. agricultural commodities and development assistance to food-insecure communities around the world.
As defined by the Congressional Research Services, international food assistance programs may provide emergency aid, nonemergency assistance, or both. Emergency projects seek to distribute immediate, life-saving food and nutrition assistance to populations in crisis due to conflict or natural disaster. Nonemergency projects address the root causes of food insecurity and seek to build resilience among vulnerable populations. Nonemergency projects often provide a combination of food distribution and nonfood assistance including education programs, technical assistance, and broader community development initiatives.
Programs that provide multisectoral development assistance are having remarkable results. During a recent CRS leadership video meeting, I was able to hear from program managers and farmers in El Salvador and see the results of their efforts. Their corn was over 10-feet high and was surrounded by cover crops providing green fertilizer for the fields. While initially, farmers were hesitant to participate, now they are seeing the results and are eager for assistance to engage in these resiliency practices.
At the CRS national conference in June, I was able to hear a program manager from Guatemala speak of CRS’s Water Sustainable Agriculture practices and learn that farmlands managed in this fashion generate 40% more crops during dry periods. These are just two of many stories that demonstrate the impact of development assistance.
Regrettably, a Federal House marker bill labeled the American Farmers Feed the World Act eliminates the ability of the Food for Peace program to invest in resilience-building activities that are essential to addressing the root causes of hunger and graduating communities out of poverty. At a time when farmlands throughout the world are subject to the effects of climate change, requiring livelihoods to adapt to increasing global temperatures, this legislation would be short sighted since it fails to advance programming that enables people to become self-reliant and make our world safer.
People in regions that are highly vulnerable to climate change are often forced to migrate, leading to a ripple effect of crises that are far more expensive than resilience-building investments. CRS estimates that the loss of these programs means that the U.S. would reach 3.65 million fewer people with assistance. This comes at a time when climate change is increasing the numbers of those who are food and water insecure.
With as many as 828 million people facing chronic hunger and 45 million children suffering acute malnutrition globally, support for efforts through the Farm Bill designed to strengthen international food aid programs would promote dignity, mitigate the ongoing global food crisis, and help more people feed themselves. I deeply appreciate the efforts of our U.S. senators and representatives for their support of international relief through the Farm Bill.
