Global Food Security
U.S. Agencies Progressing on Governmentwide Strategy, but Approach Faces Several Vulnerabilities Gao ID: GAO-10-352 March 11, 2010Global hunger continues to worsen despite world leaders' 1996 pledge--reaffirmed in 2000 and 2009--to halve hunger by 2015. To reverse this trend, in 2009 major donor countries pledged $22 billion in a 3-year commitment to agriculture and food security in developing countries, of which $3.5 billion is the U.S. share. Through analysis of agency documents, interviews with agency officials and their development partners, and fieldwork in five recipient countries, GAO examined (1) the types and funding of food security programs and activities of relevant U.S. government agencies; and (2) progress in developing an integrated U.S. governmentwide strategy to address global food insecurity as well as potential vulnerabilities of that strategy.
The U.S. government supports a wide variety of programs and activities for global food security, but lacks readily available comprehensive data on funding. In response to GAO's data collection instrument to 10 agencies, 7 agencies reported funding for global food security in fiscal year 2008 based on the working definition GAO developed for this purpose with agency input. USAID and USDA reported the broadest array of programs and activities, while USAID, the Millennium Challenge Corporation, Treasury, USDA, and State reported providing the highest levels of funding for food security. The 7 agencies together directed at least $5 billion in fiscal year 2008 to global food security, with food aid accounting for about half of that funding. However, the actual total level of funding is likely greater. GAO's estimate does not account for all U.S. government funds targeting global food insecurity because the agencies lack (1) a commonly accepted governmentwide operational definition of global food security programs and activities as well as reporting requirements to routinely capture data on all relevant funds; and (2) data management systems to track and report food security funding comprehensively and consistently. The administration is making progress toward finalizing a governmentwide global food security strategy--expected to be released shortly--but its efforts are vulnerable to data weaknesses and risks associated with the strategy's host country-led approach. The administration has established interagency coordination mechanisms at headquarters in Washington, D.C., and is finalizing an implementation document and a results framework. However, the lack of readily available comprehensive data on current programs and funding levels may deprive decision makers of information on available resources and a firm baseline against which to plan. Furthermore, the host country-led approach, although promising, is vulnerable to (1) the weak capacity of host governments, which can limit their ability to sustain donor-funded efforts; (2) a shortage of expertise in agriculture and food security at U.S. agencies that could constrain efforts to help strengthen host government capacity; and (3) policy differences between host governments and donors, including the United States, which may complicate efforts to align donor assistance with host government strategies.
RecommendationsOur recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.
Director: Team: Phone:GAO-10-352, Global Food Security: U.S. Agencies Progressing on Governmentwide Strategy, but Approach Faces Several Vulnerabilities
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Report to Congressional Committees:
United States Government Accountability Office:
GAO:
March 2010:
Global Food Security:
U.S. Agencies Progressing on Governmentwide Strategy, but Approach
Faces Several Vulnerabilities:
GAO-10-352:
GAO Highlights:
Highlights of GAO-10-352, a report to congressional committees.
Why GAO Did This Study:
Global hunger continues to worsen despite world leaders‘ 1996 pledge-”
reaffirmed in 2000 and 2009”-to halve hunger by 2015. To assist in
reversing this trend, in July 2009, the Group of 8 agreed to a $22.7
billion, 3-year commitment for agriculture and food security in
developing countries”of which $3.5 billion is the U.S. share. Through
analysis of agency document, interviews with agency officials and
their development partners, and fieldwork in five recipient countries,
GAO examined (1) the types and funding of food security programs and
activities of relevant U.S. government agencies and (2) progress in
developing an integrated U.S. governmentwide strategy to address
global food insecurity as well as potential vulnerabilities of that
strategy.
What GAO Found:
The U.S. government supports a wide variety of programs and activities
for global food security, but lacks readily available comprehensive
data on funding. In response to GAO‘s data collection instrument to 10
agencies, 7 agencies reported such funding for global food security in
fiscal year 2008 (see figure below) based on the working definition we
developed for this exercise with agency input. The U.S. Agency for
International Development (USAID) and the U.S. Department of
Agriculture (USDA) reported the broadest array of programs and
activities. USAID, the Millennium Challenge Corporation, Treasury,
USDA, and State provide the highest levels of funding for food
security, while the U.S. Trade and Development Agency and the
Department of Defense provide some assistance. These agencies
allocated at least $5 billion in fiscal year 2008 for global food
security, but the actual total is likely greater. GAO‘s estimate does
not account for all U.S. government funds targeting global food
insecurity because the agencies lack (1) a commonly accepted
governmentwide operational definition of what constitutes global food
security and reporting requirements to routinely capture comprehensive
data on all relevant funds being spent, and (2) data management
systems that accurately track and report food security funding.
Figure: Development of a U.S. Governmentwide Strategy for Global Food
Security Is in Progress:
Figure: Funding by agency, fiscal year 2008:
[Refer to PDF for image: horizontal bar graph and accompanying data]
Agency: USAID:
Funding: $2,510 million.
Agency: MCC:
Funding: $912 million.
Agency: Treasury:
Funding: $817 million.
Agency: USDA:
Funding: $540 million.
Agency: State:
Funding: $168 million.
Agency: USTDA:
Funding: $9 million.
Agency: DOD:
Funding: $8 million.
Agency: Peace Corps:
Funding: None reported.
Agency: USTR:
Funding: None reported.
Agency: OMB:
Funding: None reported.
Interagency coordination mechanisms have been established between
National Security Council Interagency Policy Committee on Agriculture
and Food Security and State-Led Global Hunger and Food Security
Initiative Working Team.
National Security Council Interagency Policy Committee on Agriculture
and Food Security:
* National Security Council;
* Department of State;
* U.S. Agency for International Development;
* Central Intelligence Agency;
* Department of Commerce;
* Department of Defense;
* Department of Labor;
* Department of the Treasury;
* Executive Office of the President;
* Export-Import Bank;
* Millennium Challenge Corporation;
* National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration;
* Office of Management and Budget;
* Office of the U.S. Trade Representative;
* Office of the Vice President;
* Overseas Private Investment Corporation;
* Peace Corps;
* U.S. Department of Agriculture;
* U.S. Trade and Development Agency.
State-Led Global Hunger and Food Security Initiative Working Team:
* Department of State;
* Department of the Treasury;
* Millennium Challenge Corporation;
* Office of the U.S. Trade Representative;
* U.S. Agency for International Development;
* U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Source: GAO analysis of the agencies‘ responses to the data collection
instrument and program documents.
[End of figure]
The administration is making progress toward finalizing a
governmentwide global food security strategy”-expected to be released
shortly”-but its efforts are vulnerable to data weaknesses and risks
associated with the host country-led approach that it calls for. The
administration has established interagency coordination mechanisms at
headquarters and is finalizing an implementation documentation and a
results framework. However, the lack of comprehensive data on programs
and funding levels may deprive decision makers of information on
available resources, actual cost data, and a firm baseline against
which to plan. Furthermore, the host country-led approach, although
promising, is vulnerable to (1) the weak capacity of host governments,
which can limit their ability to sustain donor-funded efforts; (2) a
shortage of expertise in agriculture and food security at U.S.
agencies that could constrain efforts to help strengthen host
government capacity; and (3) policy differences between host
governments and donors, including the United States, may further
complicate efforts to align donor interventions with host government
strategies.
What GAO Recommends:
To enhance U.S. efforts to address global food insecurity, GAO
recommends that the Secretary of State (1) work to develop an
operational definition of food security that is accepted by all U.S.
agencies, establish a methodology for consistently reporting
comprehensive data across agencies, and periodically inventory agencies‘
food security-related programs and funding; and (2) collaborate with
other agency heads to finalize a governmentwide strategy that
delineates measures to mitigate the risks associated with the host
country-led approach. State, Treasury, USAID, and USDA provided formal
agency comments and generally concurred with our recommendations. They
also provided some updates and clarifications relevant to data issues
and the host country-led approach.
View [hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-10-352] or key
components. For more information, contact Thomas Melito at (202) 512-
9601 or melitot@gao.gov.
[End of section]
Contents:
Letter:
Results in Brief:
Background:
The U.S. Government Supports a Broad Array of Programs and Activities
for Global Food Security, but Lacks Comprehensive Funding Data:
The Administration Is Developing a Governmentwide Global Food Security
Strategy, but Efforts Are Vulnerable to Data Weaknesses and Risks
Associated with the Host Country-Led Approach:
Conclusions:
Recommendations for Executive Action:
Agency Comments and Our Evaluation:
Appendix I: Scope and Methodology:
Appendix II: GAO's Data Collection Instrument:
Appendix III: Summary Description of U.S. Agencies' Reported Food
Security Activities and Funding:
Appendix IV: GAO's Desirable Characteristics for a National Strategy:
Appendix V: Comments from the Department of State:
Appendix VI: Comments from the Department of the Treasury:
Appendix VII: Comments from the U.S. Agency for International
Development:
Appendix VIII: Comments from the U.S. Department of Agriculture:
Appendix IX: GAO Contact and Staff Acknowledgments:
Related GAO Products:
Tables:
Table 1: Summary of Global Food Security Funding by Agency, Fiscal
Year 2008:
Table 2: List of 20 Countries Being Considered for GHFSI Assistance in
Fiscal Year 2011:
Table 3: Summary of USAID's Reported Funding for Global Food Security,
Fiscal Year 2008A:
Table 4: Summary of MCC's Reported Funding for Global Food Security,
Fiscal Year 2008:
Table 5: Summary of the Department of the Treasury's Reported Funding
for Global Food Security, Fiscal Year 2008:
Table 6: Summary of USDA's Reported Funding for Global Food Security,
Fiscal Year 2008:
Table 7: Summary of State's Reported Funding for Global Food Security,
Fiscal Year 2008:
Table 8: Summary of USTDA's Reported Funding for Global Food Security,
Fiscal Year 2008:
Table 9: Summary of DOD's Reported Funding for Global Food Security,
Fiscal Year 2008:
Table 10: Summary of the Peace Corps' Response on Global Food
Security, Fiscal Year 2008:
Table 11: Summary of USTR's Response on Global Food Security, Fiscal
Year 2008:
Table 12: Summary of OMB's Response on Global Food Security, Fiscal
Year 2008:
Table 13: GAO's Desirable Characteristics for a National Strategy:
Figures:
Figure 1: Prevalence of Undernourishment in Selected Countries:
Figure 2: Selected Key Initiatives That Address Global Food
Insecurity, 1996 to 2009:
Figure 3: Summary of the 10 Agencies' Responses on the Types of
Programs and Activities for Global Food Security, Fiscal Year 2008:
Figure 4: Participants of the Interagency Coordination Mechanisms for
Addressing Global Hunger and Food Security and Key Areas of Potential
Investment and Cross-Cutting Priorities:
Figure 5: Agricultural Expenditures as a Percentage of Government
Spending in African Countries:
Figure 6: Millennium Challenge Corporation Compact with Ghana:
Figure 7: An Example of a Host Country-led Food Security Initiative:
Malawi's Agricultural Input Subsidy Program:
Abbreviations:
CAADP: Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Program:
DOD: Department of Defense:
DSCA: Defense Security Cooperation Agency:
FACTS: Foreign Assistance Coordination and Tracking System:
FAO: Food and Agriculture Organization:
Food Security: Food Security Sub-Policy Coordinating Committee on Food
Price:
Sub-PCC: Increases and Global Food Security:
G8: Group of Eight:
G20: Group of 20:
GHFSI: Global Hunger and Food Security Initiative:
IFAD: International Fund for Agricultural Development:
IPC: Interagency Policy Committee:
MCC: Millennium Challenge Corporation:
MDB: multilateral development bank:
NGO: nongovernmental organization:
NSC: National Security Council:
OMB: Office of Management and Budget:
State: Department of State:
State/F: Department of State's Office of the Director of U.S. Foreign
Assistance:
Treasury: Department of the Treasury:
UN: United Nations:
USAID: U.S. Agency for International Development:
USDA: U.S. Department of Agriculture:
USTDA: U.S. Trade and Development Agency:
USTR: Office of the U.S. Trade Representative:
WTO: World Trade Organization:
[End of section]
United States Government Accountability Office:
Washington, DC 20548:
March 11, 2010:
The Honorable John F. Kerry:
Chairman:
The Honorable Richard G. Lugar:
Ranking Member:
Committee on Foreign Relations:
United States Senate:
The Honorable Rosa L. DeLauro:
Chairwoman:
Subcommittee on Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug
Administration, and Related Agencies:
Committee on Appropriations:
House of Representatives:
Global hunger continues to worsen despite world leaders' 1996 pledge--
reaffirmed in 2000 and 2009--to halve hunger by 2015.[Footnote 1] In
2009, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) reported that more
than 1 billion people were undernourished worldwide. High food and
energy prices in 2007-2008, and the global economic slowdown in 2009,
exacerbated food insecurity in many developing countries and sparked
food protests and riots in dozens of them. However, official
development assistance for agriculture declined from the 1980s to
2005. To assist in reversing this trend, in July 2009, the Group of 8
(G8)[Footnote 2] agreed to a $20 billion, three-year commitment for
agriculture and food security in developing countries. The U.S. share
of this commitment--at least $3.5 billion--includes $1.2 billion
towards the administration's Global Hunger and Food Security
initiative in fiscal year 2010, representing more than double the
fiscal year 2009 budget request.[Footnote 3] Various legislative
proposals currently under consideration[Footnote 4] call for action to
improve global food security.[Footnote 5]
Although investments in agriculture are important in increasing food
security, we found in our 2008 review of food insecurity in sub-
Saharan Africa that neither host governments nor donors, including the
United States, have prioritized food security and agriculture as
development goals.[Footnote 6] Agricultural development is widely
recognized as a key driver for improving food security.[Footnote 7] In
our report, we concluded that U.S. efforts to reduce hunger in sub-
Saharan Africa--where food insecurity is most prevalent--had been
impaired by limited agricultural development resources, a fragmented
approach, and an emphasis on emergency food aid. We recommended (1)
the development of an integrated governmentwide strategy that defines
each agency's actions and resource commitments to achieve food
security, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, including improving
collaboration with host governments and other donors and developing
improved measures to monitor and evaluate progress toward the
implementation of this strategy and (2) annual reporting to Congress
on progress toward the implementation of the first recommendation.
Since assuming office in January 2009, the President and the Secretary
of State have each stated on several occasions that improving global
food security is a priority for this administration. Consistent with
our first recommendation, U.S. agencies have launched a global hunger
and food security initiative, and in April 2009 the administration
renewed efforts to develop a governmentwide strategy. The National
Security Council (NSC) Interagency Policy Committee on Agriculture and
Food Security and a Department of State-led Global Hunger and Food
Security Initiative (GHFSI) working team are responsible for these
efforts. In September 2009, State issued a consultation document that
delineated a comprehensive approach to food security based on host
country-and community-led planning whereby recipient countries decide
on their own needs, solutions, and development strategies on the
grounds that the most effective food security strategies come from
those closest to the problems. The consultation document states that
supporting host country-led plans increases the long-term
sustainability of investments in food security, strengthens
coordination among stakeholders, and provides an important opportunity
to learn from the experiences of others. Moreover, the consultation
document states that the U.S. strategy will support commitments made
through consultative and inclusive country-led processes by aligning
U.S. resources behind these host country-led plans. According to
members of the GHFSI working team, the comprehensive approach under
development will also include an implementation document for the
strategy. In prior reports, we have identified six desirable
characteristics for national strategies--including the forthcoming
food security strategy--which, in our view, enhance a strategy's
usefulness in resource and policy decisions and better ensure
accountability (see appendix IV).[Footnote 8] These characteristics
are (1) purpose, scope, and methodology; (2) problem definition and
risk assessment; (3) goals, subordinate objectives, activities, and
performance measures; (4) resources, investments, and risk management;
(5) organizational roles, responsibilities, and coordination; and (6)
integration and implementation.
To inform Congress in its deliberations, you asked us to review U.S.
efforts to address global food insecurity. Specifically, we examined
(1) the types and funding levels of food security programs and
activities of relevant U.S. government agencies and (2) progress in
developing an integrated U.S. governmentwide strategy to address
global food insecurity, as well as potential vulnerabilities of that
strategy. To address these objectives, we administered a data
collection instrument to survey the 10 U.S. agencies that are engaged
in food security activities[Footnote 9] and participated in the Food
Security Sub-Policy Coordinating Committee on Food Price Increases and
Global Food Security (Food Security Sub-PCC) of the NSC in 2008. (Our
data collection instrument is shown in appendix II.) The 10 agencies
are the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), Millennium
Challenge Corporation (MCC), Department of the Treasury (Treasury),
U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), Department of State (State),
Department of Defense (DOD), U.S. Trade and Development Agency
(USTDA), Peace Corps, Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR),
and Office of Management and Budget (OMB). In addition, we conducted
fieldwork in Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Ghana, Haiti, and Malawi on the
basis of the presence of multiple active programs addressing food
insecurity, the proportion of the chronically hungry in these
countries, and geographic coverage of U.S. efforts in Africa, the
Western Hemisphere, and Asia. In these countries, we met with U.S.
mission staff and host government, donor, and nongovernmental
organization (NGO) representatives. We also visited numerous project
sites funded by the U.S. government and other donors. In addition, we
attended the 2009 World Food Summit as an observer and met with Rome-
based United Nations (UN) food and agriculture agencies--namely FAO,
the World Food Program, and the International Fund for Agricultural
Development (IFAD), as well as the U.S. Mission to the United Nations
and representatives of other donor countries.
We conducted this performance audit from February 2009 to March 2010
in accordance with generally accepted government auditing standards.
Those standards require that we plan and perform the audit to obtain
sufficient, appropriate evidence to provide a reasonable basis for our
findings and conclusions based on our audit objectives. We believe
that the evidence obtained provides a reasonable basis for our
findings and conclusions based on our audit objectives. (Appendix I
provides a detailed discussion of our scope and methodology.)
Results in Brief:
The U.S. government supports a wide variety of programs and activities
for global food security, but lacks comprehensive data on funding. We
found that it is difficult to readily determine the full extent of
such programs and activities and to estimate precisely the total
amount of funding that the U.S. government as a whole allocates to
global food security. In response to our data collection instrument to
the 10 agencies, 7 agencies reported providing monetary assistance for
global food security programs and activities in fiscal year 2008,
based on the working definition we developed for this exercise with
agency input. USAID and USDA reported providing the broadest array of
global food security programs and activities. USAID, MCC, Treasury
through its participation in the multilateral development
institutions, USDA, and State provide the highest levels of funding to
address food insecurity in developing countries. In addition, USTDA
and DOD provide some food security-related assistance. These 7
agencies reported allocating at least $5 billion in fiscal year 2008
for global food security, with food aid accounting for about a half of
this funding. However, the actual total level of funding is likely
greater. The agencies did not provide us with comprehensive funding
data due to two key factors. First, a commonly accepted governmentwide
operational definition of what constitutes global food security
programs and activities has not been developed. An operational
definition accepted by all U.S. agencies would enable them to apply it
at the program level for planning and budgeting purposes. The agencies
also lack reporting requirements to routinely capture comprehensive
data on all relevant funds being spent. Second, some of the agencies'
management systems are inadequate for tracking and reporting food
security funding data consistently. For example, USAID and State,
which use the same database for tracking foreign assistance data,
failed to include a very large amount of food aid funding data in that
database.
The administration is making progress toward finalizing a
governmentwide global food security strategy through improved
interagency coordination at the headquarters level, but its efforts
are vulnerable to weaknesses in data and risks associated with the
host country-led approach called for in the strategy under
development. Two interagency processes established in April 2009--the
NSC Interagency Policy Committee on Agriculture and Food Security and
the GHFSI working team--are improving headquarters coordination among
numerous agencies. The strategy under development is embodied in the
Consultation Document issued in September 2009, which is being
expanded and as of February 2010 was expected to be released shortly,
along with an implementation document and a results framework that
will include a plan for monitoring and evaluation. The administration
has identified a group of 20 countries around which to center GHFSI
assistance in fiscal year 2011, including 12 countries in sub-Saharan
Africa, 4 in Asia, and 4 in the Western Hemisphere. However, the
administration's efforts are vulnerable to weaknesses in funding data;
and the host country-led approach, although promising, poses some
risks. Currently, no single information database compiles
comprehensive data on the entire range of global food security
programs and activities across the U.S. government. The lack of
comprehensive data on current programs and funding levels may impair
the success of the new strategy because it deprives decision makers of
information on all available resources, actual cost data, and a firm
baseline against which to plan. Furthermore, the host country-led
approach has three key vulnerabilities. First, the weak capacity of
host governments raises questions regarding their ability to absorb
significant increases in donor funding for agriculture and food
security and to sustain donor-funded projects on their own over time.
Second, the shortage of expertise in agriculture and food security at
relevant U.S. agencies can constrain efforts to help strengthen host
government capacity, as well as review host government efforts and
guide in-country activities. Third, policy differences between host
governments and donors, including the United States, with regard to
agricultural development and food security may further complicate
efforts to align donor interventions with host government strategies.
In this report, we are recommending that the Secretary of State (1)
work with the existing NSC Interagency Policy Committee to develop an
operational definition of food security that is accepted by all U.S.
agencies; establish a methodology for consistently reporting
comprehensive data across agencies; and periodically inventory the
food security-related programs and associated costs for each of these
agencies; and (2) work in collaboration with relevant agency heads to
delineate measures to mitigate the risks associated with the host
country-led approach on the successful implementation of the
forthcoming governmentwide global food security strategy.
We provided a draft of this report to the NSC and the 10 agencies that
we surveyed. Four of these agencies--State, Treasury, USAID, and USDA--
provided formal agency comments and generally concurred with our
recommendations. In addition, they provided updated information and
clarifications concerning data issues and the host country-led
approach. We have reprinted these agencies' comments in appendixes V,
VI, VII, and VIII, respectively, along with our responses. Both State
and USAID agreed that a common definition for food security would be
useful, although State expressed some concern regarding the costs in
doing so. In addition, USDA noted that the recommendation gives State
the lead role, despite acknowledging that USAID and USDA offer the
broadest array of food security programs and activities. We recognize
the expertise that various agencies can contribute toward the effort
and encourage fully leveraging their expertise. The four agencies all
noted that the administration recognizes the risks associated with a
country-led approach and are taking actions to mitigate these risks.
State indicated that the implementation strategy for the GHFSI will
incorporate mechanisms to manage these risks. USAID noted that the
administration is planning to implement support to host governments in
two phases in order to reduce the risks associated with limited
country capacity and potential policy conflicts. Treasury noted that
the interagency working group is proposing to increase the amount of
technical assistance to recipient countries and that a new multidonor
trust fund administered by the World Bank will complement our
bilateral food security activities by leveraging the financial
resources of other donors and utilizing the technical capacity of
multilateral development banks. USDA pointed out the technical
expertise that the department can offer, including its relationships
with U.S. land grant colleges and universities and international
science and technology fellowship programs to help build institutional
and scientific capacity. In addition, DOD, MCC, NSC, OMB, State,
Treasury, USAID, USDA, and USTDA provided technical comments on a
draft of this report, which we have addressed or incorporated as
appropriate. The Peace Corps and USTR did not provide comments.
Background:
Global Food Insecurity Persists, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa,
South Asia, and Haiti:
Currently, there are over 1 billion undernourished people worldwide,
according to FAO. This number is greater than at any time since the
1996 World Food Summit, when world leaders first pledged to halve the
number of the world's hungry, and has been steadily increasing since
the mid-1990s, even before the food and fuel crisis of 2006-2008 and
the current economic downturn.[Footnote 10] Based on FAO's most recent
data, Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia had the most severe and
widespread food insecurity as of 2004-2006. Outside these two regions,
Haiti, the least developed country in the Western Hemisphere and one
of the poorest countries in the world, had extremely high levels of
hunger and food insecurity, which have been further exacerbated by the
January 2010 earthquake.
Figure 1: Prevalence of Undernourishment in Selected Countries[A]:
[Refer to PDF for image: maps of Africa, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh,
and Haiti and associated data]
Country: Angola;
Number of undernourished people: 7.1 million;
Undernourished people as a percentage of populations: 44%.
Country: Bangladesh;
Number of undernourished people: 40.2 million;
Undernourished people as a percentage of populations: 26%.
Country: Burundi;
Number of undernourished people: 3.7 million;
Undernourished people as a percentage of populations: 40%.
Country: Central African Republic;
Number of undernourished people: 1.7 million;
Undernourished people as a percentage of populations: 41%.
Country: Chad;
Number of undernourished people: 3.9 million;
Undernourished people as a percentage of populations: 38%.
Country: Democratic Republic of the Congo;
Number of undernourished people: 43.9 million;
Undernourished people as a percentage of populations: 75%.
Country: Eritrea;
Number of undernourished people: 3 million;
Undernourished people as a percentage of populations: 66%.
Country: Ethiopia;
Number of undernourished people: 34.6 million;
Undernourished people as a percentage of populations: 44%.
Country: Ghana;
Number of undernourished people: 1.7 million;
Undernourished people as a percentage of populations: 8%.
Country: Haiti;
Number of undernourished people: 5.4 million;
Undernourished people as a percentage of populations: 58%.
Country: India;
Number of undernourished people: 251.5 million;
Undernourished people as a percentage of populations: 22%.
Country: Liberia;
Number of undernourished people: 1.3 million;
Undernourished people as a percentage of populations: 38%.
Country: Madagascar;
Number of undernourished people: 6.6 million;
Undernourished people as a percentage of populations: 35%.
Country: Mali;
Number of undernourished people: 1.2 million;
Undernourished people as a percentage of populations: 10%.
Country: Malawi;
Number of undernourished people: 3.8 million;
Undernourished people as a percentage of populations: 29%.
Country: Mauritania;
Number of undernourished people: 0.2 million;
Undernourished people as a percentage of populations: 8%;
Country: Mozambique;
Number of undernourished people: 7.5 million;
Undernourished people as a percentage of populations: 37%.
Country: Niger;
Number of undernourished people: 3.8 million;
Undernourished people as a percentage of populations: 28%.
Country: Nigeria;
Number of undernourished people: 11.3 million;
Undernourished people as a percentage of populations: 8%.
Country: Pakistan;
Number of undernourished people: 36.5 million;
Undernourished people as a percentage of populations: 23%.
Country: Rwanda;
Number of undernourished people: 3.7 million;
Undernourished people as a percentage of populations: 40%.
Country: Senegal;
Number of undernourished people: 2.9 million;
Undernourished people as a percentage of populations: 25%.
Country: Sierra Leone;
Number of undernourished people: 2.5 million;
Undernourished people as a percentage of populations: 46%.
Country: Tanzania;
Number of undernourished people: 13.6 million;
Undernourished people as a percentage of populations: 35%.
Country: Togo;
Number of undernourished people: 2.3 million;
Undernourished people as a percentage of populations: 37%.
Country: Zambia;
Number of undernourished people: 5.2 million;
Undernourished people as a percentage of populations: 45%.
Country: Zimbabwe;
Number of undernourished people: 5.1 million;
Undernourished people as a percentage of populations: 39%.
Source: GAO analysis of FAO data; Map Resources (map).
[A] The information on this map is based on FAO's 2004-2006
undernourishment estimates.
[End of figure]
In absolute numbers, more hungry people lived in South Asia than in
any other region, whereas the most concentrated hunger was found in
sub-Saharan Africa, which had 16 of the world's 17 countries where the
prevalence of hunger was 35 percent or higher. The seventeenth country
was Haiti, where 58 percent of the population lived in chronic hunger.
According to FAO's data for 2004-2006, since 1990, the proportion of
undernourished people has declined from 34 to 30 percent in sub-
Saharan Africa, from 25 to 23 percent in South Asia, and from 63 to 58
percent in Haiti. However, during this period, the actual number of
undernourished people has increased: from 169 million to 212 million
in sub-Saharan Africa, from 286 million to 337 million in South Asia,
and from 4.5 million to 5.4 million in Haiti--a number that is likely
to grow further due to the earthquake.[Footnote 11]
The United States and Other World Leaders Have Made Longstanding
Commitments to Address Global Food Insecurity:
The United States and about 180 world leaders pledged to address
global food insecurity, specifically making a commitment to halve
hunger by 2015. In 2000 they reaffirmed this commitment with the
establishment of the UN Millennium Development Goals and, more
recently, at the World Summit on Food Security held in Rome in
November 2009. As shown in figure 2, both the international donor
community and the U.S. government have undertaken a number of key
initiatives over the years in their efforts to address global food
insecurity. The global food price crisis in 2007-2008 spurred new
initiatives in recent years to address the growing prevalence of
hunger.
Figure 2: Selected Key Initiatives That Address Global Food
Insecurity, 1996 to 2009:
[Refer to PDF for image: timeline]
Year: 1996;
International Initiative: World Food Summit is held in Rome;
U.S. Initiative: A high-level Interagency Working Group, co-chaired by
State, USAID, and USDA is established.
Year: 2000;
International Initiative: UN Millennium Development Goals are
established.
Year: 2002;
U.S. Initiative: Presidential Initiative to End Hunger in Africa is
launched.
Year: 2003, July;
International Initiative: African Union endorses the implementation of
the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Program.
Year: 2007;
International Initiative: FAO launches an Initiative on Soaring Food
Prices.
Year: 2008;
International Initiative:
April: UN High-Level Task Force on the Global Food Security Crisis is
established;
May: World Bank‘s Global Food Crisis Response Program is launched;
December: The European Parliament and Council establish €1 billion
Food Facility.
U.S. Initiative:
May: USAID establishes the Sub-Policy Coordinating Committee on Food
Price Increase and Global Food Security (which is dissolved in January
2009);
June: Global Food Security Response is announced.
Year: 2009;
International Initiative:
January: UN and the government of Spain convene the Madrid meeting to
chart action on continuing global food crisis;
July: African Union‘s Sirte Declaration on Investing in Agriculture
for Economic Growth and Food Security is adopted;
July: G8 issues Joint Statement on Global Food Security in L‘Aquila,
Italy;
November: World Summit on Food Security is held in Rome.
U.S. Initiative:
February: Global Food Security Act of 2009 is introduced in the U.S.
Senate;
April: Interagency Policy Committee at the National Security Council
is established;
April: State-led Interagency Global Hunger and Food Security
Initiative working team is established;
May: Global Health Initiative is launched;
June: Global Food Security Act of 2009 and the Roadmap to End Global
Hunger and Promote Food Security Act of 2009 are introduced in the
U.S. House of Representatives;
September: Consultation Document for the U.S. Global Hunger and Food
Security Initiative is released by the State Department.
Source: GAO analysis of literature review and structured discussions.
[End of figure]
U.S. Agencies Work with Numerous Development Partners to Advance
Global Food Security:
In their efforts to advance global food security, U.S. agencies work
with numerous development partners. These include host governments,
multilateral organizations, and bilateral donors, as well as other
entities such as NGOs, philanthropic foundations, private sector
organizations, and academic and research organizations. Their roles
and types of activities include the following:
* Host governments. At the country level, host governments generally
lead the development of a strategy for the agricultural sector, the
coordination of donor assistance, and the implementation of projects
and programs, as appropriate. They typically issue a poverty reduction
strategy paper that outlines their country development plans and a
national action plan to alleviate poverty, both elements considered
indicators of national ownership of the development approach. Donors
are committed under the Paris Declaration to align their assistance
with national development strategies of the host country. Host
governments may also participate in efforts at the regional level. For
example, in 2003, members of the African Union endorsed the
implementation of the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development
Program (CAADP), a framework that is aimed to guide agricultural
development efforts in African countries, and agreed to allocate at
least 10 percent of government spending to agriculture by 2008.
[Footnote 12]
* Multilateral organizations. Several multilateral organizations and
international financial institutions implement a variety of programs
in the areas of agricultural development and food security.[Footnote
13] IFAD and other international financial institutions play a large
role in providing funding support for agriculture. Together, the World
Bank, IFAD, and the African Development Bank accounted for about 73
percent of multilateral official development assistance to agriculture
from 1974 to 2006 in sub-Saharan Africa. In addition, the New York-
based UN Development Program is responsible for supporting the
implementation of the UN Millennium Development Goals. In September
2009, the Group of Twenty (G20) countries asked the World Bank to
establish a multidonor trust fund to support the L'Aquila initiative
to boost support for agriculture and food security. As of January
2010, the World Bank put forward a framework document seeking approval
from its executive directors to create the Global Agriculture and Food
Security Program Trust Fund, for which the World Bank will serve as a
trustee. According to Treasury officials, the fund will be operational
by the middle of 2010.
* Bilateral donors. The largest bilateral donors include Australia,
Canada, France, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom,
and the United States, among others. At the first ever "Farm" Summit
of G8 countries in L'Aquila, Italy, in July 2009, and the subsequent
G20 Summit in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in September 2009, major donor
countries and the European Commission pledged to significantly
increase aid to agriculture and food security.[Footnote 14] According
to the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development, since the
mid-1980s, aid to agriculture has fallen by half, but recent trends
indicate a slowdown in the decline, and even the prospect of an upward
trend. From 2002-2007, bilateral aid to agriculture increased at an
average annual rate of 5 percent in real terms. Organization of
Economic Cooperation and Development data show that in 2006-2007,
development assistance countries' bilateral aid commitments to
agriculture amounted to $3.8 billion, a little more than half of the
L'Aquila commitment on an annual basis.
* Other entities. Other entities such as NGOs, philanthropic
foundations, private sector organizations, and academic and research
organizations--often working in partnership--also play a significant
role in supporting food security and agricultural development in
developing countries. For example, the Alliance for a Green Revolution
in Africa, which was established in 2006 with initial funding from the
Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation, has
entered into a partnership with the New Partnership for African
Development to help link African government commitments to
agricultural development with programs in seeds, soil health, market
access, and policy.[Footnote 15] U.S. land-grant colleges and
universities--institutions of higher education which receive federal
support for integrated programs of agricultural teaching, research,
and extension--sponsor fellowships for students from developing
countries. Additionally, these colleges and universities often support
the activities of some of the institutes that are part of the
Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research, such as
the International Food Policy Research Institute the International
Institute for Tropical Agriculture, and the International Livestock
Research Institute.
The U.S. Government Supports a Broad Array of Programs and Activities
for Global Food Security, but Lacks Comprehensive Funding Data:
While the U.S. government supports a broad array of programs and
activities for global food security, it lacks comprehensive funding
data on these programs and activities. We found that it is difficult
to readily determine the full extent of such programs and activities
and to estimate precisely the total amount of funding that the U.S.
government as a whole allocates to global food security. In response
to our data collection instrument, 7 of the 10 agencies reported
providing monetary assistance for global food security based on the
working definition we developed for this exercise with agency input.
USAID, MCC, Treasury, USDA, State, USTDA, and DOD allocated at least
$5 billion in fiscal year 2008 for programs and activities that we
define as addressing global food security, with food aid accounting
for about a half of this funding. However, the actual total level of
funding is likely greater. The agencies were unable to provide us with
comprehensive funding data due to (1) a lack of a commonly accepted
governmentwide operational definition of what constitutes global food
security and reporting requirements to routinely capture comprehensive
data on all relevant funds being spent, and (2) weaknesses in some of
the agencies' management systems for tracking and reporting food
security funding data consistently.
USAID and USDA Reported Providing the Broadest Array of Global Food
Security Programs and Activities, while USAID and MCC Reported
Providing the Largest Amounts of Funding:
Among agencies that support global food security programs and
activities, USAID and USDA reported providing the broadest array of
such programs and activities, while USAID and MCC reported providing
the largest amount of funding in fiscal year 2008. To examine the
types and funding levels of these programs and activities as
comprehensively as possible, we sent a data collection instrument to
the 10 agencies that participated in the 2008 Food Security Sub-PCC:
DOD, MCC, State, OMB, the Peace Corps, Treasury, USAID, USDA, USTDA,
and USTR. In this instrument, we asked the agencies to indicate what
types of food security activities they performed in fiscal year 2008
and the funding levels associated with them. We had to develop a
working definition of food security because there is no commonly
accepted governmentwide operational definition that specifies the
programs and activities that are food security related.[Footnote 16]
We developed our working definition based on a framework of food
security-related activities that we established in a prior GAO
report[Footnote 17] and a series of interactions with the relevant
agencies over a period of several months. Our interactions with the
agencies focused on refining the definition to ensure that it would be
commonly understood and applicable to their programs and activities to
the extent possible. The working definition that we developed included
the following elements: food aid, nutrition, agricultural development,
rural development, safety nets, policy reform, information and
monitoring, and future challenges to food security. We asked the
agencies to indicate which of these activities they performed and to
provide funding data--when these data were available and reliable--on
the appropriations, obligations, expenditures, and other allocations
associated with these activities in fiscal year 2008. We pretested the
instrument with officials at DOD, MCC, State, USAID, and USDA, and
administered it in June and July 2009. All 10 agencies responded to
our instrument, and 7 of them (DOD, MCC, State, Treasury, USAID, USDA,
and USTDA) reported funding data.
In addition, the instrument gave the agencies the option to indicate
whether they were involved in other types of food security assistance
and if so, to describe them. Figure 3 summarizes the agencies'
responses on the types of global food security programs and activities
and table 1 summarizes the funding levels. (The agencies are listed in
order from highest to lowest amount of funding provided.)
Figure 3: Summary of the 10 Agencies' Responses on the Types of
Programs and Activities for Global Food Security, Fiscal Year 2008:
[Refer to PDF for image: illustrated table]
Types of activities:
A. Food aid: Emergency food aid:
USAID: [Check];
MCC: [Empty];
Treasury[A]:
USDA: [Check];
State: [Check];
USTDA: [Empty];
DOD: [Check];
Peace Corps: [Empty];
USTR: [Empty];
OMB[B]: [Empty].
A. Food aid: Nonemergency food aid:
USAID: [Check];
MCC: [Empty];
Treasury[A]: [Empty];
USDA: [Check];
State: [Check];
USTDA: [Empty];
DOD: [Empty];
Peace Corps: [Empty];
USTR: [Empty];
OMB[B]: [Empty].
B. Nutrition: Supplementary feeding and micronutrient supplementation:
USAID: [Check];
MCC: [Empty];
Treasury[A]: [Empty];
USDA: [Empty];
State: [Empty];
USTDA: [Empty];
DOD: [Empty];
Peace Corps: [Empty];
USTR: [Empty];
OMB[B]: [Empty].
B. Nutrition: Nutritional education, counseling, and assessment:
USAID: [Check];
MCC: [Empty];
Treasury[A]: [Empty];
USDA: [Check];
State: [Empty];
USTDA: [Empty];
DOD: [Empty];
Peace Corps: [Check];
USTR: [Empty];
OMB[B]: [Empty].
B. Nutrition: Assistance focusing on especially vulnerable groups:
USAID: [Check];
MCC: [Empty];
Treasury[A]: [Empty];
USDA: [Check];
State: [Empty];
USTDA: [Empty];
DOD: [Empty];
Peace Corps: [Check];
USTR: [Empty];
OMB[B]: [Empty].
C. Agricultural development: Agricultural technologies:
USAID: [Check];
MCC: [Check];
Treasury[A]: [Empty];
USDA: [Check];
State: [Empty];
USTDA: [Check];
DOD: [Empty];
Peace Corps: [Empty];
USTR: [Empty];
OMB[B]: [Empty].
C. Agricultural development: Farming techniques and agricultural
inputs:
USAID: [Check];
MCC: [Check];
Treasury[A]: [Empty];
USDA: [Check];
State: [Check];
USTDA: [Check];
DOD: [Empty];
Peace Corps: [Check];
USTR: [Empty];
OMB[B]: [Empty].
C. Agricultural development: Agricultural value chains, including
investments in food processing and storage:
USAID: [Check];
MCC: [Check];
Treasury[A]: [Empty];
USDA: [Check];
State: [Empty];
USTDA: [Check];
DOD: [Empty];
Peace Corps: [Empty];
USTR: [Empty];
OMB[B]: [Empty].
C. Agricultural development: Agricultural market development:
USAID: [Check];
MCC: [Check];
Treasury[A]: [Empty];
USDA: [Check];
State: [Empty];
USTDA: [Check];
DOD: [Empty];
Peace Corps: [Empty];
USTR: [Empty];
OMB[B]: [Empty].
C. Agricultural development: Agricultural risk management:
USAID: [Check];
MCC: [Check];
Treasury[A]: [Empty];
USDA: [Check];
State: [Check];
USTDA: [Check];
DOD: [Empty];
Peace Corps: [Empty];
USTR: [Empty];
OMB[B]: [Empty].
C. Agricultural development: Agricultural research and development,
education, and training:
USAID: [Check];
MCC: [Check];
Treasury[A]: [Empty];
USDA: [Check];
State: [Check];
USTDA: [Empty];
DOD: [Check];
Peace Corps: [Check];
USTR: [Empty];
OMB[B]: [Empty].
C. Agricultural development: Irrigation and watershed management:
USAID: [Check];
MCC: [Check];
Treasury[A]: [Empty];
USDA: [Check];
State: [Empty];
USTDA: [Check];
DOD: [Check];
Peace Corps: [Check];
USTR: [Empty];
OMB[B]: [Empty].
C. Agricultural development: Maintaining the natural resource base:
USAID: [Check];
MCC: [Check];
Treasury[A]: [Empty];
USDA: [Check];
State: [Check];
USTDA: [Check];
DOD: [Empty];
Peace Corps: [Check];
USTR: [Empty];
OMB[B]: [Empty].
D. Rural development: Land tenure reform:
USAID: [Check];
MCC: [Check];
Treasury[A]: [Empty];
USDA: [Empty];
State: [Empty];
USTDA: [Empty];
DOD: [Empty];
Peace Corps: [Empty];
USTR: [Empty];
OMB[B]: [Empty].
D. Rural development: Rural infrastructure:
USAID: [Check];
MCC: [Check];
Treasury[A]: [Empty];
USDA: [Check];
State: [Empty];
USTDA: [Check];
DOD: [Check];
Peace Corps: [Empty];
USTR: [Empty];
OMB[B]: [Empty].
D. Rural development: Microlending and access to other credit:
USAID: [Check];
MCC: [Check];
Treasury[A]: [Empty];
USDA: [Check];
State: [Empty];
USTDA: [Check];
DOD: [Empty];
Peace Corps: [Empty];
USTR: [Empty];
OMB[B]: [Empty].
E. Safety nets:
USAID: [Check];
MCC: [Empty];
Treasury[A]: [Empty];
USDA: [Empty];
State: [Check];
USTDA: [Empty];
DOD: [Empty];
Peace Corps: [Empty];
USTR: [Empty];
OMB[B]: [Empty].
F. Policy reform: Government food security-oriented policy reform:
USAID: [Check];
MCC: [Empty];
Treasury[A]: [Check];
USDA: [Check];
State: [Check];
USTDA: [Check];
DOD: [Empty];
Peace Corps: [Empty];
USTR: [Empty];
OMB[B]: [Empty].
F. Policy reform: Encouraging private sector investment:
USAID: [Check];
MCC: [Empty];
Treasury[A]: [Check];
USDA: [Check];
State: [Check];
USTDA: [Empty];
DOD: [Empty];
Peace Corps: [Empty];
USTR: [Check];
OMB[B]: [Empty].
F. Policy reform: Strengthening national and regional trade and
transport corridors:
USAID: [Check];
MCC: [Empty];
Treasury[A]: [Check];
USDA: [Check];
State: [Check];
USTDA: [Check];
DOD: [Empty];
Peace Corps: [Empty];
USTR: [Check];
OMB[B]: [Empty].
G. Information and monitoring:
USAID: [Check];
MCC: [Empty];
Treasury[A]: [Empty];
USDA: [Check];
State: [Empty];
USTDA: [Empty];
DOD: [Check];
Peace Corps: [Empty];
USTR: [Empty];
OMB[B]: [Empty].
H. Other types of food security assistance:
USAID: [Check];
MCC: [Empty];
Treasury[A]: [Empty];
USDA: [Check];
State: [Check];
USTDA: [Check];
DOD: [Empty];
Peace Corps: [Empty];
USTR: [Empty];
OMB[B]: [Empty].
I. Future challenges to food security:
USAID: [Check];
MCC: [Check];
Treasury[A]: [Empty];
USDA: [Check];
State: [Check];
USTDA: [Empty];
DOD: [Check];
Peace Corps: [Empty];
USTR: [Empty];
OMB[B]: [Empty].
Source: GAO analysis of the agencies‘ responses to the data collection
instrument.
[A] Treasury reported that its direct involvement in food security is
in the area of policy reform and its indirect involvement is through
its participation as the U.S. representative at the multilateral
development institutions, which support a range of global food
security activities, such as agricultural and rural development.
[B] OMB is not an implementing agency for global food security
activities and, as such, does not have programs and activities to
report.
[End of figure]
Table 1: Summary of Global Food Security Funding by Agency, Fiscal
Year 2008:
Agency: USAID;
Reported funding: $2,510 million.
Agency: MCC;
Reported funding: $912 million.
Agency: Treasury[A];
Reported funding: $817 million.
Agency: USDA;
Reported funding: $540 million.
Agency: State;
Reported funding: $168 million.
Agency: USTDA;
Reported funding: $9 million.
Agency: DOD;
Reported funding: $8 million.
Agency: Peace Corps;
Reported funding: None reported.
Agency: USTR;
Reported funding: None reported.
Agency: OMB;
Reported funding: None reported.
Agency: Approximate total[B];
Reported funding: $5 billion.
Source: GAO analysis of the agencies' responses to the data collection
instrument.
[A] Treasury reported that it is directly involved in the area of food
security-related policy reform and indirectly as conduit of U.S.
contributions to multilateral development banks, which support a range
of global food security activities, such as agricultural and rural
development.
[B] OMB is not an implementing agency for global food security
activities and, as such, does not have programs and activities to
report.
[End of figure]
Our analysis of the agencies' responses to the data collection
instrument shows that USAID, MCC, Treasury, USDA, and State are the
agencies providing the highest levels of funding in U.S. foreign
assistance to address food insecurity in developing countries. These
agencies' food security assistance, as reported in response to our
instrument, can be summarized as follows:
* USAID. In addition to providing the bulk of U.S. foreign assistance
targeting global food insecurity, USAID supports more types of
programs and activities in this area than any other agency. The two
types of USAID assistance with the highest funding are the delivery of
food aid as well as the promotion of food security by stimulating
rural economies through broad-based agricultural growth. According to
USAID's most recent International Food Assistance Report, the agency
provided almost $2 billion for emergency food aid in fiscal year 2008.
In addition, in response to our instrument, USAID reported about $500
million in funding for agricultural development and other global food
security-related programs and activities in that year. USAID's funding
for agriculture would increase significantly under the
administration's fiscal year 2010 budget request to double U.S.
assistance for global food security and agricultural development from
the fiscal year 2009 request level.
* Millennium Challenge Corporation. MCC was established in 2004 and
provides eligible developing countries with grants designed to support
country-led solutions for reducing poverty through sustainable
economic growth. MCC offers two kinds of monetary assistance: (1)
compacts, which are large, multiyear grants to countries that meet
MCC's eligibility criteria in the areas of good governance, economic
freedom, education, health, and natural resource management; and (2)
threshold programs, which are smaller grants awarded to countries that
come close to meeting these criteria and are committed to improving
their policy performance. According to MCC, as of March 2009, it had
obligated nearly $3.2 billion to strengthen the agricultural and rural
economies in poor countries to promote reliable access to sufficient,
safe, and affordable food. For fiscal year 2008, MCC reported funding
obligations of about $912 million for multiyear compacts.
* Treasury. Treasury is the lead agency responsible for U.S.
participation in the multilateral development banks. It provides
funding for agricultural development through the leveraging of its
contributions to the African Development Bank, Asian Development Bank,
Inter-American Development Bank and Fund for Special Operations,
European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, International Fund
for Agricultural Development (IFAD), and World Bank. A representative
from Treasury's Office of International Affairs serves in a leadership
role as a member of IFAD's Board of Directors. Treasury reported that
in fiscal year 2008 the total financing for public and private sector
investments in agricultural development, including rural development
and policy reform, from the multilateral development banks was $4.9
billion. We estimate that the U.S. share of this financing is $817
million, including $358 million in highly concessional loans[Footnote
18] and grants to the world's poorest countries and $459 million in
loans to middle-income and creditworthy low-income developing
countries.
* USDA. USDA provides nonemergency food aid, as well as technical and
nutritional assistance focusing on agricultural development and
vulnerable groups. USDA reported $540 million in food security-related
funding in fiscal year 2008, including $530.5 million dedicated to
food aid programs--namely, Food for Progress and the McGovern-Dole
International Food for Education and Child Nutrition Program[Footnote
19]--and the emergency food commodity reserve known as the Bill
Emerson Humanitarian Trust. The remaining amount is used for various
technical assistance programs, such as the Cochran and Borlaug
fellowships supporting international exchanges to facilitate
agricultural development.
* State. State's primary role with regard to food security is to
coordinate international communication, negotiations, and U.S.
government policy formulation. State is currently leading the Global
Hunger and Food Security Initiative and in 2008 it co-chaired, along
with USAID and USDA, the Food Security Sub-PCC. A number of State's
bureaus and offices perform duties specific to their expertise that
help promote global food security. For example, State's Bureau of
Economic, Energy, and Business Affairs, with assistance from the
Office of Policy Planning and others, is involved in the effort to
develop a whole-of-government strategy to promote global food
security. The Bureau's Office of Multilateral Trade and Agriculture
Affairs assists with food security policy coordination, works toward a
successful conclusion of the Doha Round of trade talks in the World
Trade Organization (WTO), and promotes the removal of export
restrictions on agricultural products and the reduction in trade
barriers to agricultural biotechnology. The Bureau of International
Organizations coordinates U.S. policy towards and participation in FAO
and the World Food Program. The Bureau for Population, Refugees, and
Migration coordinates with the World Food Program and USAID regarding
food assistance and food security for refugees and other populations
of concern. The Bureau of Oceans, Environment, and Science works
bilaterally and multilaterally to advance U.S. foreign policy
objectives in such areas as the sustainable use of natural resources,
protection of biodiversity and wildlife, adaptation to climate change,
harnessing of science and technology, and improvements to human
health. State's Office of the Director of U.S. Foreign Assistance
(State/F) coordinates State and USAID budgets, while the Office of
Conflict Prevention acts as the secretariat for the funding of
reconstruction and stabilization projects through the use of DOD
Section 1207 funds.[Footnote 20] State reported providing about $168
million for food security programs and activities in fiscal year 2008.
The other five agencies that responded to our data collection
instrument are involved in supporting global food security initiatives
in different ways. USTDA and DOD provide some food security-related
monetary assistance. For fiscal year 2008, USTDA reported providing
more than $9 million for agriculture, rural development, and other
types of food security assistance, and DOD's Defense Security
Cooperation Agency (DSCA) reported allocating more than $8 million for
global food security-related activities that were part of disaster
relief and humanitarian assistance efforts. The Peace Corps estimates
that many of its volunteers serving in developing countries address
the issues of hunger, malnutrition, and food insecurity, but did not
report any funding data. While USTR does not support any food security
programming, it is engaged in interagency consultations and has
recently created an interagency subcommittee at the Trade Policy Staff
Committee to coordinate trade policy elements of the administration's
global food security initiative.[Footnote 21] The 10th agency, OMB,
participates in the interagency process as part of its mission to help
formulate the administration's budget and to advise the White House
and other components of the Executive Office of the President on the
resources available to support the development of new food security
initiatives. (For a more extensive description of the 10 agencies'
food security-related programs and activities, see appendix III.)
The Agencies Did Not Report Comprehensive Funding Information Due to
Incomplete Data as well as Inadequate Data Management Systems:
Comprehensive data on the total amount of funding dedicated to global
food security programs and activities by the whole of the U.S.
government are not readily available. In response to our data
collection instrument, the agencies providing monetary assistance for
global food security reported directing at least $5 billion in fiscal
year 2008 to programs and activities that we define as addressing
global food security, with food aid accounting for about a half of
this funding. However, the actual total level of funding is likely
greater. We were only able to obtain these funding data and ascertain
their reliability through repeated inquiries and discussions with the
agencies over a six-month period. The estimate does not account for
all the U.S. government's funds targeting global hunger and food
insecurity because the agencies did not provide us with comprehensive
funding data due to (1) lack of a commonly accepted governmentwide
operational definition of what constitutes global food security and
reporting requirements to routinely capture comprehensive data on all
relevant funds being spent, and (2) weaknesses in some of the
agencies' management systems for tracking and reporting food security
funding data consistently, which we discuss below. For example, the
estimate does not include funding for some of USAID's food security
activities, some U.S. contributions to international food security
organizations, or funding for relevant programs of agencies that did
not participate in the Food Security Sub-PCC and were, therefore,
outside the scope of our audit, such as nutritional assistance
implemented as part of the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief.
[Footnote 22] In addition, the agencies used different measures, such
as planned appropriations, obligations, expenditures, and, in
Treasury's case, U.S. contributions to multilateral development
banks,[Footnote 23] which made it difficult to arrive at a precise
estimate.
Incomplete Funding Data Due to Lack of a Commonly Accepted
Governmentwide Operational Definition and Reporting Requirements:
The agencies reported incomplete funding data due to a lack of a
commonly accepted governmentwide operational definition of what
constitutes global food security programs and activities, as well as a
lack of reporting requirements to routinely capture comprehensive data
on all relevant funds being spent. An operational definition accepted
by all U.S. agencies would enable them to apply it at the program
level for planning and budgeting purposes. Because food security is an
issue that cuts across multiple sectors, it can be difficult to define
precisely what constitutes a food security-related program or
activity, or to distinguish a food security activity from other
development activities. Principal planning documents, even at the
agencies with the highest levels of funding, may not prioritize food
security or recognize it as a distinct program area. For example, as
State noted in a written response to our data collection instrument,
State's and USAID's Strategic Plan for Fiscal Years 2007 to 2012, the
most recent guidance that sets these agencies' priorities, does not
use the term "food security."
FACTS uses the standardized program structure, which is based on the
U.S. Foreign Assistance Framework and organized by objective, program
area, element, and subelement.
We also found that the Foreign Assistance Coordination and Tracking
System (FACTS) database,[Footnote 24] which State and USAID use to
collect and report data on the U.S. foreign assistance that they
implement, provides limited guidance on designating food security a
"key issue." The organization of the FACTS database reflects the four
levels of the standardized program structure of U.S. foreign
assistance: objectives, program areas, elements, and subelements.
USAID could identify elements and subelements whose definitions
included food security activities, but if these elements and
subelements combined food security and non-food security activities,
it could not always isolate the former from the latter. After
extensive discussions with USAID, we identified 13 subelements as
primarily containing food security programs and activities and added
up funding levels associated with these subelements to estimate
USAID's global food security assistance in fiscal year 2008.[Footnote
25] However, we identified about $850 million in funding for 12
additional subelements that include food security activities, and
therefore some portion of this funding is dedicated to food security
as well. For example, the subelement for livelihood support,
infrastructure rehabilitation, and services, with $123 million in
funding in fiscal year 2008, combines nonemergency food aid
activities, such as food for work, with other activities, such as
education and income generation, but FACTS is currently not designed
to readily identify what portion of the $123 million is related to
global food security.
The lack of a commonly accepted governmentwide operational definition
may also lead the agencies to either define food security very broadly
or to not recognize food security-related activities as such. For
example, in response to our instrument USDA reported some of the
activities supported by USDA's Forest Service--such as the migratory
bird and monarch butterfly habitat management--but did not explain how
they were related to global food security.[Footnote 26] Conversely,
DOD did not initially report any global food security-related programs
and activities because food security is not recognized as part of
DOD's officially defined mission. However, in subsequent inquiries we
established that some of DOD's humanitarian assistance projects, such
as those implemented by DSCA, have food security components. DOD
officials acknowledged that the Combatant Commanders' Initiative Fund
and the Commanders' Emergency Response Program likely support food
security-related projects but did not provide us with relevant data.
DOD's involvement could be significant--for example, the Center for
Global Development estimates that in 2007 DOD implemented 16.5 percent
of U.S. development assistance[Footnote 27]--and DSCA's $8.4 million
for global food security-related projects likely represents only a
portion of DOD's total spending on food security-related activities.
Additionally, some agencies that support food security activities lack
reporting requirements to routinely capture comprehensive data on all
relevant funds being spent. For example, although the Peace Corps has
adopted a Food Security Strategic Plan and estimates that about 40
percent of its volunteers contribute in some capacity to food security
work through projects in agriculture, health, and environment, the
agency did not report any funding information. In an interview, senior
Peace Corps officials noted that, given the circumstances under which
Peace Corps volunteers work and live, it is impossible to isolate what
portion of volunteers' time is spent on food security. Furthermore,
according to these officials, the Peace Corps does not track what
percentage of the organization's budget is spent on supporting
volunteers' food security-related work.
Data Management Systems Are Inadequate for Tracking and Reporting Food
Security Funding Consistently:
We found that some of the agencies' data management systems are
inadequate for tracking and reporting food security funding
consistently. Most notably, USAID and State/F--which both use FACTS--
failed to include a very large amount of food aid funding data in the
FACTS database. In its initial response to our instrument, USAID,
using FACTS, reported that in fiscal year 2008 the agency's planned
appropriations for global food security included about $860 million
for Food for Peace Title II emergency food aid. However, this
indicated a very large discrepancy between the FACTS-generated $860
million and (1) the $1.7 billion that USAID allocated to emergency
food aid from the congressional appropriations for Title II food aid
for fiscal year 2008,[Footnote 28] or (2) the $2 billion in emergency
food aid funding reported by USAID in its International Food
Assistance Report for fiscal year 2008. USAID and State/F were unaware
of the discrepancy until we brought it to their attention. As of
February 2010, USAID had not updated FACTS to incorporate the missing
information and had not provided an explanation for the discrepancy.
USAID and State officials ultimately reported that this discrepancy
was due to the fact that no Title II food aid supplemental
appropriations had been entered into FACTS because these were made
fairly late in fiscal year 2008[Footnote 29]. While USAID officials
reported that the agency has checks in place to ensure the accuracy of
the regular appropriations data entered by its overseas missions and
most headquarters bureaus, the omission of the supplemental
appropriation information for USAID's global food security program
with the highest funding level raises questions about the data
management and verification procedures in FACTS, particularly with
regards to the Food for Peace program, and seriously limits its
capacity to track all food security funding.
We also found that USDA does not have an established mechanism for
collecting and reporting agencywide funding data on global food
security programs and activities. In its initial response to our
instrument, USDA provided us with several conflicting funding
estimates for its food security programs, including for its two
flagship food aid programs (Food for Progress and McGovern-Dole
International Food for Education and Child Nutrition). Moreover, the
funding data reported by USDA to us differed from those reported in
the International Food Assistance Report for fiscal year 2008. USDA
acknowledged and reconciled the conflicting estimates after repeated
inquiries from us.
The implications of these weaknesses in data will be discussed in the
context of the development of a governmentwide global food security
strategy in the next section of this report.
The Administration Is Developing a Governmentwide Global Food Security
Strategy, but Efforts Are Vulnerable to Data Weaknesses and Risks
Associated with the Host Country-Led Approach:
Consistent with our 2008 recommendation, the current administration
has taken a number of steps toward developing a U.S. governmentwide
strategy for global food security, including improving interagency
coordination at the headquarters level in Washington, D.C.; finalizing
the main elements of the strategy; and identifying potential priority
countries for assistance. Two interagency processes established in
April 2009--the National Security Council (NSC) Interagency Policy
Committee (IPC) on Agriculture and Food Security and the Global Hunger
and Food Security (GHFSI) working team--are improving coordination
among numerous agencies, particularly at headquarters. The strategy
under development is embodied in the GHFSI Consultation Document that
State issued in September 2009, which is being expanded and is
expected to be released shortly, along with an implementation document
and a results framework that will include a plan for monitoring and
evaluation.[Footnote 30] The administration has identified a group of
20 countries around which to center GHFSI assistance in fiscal year
2011, including 12 countries in sub-Saharan Africa, 4 in Asia, and 4
in the Western Hemisphere. Going forward, however, the
administration's efforts are vulnerable to weaknesses in funding data
as well as risks associated with the country-led approach. Currently,
no single information database compiles comprehensive data on the
entire range of global food security programs and activities across
the U.S. government.[Footnote 31] The lack of comprehensive data on
current programs and funding levels may impair the success of the new
strategy because it deprives decision makers of information on all
available resources, actual cost data, and a firm baseline against
which to plan. In addition, although the host country-led approach--a
central feature of the forthcoming strategy--is promising, it is
vulnerable to some risks. These include (1) the weak capacity of host
governments; (2) limitations in the U.S. government's own capacity to
provide needed assistance to strengthen host governments' capacity, as
well as review host governments' efforts and guide in-country
activities, due to a shortage of expertise in agriculture and food
security; and (3) difficulties that recipient countries and donors
face in aligning their policy priorities and interventions.
The Administration Is Making Progress toward Finalizing a
Governmentwide Global Food Security Strategy:
The Administration Has Established Interagency Coordination Mechanisms
at the Headquarters Level to Facilitate the Development of a
Governmentwide Strategy:
Since 2009, to facilitate the development of a governmentwide global
food security strategy, the administration has been taking steps to
enhance coordination among the relevant entities and to ensure
communication between policymakers and program implementers,
particularly at the headquarters level in Washington, D.C. Two
interagency coordination mechanisms are currently under way. These
interagency coordination mechanisms, established in April 2009, are
(1) the NSC/IPC on Agriculture and Food Security and (2) the State-led
GHFSI working team, which have identified key areas of potential
investment and cross-cutting priorities. (See figure 4.)
The IPC is led by the NSC's Special Assistant to the President and
Senior Director for Relief, Stabilization, and Development and co-
chaired by the Secretary of State and the Administrator of USAID. Ten
agencies participated in the IPC when it was initially established:
USAID, MCC, Treasury, USDA, State, DOD, Peace Corps, USTDA, USTR, and
OMB. These agencies previously participated in the Food Security Sub-
PCC, which was created in May 2008 and dissolved in January 2009.
Other agencies have since joined the IPC, including the Departments of
Commerce and Labor, the Export-Import Bank of the United States, the
Overseas Private Investment Corporation, and the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration.
The primary agencies participating in the GHFSI working team are
State, USAID, USDA, MCC, Treasury, and USTR. The Secretary of State's
Chief of Staff has been convening weekly meetings with relevant GHFSI
agency officials to inform the IPC process since April 2009.
Figure 4: Participants of the Interagency Coordination Mechanisms for
Addressing Global Hunger and Food Security and Key Areas of Potential
Investment and Cross-Cutting Priorities:
[Refer to PDF for image: illustration and 7 photographs]
Interagency coordination mechanisms have been established between
National Security Council Interagency Policy Committee on Agriculture
and Food Security and State-Led Global Hunger and Food Security
Initiative Working Team.
National Security Council Interagency Policy Committee on Agriculture
and Food Security:
* National Security Council;
* Department of State;
* U.S. Agency for International Development;
* Central Intelligence Agency;
* Department of Commerce;
* Department of Defense;
* Department of Labor;
* Department of the Treasury;
* Executive Office of the President;
* Export-Import Bank;
* Millennium Challenge Corporation;
* National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration;
* Office of Management and Budget;
* Office of the U.S. Trade Representative;
* Office of the Vice President;
* Overseas Private Investment Corporation;
* Peace Corps;
* U.S. Department of Agriculture;
* U.S. Trade and Development Agency.
State-Led Global Hunger and Food Security Initiative Working Team:
* Department of State;
* Department of the Treasury;
* Millennium Challenge Corporation;
* Office of the U.S. Trade Representative;
* U.S. Agency for International Development;
* U.S. Department of Agriculture.
GHFSI Strategy: Whole-of-Government Approach to Food Security:
Cross-cutting priorities:
* Gender equality;
* Environmentally sustainable and climate resilient agricultural
development;
* Economic growth for the vulnerable and very poor;
* Global innovation and research.
Areas of potential investment:
* Advancing agricultural-led growth;
* Reducing undernutrition;
* Increasing the impact of humanitarian food assistance.
Sources: GAO presentation based on State data; and GAO (photos).
Note: According to the GHFSI strategy, investments will emphasize the
four cross-cutting priorities and potential investments will be made
in the three overarching areas shown above.
[End of figure]
In addition, several agencies at headquarters, such as USAID and USDA,
have established task forces or working groups with staff from
different entities within the agency to coordinate their food security
activities. USDA has recently named a coordinator for the global food
security initiative in the Office of Secretary of Agriculture.
Furthermore, the administration is considering appointing a high-level
U.S. food security coordinator to help clarify roles and
responsibilities and facilitate improved coordination among the
multiple agencies. Finally, a number of U.S. missions--including
several in countries we visited during fieldwork--are organizing an
interagency task force or working group to help coordinate efforts at
the mission level, and some missions are considering designating a
country coordinator position for GHFSI activities. In Bangladesh, for
example, an active interagency food security task force meets at least
biweekly and includes staff from USAID, State, and USDA,[Footnote 32]
according to the USAID Mission Director, and the post is considering
creating a GHFSI country coordinator position to coordinate the
initiative's activities in-country. Similarly, in Ethiopia, the USAID
Mission Global Food Security Response Team[Footnote 33] was expanded
to include DOD, the Peace Corps, the President's Emergency Plan for
AIDS Relief, State, various USAID units, and USDA, and the post is
considering an initiative facilitator position. Concurrent with these
efforts, the administration continues to define the organizational
structure within the executive branch to effectively manage U.S.
support for the development and implementation of host country-led
plans, links to regional activities, and GHFSI leadership and
oversight.
The Administration Is Finalizing an Implementation Document and a
Results Framework, and Moving Forward with Country Selection:
Since April 2009, consistent with our recommendation in a 2008 report,
[Footnote 34] the administration has taken a number of steps to
develop the elements of a U.S. governmentwide strategy to reduce
global food insecurity--including an implementation document and a
results framework--and is moving forward with selection of countries
where GHFSI assistance will be focused and concentrated. The
administration's actions reflect the President's commitment, made in
January 2009, to make the alleviation of hunger worldwide a top
priority of this administration. In remarks to participants at a UN
High-level Meeting on Food Security for All in Madrid, Spain, later
that month, the Secretary of State reaffirmed the administration's
commitment to build a new partnership among donors, host governments
in developing countries, UN agencies, NGOs, the private sector, and
others to better coordinate policies to achieve the UN Millennium
Development Goals adopted in 2000. However, as U.S. agencies working
on the strategy recognize, translating these intentions into well-
coordinated and integrated action to address global food insecurity is
a difficult task, given the magnitude and complexity of the problem,
the multitude of stakeholders involved, and long-standing problems in
areas such as coordination, resources, and in-country capacity.
The strategy is expected to be released shortly, according to the co-
chairs of the NSC/IPC. In September 2009, the IPC and GHFSI working
team issued an initial draft of the strategy, known as the
Consultation Document. The Consultation Document delineates a proposed
approach to food security based on five principles for advancing a
global food security:
(1) Comprehensively address the underlying causes of hunger and
undernutrition.
(2) Invest in country-led plans.
(3) Strengthen strategic coordination.
(4) Leverage the benefits of multilateral mechanisms to expand impacts.
(5) Deliver on sustained and accountable commitments.[Footnote 35]
These principles reflect the approach endorsed in several recent
multilateral venues, including the G8 L'Aquila joint statement, the UN
Comprehensive Framework for Action, and the World Summit on Food
Security declaration. To create the Consultation Document, the
administration engaged in a consultative process within the U.S.
government and with the global community and other stakeholders
through the NSC/IPC and the State-led GHFSI. The Consultation Document
was posted on State's Web site for input from a broad range of
relevant entities.[Footnote 36] According to State, to date, the
document has also been shared with about 130 entities for input,
including host governments, bilateral and multilateral donors, NGOs,
universities, philanthropic foundations, and private sector entities.
Based on the input provided, the GHFSI working team is expanding the
initial Consultation Document and expects to release it to the public
shortly.
Furthermore, the GHFSI working team is developing an implementation
strategy and a results framework for this initiative under
development. According to the GHFSI working team, the effort to
develop an implementation strategy has involved intensive interagency
discussions and meetings with donors, such as FAO, the World Bank, and
the United Kingdom's Department for International Development, to
gather implementation "best practices," including an effort to
coordinate the development of common, global guidance on the
development process, presentation of content, and review of country-
led investment plans. Additionally, a number of U.S. missions overseas
have submitted draft implementation plans for fiscal year 2010 that
include staffing and budget resources required to achieve planned
objectives in core investment areas. Absent a finalized governmentwide
strategy, however, it is difficult to evaluate the subordinate
implementation plans that field missions are submitting to ensure
sufficient resource and funding levels. The GHFSI working team is also
developing a whole-of-government results framework, which articulates
specific objectives of the initiative as well as causal linkages
between certain objectives, their intended results, and contribution
to the overall goal. The results framework will be accompanied by a
monitoring and evaluation plan, which identifies indicators to be used
to report progress against planned outputs and outcomes. The framework
has been externally reviewed by 10 experts, is now under review by
U.S. government representatives in the field, and will be made
available for public comment shortly, according to State and other
members of the GHFSI working team.[Footnote 37]
The administration is moving forward with plans to select about 20
countries where GHFSI assistance efforts and concentrated. State's
Fiscal Year 2011 Congressional Budget Justification for the GHFSI
identified 12 countries in sub-Saharan Africa, 4 countries in Asia,
and 4 countries in the Western Hemisphere on the basis of four
criteria, as follows:
(1) prevalence of chronic hunger and poverty in rural communities;
(2) potential for rapid and sustainable agricultural-led growth;
(3) host government commitment, leadership, governance, and political
will; and:
(4) opportunities for regional synergies through trade and other
mechanisms.
According to the Consultation Document, the GHFSI focus countries will
fall into two general categories: preinvestment plan countries in the
first phase that would benefit from technical assistance and capacity
building to fully develop investment plans, and investment plan
countries in the second phase with advanced national food security
plans and already-established public and private capacities to enable
successful plan implementation. Preinvestment plan countries will
receive targeted assistance to generate a comprehensive national food
security investment plan, including assistance to increase technical
expertise, improve natural resource management, prepare inventories
and assessments of the agricultural sector, conduct reform of trade
and agricultural policies, and meet critical infrastructure needs.
Investment plan countries are designated for significant resources and
have to demonstrate sufficient capacity, have an enabling environment
for sustainable agricultural-led growth, and have a completed country
plan. According to State's Fiscal Year 2011 CBJ for GHFSI, the
administration will develop a set of objective indicators that measure
both the progress toward reforms that a country has committed to in
its internal consultative processes and a minimum set of
internationally recognized cross-country policy indicators. As of
February 2010, GHFSI has identified 15 preinvestment plan countries (7
in sub-Saharan Africa, 4 in Asia, 4 in the Western Hemisphere) and 5
investment plan countries (all in sub-Saharan Africa) that are being
considered for assistance in fiscal year 2011. (See table 2.) GHFSI
proposed budgets for preinvestment plan countries range from $11.56
million to $36.75 million for a total of $352 million in fiscal year
2011. For investment plan countries, the proposed budgets range from
$42 million to $63 million for a total of $246 million in fiscal year
2011.[Footnote 38]
Table 2: List of 20 Countries Being Considered for GHFSI Assistance in
Fiscal Year 2011:
Phase I: Preinvestment plan countries:
Sub-Saharan Africa:
Ethiopia;
Kenya;
Liberia;
Malawi;
Mozambique;
Uganda;
Zambia.
Asia:
Bangladesh;
Cambodia;
Nepal;
Tajikistan.
Western Hemisphere:
Guatemala;
Haiti;
Honduras;
Nicaragua.
Phase II: Investment plan countries:
Sub-Saharan Africa:
Ghana;
Mali;
Rwanda;
Senegal;
Tanzania.
Source: State Department.
Note: According to State, depending on progress at the country level,
it is possible that one or more of the countries notionally identified
for Phase II may not be prepared to move forward with higher U.S.
investment levels; or alternatively, one or two Phase I countries may
move forward more rapidly than expected and be ready for higher levels
of investment earlier.
[End of table]
The Strategy under Development May Be Vulnerable to Weaknesses in
Funding Data and Risks associated with the Host Country-Led Approach:
Comprehensive Data on Global Food Security Are Not Collected in a
Governmentwide Information Database:
Comprehensive data on the entire range of global food security
programs and activities across the U.S. government are not collected
in a single information database. As we discussed earlier in this
report, the agencies we surveyed do not routinely collect and report
such information using comparable measures. As a result, it is
extremely difficult to capture the full extent of the U.S.
government's ongoing efforts to promote global food security as well
as the sources and levels of funding supporting these efforts. Current
planning efforts are not considering these data, officials reported,
but are relying instead on budget projections for the programs they
identified. However, the lack of comprehensive data on current
programs and funding levels deprives decision makers of information on
all available resources, actual cost data, and a firm baseline against
which to plan. Such information would be critical for determining the
costs of implementing new global food security initiatives, and its
absence may therefore impair the development of a well-informed and
well-planned governmentwide strategy.
Currently, FACTS is the only information system with the potential to
collect and report comprehensive data using comparable measures across
the U.S. government on a range of issues, including food security, but
it has serious limitations in implementation and risk management.
FACTS was initially designed to be a comprehensive repository of
program and funding data on the U.S. government's foreign assistance,
and State expected the system to eventually include data from the more
than 25 other U.S. entities involved in providing foreign assistance,
including MCC and Treasury. However, it is currently used only by
State and USAID to collect, track, and report standardized data for
all U.S. foreign assistance that they implement. Expanding the use of
FACTS to other agencies has proven to be difficult, in part because
agencies use different data management systems and procedures to
allocate resources and measure results.[Footnote 39] Even different
units within an agency may use different data management systems.
[Footnote 40] In addition, as we were told in Ethiopia, information
sharing has been hindered by a perception among officials from at
least one agency providing foreign assistance that supporting the
coordination effort through the State/F process created an additional
layer of work that was not regarded as a priority within their own
agencies. As we discuss earlier in this report, FACTS currently has
limited capacity to track data for global food security programs and
activities. We highlight FACTS because, despite its limitations, it is
the only existing system that was designed to compile and report
comprehensive and comparable funding data on assistance programs
implemented by multiple agencies of the U.S. government, and the
limitations we note are ones that State/F and USAID could address by
changing their operating procedures rather than by redesigning the
system itself.
Host Country-led Approach Could Be Central to the Success of the
Forthcoming Strategy but Has Key Vulnerabilities:
The administration has embraced the host country-led approach as
central to the success of the new strategy, reflecting a consensus
among policymakers and experts that development efforts will not
succeed without host country ownership of donor-supported
interventions. At the same time, as our current and prior work shows,
the host country-led approach, although promising, is vulnerable to a
number of risks. These include (1) the weak capacity of host
governments, which can limit their ability to absorb increased donor
funding and sustain these levels of assistance; (2) a shortage of
expertise in agriculture and food security at relevant U.S. agencies
that could constrain efforts to help strengthen host governments'
capacity as well as review host governments' efforts and guide in-
country activities; and (3) difficulties that recipient countries face
in aligning their policy priorities and interventions with those of
donors, including the United States.[Footnote 41]
Weak Capacity of Host Governments Can Limit Sustainability of Donor
Assistance:
The weak capacity of host governments--a systemic problem in many
developing countries, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa--could limit
their ability to (1) meet their own funding commitments for
agriculture, (2) absorb significant increases in donor funding for
agriculture and food security, and (3) sustain these donor-funded
projects over time. In addition, host governments often lack
sufficient local staff with the technical skills and expertise
required to implement donor-initiated agriculture and food security
projects.
First, while donors are poised to substantially increase funding for
agriculture and food security, many African countries have yet to meet
their own pledges to increase government spending for agriculture. At
the G8 and G20 summits in 2009, major donors pledged to direct more
than $22 billion for agriculture and food security to developing
countries between 2010 and 2012.[Footnote 42] In 2003 African
countries adopted the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development
Program (CAADP) and pledged to commit 10 percent of government
spending to agriculture by 2008.[Footnote 43] However, in December
2009, the International Food Policy Research Institute reported that
only 8 out of 38 countries had met this pledge as of 2007, namely
Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guinea, Malawi, Mali, Niger, and
Senegal (see figure 5).
Figure 5: Agricultural Expenditures as a Percentage of Government
Spending in African Countries:
[Refer to PDF for image: vertical bar graph]
Countries below 10% CAADP pledge level:
Guinea-Bissau;
Gabon;
Côte d‘Ivoire;
Democratic Republic;
of the Congo;
Morocco;
Central African;
Mauritius;
Lesotho;
Rwanda;
Cameroon;
Egypt;
Botswana;
Burundi;
Kenya;
Uganda;
Sudan;
Swaziland;
Namibia;
Tanzania;
Benin;
Mauritania;
Tunisia;
Nigeria;
Zimbabwe;
Zambia;
Togo;
Gambia;
Madagascar;
Mozambique.
Countries at or above 10% CAADP pledge level:
Chad;
Ghana;
Malawi;
Ethiopia;
Mali;
Niger;
Guinea;
Burkina Faso;
Senegal.
Source: GAO presentation of International Food Policy Research
Institute data.
Note: Data are based on the most recent available data that the
International Food Policy Research Institute was able to report as of
December 2009. Although most of these data were for 2007, in some
cases the most recent data reported were for 2004, 2005, 2006, or 2008.
[End of figure]
Despite stakeholders' endorsement of progress Rwanda has made toward
addressing agriculture and food security at the first CAADP post-
compact high-level stakeholder meeting in December 2009, expert
technical reviews of Rwanda's investment plan raised some concerns
regarding the government's capacity to achieve the desired results of
the plan. For example, an analysis by the International Food Policy
Research Institute found that (1) recent agricultural sector growth is
higher than precompact levels but remains below the sustained rates
necessary to achieve CAADP (about 6 percent) and Millennium
Development Goal targets (about 9 percent) and (2) even a fully-funded
investment plan would only bring about the long-term growth required
to realize the poverty Millennium Development Goal by 2020, rather
than by 2015.
Second, the weak capacity of host governments raises questions about
their ability to absorb significant increases in donor funding for
agriculture and food security. Prior GAO analysis shows that, as of
the end of the first quarter of fiscal year 2009, MCC had disbursed
$437 million in compact assistance--32 percent of initially planned
disbursements--for the 16 compacts that had entered into force. The 16
compacts have a total value of approximately $5.7 billion.[Footnote
44] According to a senior technical financial advisor to the
government of Ghana, a number of donor-funded projects have often not
been able to spend their full funding and delays in project
implementation are not uncommon. For example, as shown in figure 6,
MCC's $547 million compact with Ghana, which was signed in August 2006
and entered into force February 2007, had contract commitments
totaling $342 million but had disbursed only about $89.9 million as of
December 2009, more than halfway through the 5-year compact that ends
in January 2012.
Figure 6: Millennium Challenge Corporation Compact with Ghana:
[Refer to PDF for image: illustration containing 2 photographs and 1
pie-chart]
Ghana‘s compact with MCC seeks to increase farmer incomes through
private sector-led agribusiness development to make the country's
agricultural products more competitive in regional and global markets
(above). The compact also aims to improve credit services to farmers
and agribusinesses, with 33,000 farmers trained in 2009 (below)
and a loan guarantee facility.
Disbursements as of December 2009:
Total: $547 million;
Disbursements to date: $123 million;
Contract commitments: $340 million;
Funds remaining: $84 million.
Sources: GAO analysis of Millennium Challenge Corporation data; GAO
(photos).
[End of figure]
In the case of Rwanda, when asked about the host government's capacity
to absorb aid at national, local, and community levels if the
investment plan is fully funded, FAO had not yet received access to
the models and data at the time of the CAADP post-compact meeting that
informed the costing of the various programs identified in the plan
and was therefore unable to undertake a cost-benefit analysis of the
proposed investments. These data have since been provided, enabling
FAO to complete its analysis. FAO concluded that despite various
inconsistencies, overestimations, underestimations and misalignments,
Rwanda's costing for its strategic plan for agriculture[Footnote 45]
provided a reasonable basis for the government and development
partners to commit funds to the sector from 2010 through 2012.
Third, the weak capacity of host governments may also limit their
ability to eventually take ownership of development projects at the
conclusion of donor assistance and sustain these projects over time.
Moreover, according to several host government officials we met with,
high population growth rates, erratic weather patterns that could
worsen with climate change, and natural disasters further strain the
capacity of their governments to respond to numerous needs on limited
resources. The multilateral development banks--including the World
Bank and IFAD, which both work primarily with host governments--
reported relatively low ratings for sustainability of agriculture-
related projects in the past. In a 2007 review of World Bank
assistance to the agricultural sector in Africa, the World Bank
Independent Evaluation Group reported that only 40 percent of the
bank's agriculture-related projects in sub-Saharan Africa had been
sustainable. Similarly, an annual report issued by IFAD's independent
Office of Evaluation on the results and impact of IFAD operations
between 2002 and 2006 rated 45 percent of its agricultural development
projects satisfactory for sustainability.[Footnote 46] Sub-Saharan
Africa, where food insecurity is most concentrated and where
agricultural investments are greatly needed, lags behind other regions
in terms of the sustainability of development projects there. In its
2008 annual review of development effectiveness, the World Bank
reported that Africa ranked the lowest in sustainability of the bank's
projects among all regions and agriculture and rural development
ranked among the lowest of the sectors. According to the World Bank
review of its projects for fiscal years 1998 to 2007, 47 percent of
projects rated satisfactory in Africa versus 64 percent worldwide, and
54 percent of agriculture and rural development projects were rated 54
percent for sustainability versus 64 percent for all sectors.[Footnote
47] In light of these experiences, U.S. agency officials expressed
concerns regarding the ability of host governments to sustain donor-
initiated projects over time. One example of the weak institutional
capacity of host governments to sustain donor assistance was a project
in Ghana. USAID's Office of Food for Peace (FFP) made a decision to
phase out its food aid programs in Ghana in March 2006 when the new
Food for Peace strategy sought to focus its resources available to the
most vulnerable priority countries. According to USAID officials, the
Office of Food for Peace made arrangements with the Ghana School
Feeding Program to absorb additional schools to be part of the school
feeding program, but the government was not able to do so quickly
enough. As a result, the World Food Program found itself filling a gap
to provide food aid to some 300,000 people in the northern part of the
country where, World Food Program officials note, anemia is about 80
percent.
Host government capacity is further constrained by the lack of
sufficient local staff with the technical skills and expertise
required to implement agriculture and food security projects funded by
various donors. According to a World Bank review of assistance to
agricultural development in Africa, in some countries, scientific and
technically proficient staff are in short supply, in part due to the
quality of education in universities. In its technical review of
Rwanda's investment plan, FAO noted the need to build human and social
capacity before implementing certain aspects of the plan. In Malawi,
the technical secretariat responsible for measuring the outcomes of
the government's agricultural input subsidy program and providing
policy analysis for the Ministry of Agriculture, where it is located,
and other government entities are staffed largely with expatriates
because local staff lack necessary skills. In addition, many of the
African agricultural scientists trained in the United States and at
Western universities are close to retirement age, which could increase
the shortage of qualified staff in the years ahead. Similarly, many
officials we met in Haiti cited a lack of local staff with necessary
training as a particular problem, as many of Haiti's trained
professionals emigrate to the United States and Canada.
Shortage of Expertise in Agriculture and Food Security at U.S.
Agencies May Constrain Efforts to Strengthen Host Government' Capacity:
The shortage of technical expertise in agriculture and food security
at relevant U.S. agencies--in particular, USAID and USDA, which have
the broadest array of food security-related programs and activities--
can constrain their efforts to help strengthen the capacity of host
governments in recipient countries, as well as review host
governments' efforts and guide in-country activities. The Chicago
Council on Global Affairs noted that whereas USAID previously had a
significant in-house staff capacity in agriculture, it has lost that
capacity over the years and is only now beginning to restore it.
[Footnote 48] The loss has been attributed to the overall declining
trend in U.S. assistance for agriculture since the 1990s. In 2008
three former USAID administrators reported that "the agency now has
only six engineers and 16 agriculture experts."[Footnote 49] USAID
officials told us that the agency's current workforce plan calls for
adding 95 to 114 new Foreign Service officers with technical expertise
in agriculture by the end of fiscal year 2012. Over the past year,
according to USAID officials, the agency has been aggressively
recruiting and hiring additional staff to support this effort. USAID
officials told us the agency now has 10 new Foreign Service
agriculture officers on board with an additional 35 selected and in
the hiring pipeline. In determining overseas assignments for these new
officers, priority is being given to the priority countries under
GHFSI. Thus far, new officers have been assigned to El Salvador,
Ethiopia, Ghana, Guatemala, India, Kenya, Malawi, Mali, and Nepal.
USDA also has limited in-country presence, generally providing
oversight for its food aid programs in recipient countries from its
headquarters in Washington, D.C., and its Foreign Agricultural Service
(FAS) regional offices. According to FAS attachés we met with
overseas, their field visits to recipient countries are too few--not
enough to be able to monitor and evaluate food security projects
effectively and provide guidance to their implementing partners--due
to limited travel funds and the scope of their responsibilities, which
include market development and trade promotion. For example, USDA has
no presence in Ethiopia although one of its largest programs provided
$76.9 million in food aid funding to that country in fiscal year 2008.
Ethiopia is covered by the FAS office in Kenya, which also covers the
countries of Malawi, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia. The office is
staffed by an agricultural counselor and an agricultural attaché, with
additional support from locally-hired staff. A global review of FAS
positions in fiscal year 2009 determined that USDA would need to
increase its worldwide presence to support expanded programs for
agriculture and food security in accordance with the G8 and G20
increased commitments. USDA estimates that 65 positions are required,
primarily for Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia, between fiscal
years 2010 and 2012.
Recipient Countries' and Donors' Policy Priorities May Diverge, Making
It Difficult to Align Their Strategies, Plans, and Interventions:
Recipient countries and donors, including the United States, may have
difficulties in agreeing on their policy priorities and, therefore, in
aligning donor interventions with host government strategies for
reducing food insecurity. Under a country-led approach, host
governments take the lead in setting development priorities and
deciding on their own needs, solutions, and development strategies.
Malawi--one of the eight African countries that has met its CAADP
pledge to direct at least 10 percent of government spending toward
agriculture--provides an instructive example of policy differences
between the host government and donors and the difficulties of
aligning donor interventions with host government strategies. (See
figure 7.)
Figure 7: An Example of a Host Country-led Food Security Initiative:
Malawi's Agricultural Input Subsidy Program:
[Refer to PDF for image: 2 photographs]
The government of Malawi provides vouchers for subsidized fertilizer
(left) and seeds to poor rural households, and credits these subsidies
for significantly increasing the production of white maize (right),
Malawi‘s main food crop.
Source: GAO.
[End of figure]
To increase agricultural production and reduce poverty among
subsistence farmers, who represent 80 percent of the country's
population, the government of Malawi has chosen to provide subsidies
to offset the costs of major agricultural inputs, such as fertilizer,
seeds, and pesticides. Since 2005-2006, the government of Malawi has
implemented a large-scale national program that distributes vouchers
to about 50 percent of the country's farmers so that they can purchase
agricultural inputs at highly discounted prices.[Footnote 50] The
program has grown over the years from representing about 6 percent of
the national budget in 2005/2006 to nearly 14 percent in 2008/2009.
However, USAID has long objected to any use of targeted subsidies, and
the U.S. food security strategy in sub-Saharan Africa has focused on
linking farmers to the market so that they can increase their incomes
by relying on the market rather than by receiving subsidized
agricultural inputs. According to a USAID official, the provision of
cheaper fertilizer and seeds does not address the fundamental problem--
that poor farmers cannot afford fertilizer on their own--and,
furthermore, without improvements in irrigation, investments in
fertilizer would not pay off in drought years in a country like
Malawi, whose agriculture is mainly rain-fed. Whether the Malawi
program offers a model for a new generation of large-scale "smart
subsidies" to boost Africa's agricultural production after years of
stagnation is of great interest to host governments and the
development community.
Conclusions:
In the face of growing malnutrition worldwide, the international
community has established ambitious goals toward halving global
hunger, including significant financial commitments to increase aid
for agriculture and food security. Given the size of the problem and
how difficult it has historically been to address it, this effort will
require a long-term, sustained commitment on the part of the
international donor community, including the United States. As part of
this initiative, and consistent with a prior GAO recommendation, the
United States has committed to marshaling the efforts of all relevant
U.S. agencies in a coordinated governmentwide approach. The
administration has made important progress toward realizing this
commitment, including providing high-level support across multiple
government agencies. However, the administration's efforts to develop
an integrated U.S. governmentwide strategy for global food security
have two key vulnerabilities: (1) the lack of readily available
comprehensive data across agencies and (2) the risks associated with
the host country-led approach. Given the complexity and long-standing
nature of these concerns, there should be no expectation of quick and
easy solutions. Only long-term, sustained efforts by all relevant
entities to mitigate these concerns will greatly enhance the prospects
of fulfilling the international commitment to halve global hunger.
Recommendations for Executive Action:
To enhance U.S. efforts to address global food insecurity, we
recommend that the Secretary of State take the following two actions:
1. work with the existing NSC/IPC to develop an operational definition
of food security that is accepted by all U.S. agencies; establish a
methodology for consistently reporting comprehensive data across
agencies; and periodically inventory the food security-related
programs and associated costs for each of these agencies; and:
2. work in collaboration with the USAID Administrator, the Secretary
of Agriculture, the Chief Executive Officer of the Millennium
Challenge Corporation, the Secretary of the Treasury, and other agency
heads, as appropriate, to delineate measures to mitigate the risks
associated with the host country-led approach on the successful
implementation of the forthcoming governmentwide global food security
strategy.
Agency Comments and Our Evaluation:
We provided a draft of this report to the NSC and the 10 agencies that
we surveyed. Four of these agencies--State, Treasury, USAID, and USDA--
provided formal agency comments and generally concurred with our
recommendations. In addition, they provided updated information and
clarifications concerning data issues and the host country-led
approach. We have reprinted these agencies' comments in appendixes V,
VI, VII, and VIII, respectively, along with our responses.
Both State and USAID agreed that a common definition for food security
would be useful, although State expressed some concern regarding the
costs in doing so. However, the limitations we found in FACTS could be
addressed by improving operating procedures and therefore need not be
costly. Moreover, technical comments from OMB suggest that its budget
database may be able to address our recommendation to establish a
methodology for consistently reporting comprehensive data across
agencies and periodically inventory agencies' food security-related
programs and funding. State's and USAID's comments confirm our finding
that FACTS is limited in its capacity to track all food security
funding as it lacks complete data for supplemental appropriations.
This is a serious limitation given the size of these appropriations
(e.g., the largest food security program received a supplemental
appropriation of $850 million in fiscal year 2008). In addition, USDA
noted that the recommendation gives State the lead role, despite
acknowledging that USAID and USDA offer the broadest array of food
security programs and activities. We recognize the important roles
that all the relevant agencies play in the Global Hunger and Food
Security Initiative (GHFSI) currently led by State as a whole-of-
government effort. We also recognize the expertise that various
agencies can contribute toward the effort and encourage fully
leveraging their expertise.
The four agencies all noted that the administration recognizes the
risks associated with a country-led approach and are taking actions to
mitigate these risks. State indicated that the implementation strategy
for GHFSI will incorporate mechanisms to manage these risks. USAID
noted that the administration is planning to implement support to host
governments in two phases in order to reduce the risks associated with
limited country capacity and potential policy conflicts. Treasury
noted that the interagency working group is proposing to increase the
amount of technical assistance to recipient countries and that a new
multidonor trust fund administered by the World Bank will complement
our bilateral food security activities by leveraging the financial
resources of other donors and utilizing the technical capacity of
multilateral development banks. USDA pointed out the technical
expertise that the department can offer, including its relationships
with U.S. land grant colleges and universities and international
science and technology fellowship programs to help build institutional
and scientific capacity.
In addition, DOD, MCC, NSC, OMB, State, Treasury, USAID, USDA, and
USTDA provided technical comments on a draft of this report, which we
have addressed or incorporated as appropriate. The Peace Corps and
USTR did not provide comments.
We are sending copies of this report to interested members of
Congress; the Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director
for Relief, Stabilization, and Development; the Secretary of State;
and the Administrator of USAID as co-chairs of the NSC/IPC on
Agriculture and Food Security; and relevant agency heads. The report
is also available at no charge on the GAO Web site at [hyperlink,
http://www.gao.gov].
If you or your staffs have any questions about this report, please
contact me at (202) 512-9601 or melitot@gao.gov. Contact points for
our Office of Congressional Relations and Public Affairs may be found
on the last page of this report. GAO staff who made major
contributions to this report are listed in appendix VI.
Signed by:
Thomas Melito:
Director, International Affairs and Trade:
[End of section]
Appendix I: Scope and Methodology:
We examined (1) the types and funding levels of food security programs
and activities of relevant U.S. government agencies and (2) progress
in developing an integrated U.S. governmentwide strategy to address
global food insecurity, as well as potential vulnerabilities of that
strategy.
To examine the types and funding levels of food security programs and
activities of relevant U.S. government agencies, we administered a
data collection instrument to survey the ten U.S. agencies that are
engaged in food security activities and participated in the Food
Security Sub-Policy Coordinating Committee on Food Price Increases and
Global Food Security (Food Security Sub-PCC). These agencies included
the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), Millennium
Challenge Corporation (MCC), Department of the Treasury (Treasury),
U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), Department of State (State),
Department of Defense (DOD), U.S. Trade and Development Agency
(USTDA), Peace Corps, Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, and
Office of Management and Budget.[Footnote 51] We had to develop a
working definition of food security because there is no commonly
accepted governmentwide operational definition that specifies the
programs and activities that are food-security related.[Footnote 52]
We developed our working definition based on a framework of food
security-related activities that we established in prior work on
international food assistance, including our 2008 report,[Footnote 53]
and a series of interactions with the relevant agencies over a period
of several months. Our interactions with the agencies focused on
refining the definition to ensure that it would be commonly understood
and applicable to their programs and activities to the extent
possible. The working definition that we developed included the
following elements: food aid, nutrition, agricultural development,
rural development, safety nets, policy reform, information and
monitoring, and future challenges to food security. We asked the
agencies to indicate which of these activities they performed and to
provide funding data--when these data were available and reliable--on
the appropriations, obligations, expenditures, and other allocations
associated with these activities in fiscal year 2008. We pretested the
instrument with officials at DOD, MCC, State, USAID, and USDA, and
administered it in June and July 2009. All 10 agencies responded to
our instrument, and 7 of them (DOD, MCC, State, Treasury, USAID, USDA,
and USTDA) reported funding data.
We conducted extensive follow-up with the agencies to determine the
completeness, accuracy, and reliability of the data provided. While
the agencies provided us with data about their food security programs
and activities, we noted limitations in terms of establishing a
complete and consistent U.S. governmentwide total. Specifically, some
agencies could not report funding information for all or some of their
food security activities because their databases did not track those
specific activities. In some cases, agencies could provide funding
information for their major food security programs, such as USDA's
Food for Progress and Food for Education programs administered by the
Foreign Agriculture Service, but were limited in their ability to
provide this information for food security activities that spanned
several units within agencies. The agencies that were able to report
funding information did so using different measures: USAID reported
data on planned appropriations (plans for implementing current-year
appropriated budgets); State provided appropriations, obligations, and
expenditures data for different programs; and DOD, MCC, USDA, and
USTDA[Footnote 54] reported obligations data. Treasury's funding
figure is a GAO estimate based on (1) agricultural sector lending
commitments made in fiscal year 2008 by the multilateral development
banks, (2) the U.S. share of capital in the banks which lend to middle-
income and creditworthy low-income countries, and/or (3) the U.S.
share of total resources provided to the multilateral development bank
concessional windows from donor contributions for the replenishment
active in fiscal year 2008. As a result, the data reported by the
agencies are not directly comparable and may not be directly
comparable to their budget or accounting data.
Where possible, we performed some cross-checks of the data we received
in response to our instrument with data from published sources. During
this review, we compared USAID's planned appropriations for emergency
food aid submitted in response to the instrument to the funding
information reported in USAID's International Food Assistance Report
for fiscal year 2008 and found a difference of more than a $1 billion.
USAID officials were unable to explain why this amount had not been
entered into the Foreign Assistance Coordination and Tracking System
(FACTS). In this instance, we relied on the International Food
Assistance Report data instead of the FACTS data. Based on discussions
with USAID officials about their procedures for entering data into
FACTS, we determined that, once we had made the correction for
emergency food aid, the data we received were sufficiently reliable to
indicate a minimum amount that USAID had appropriated to food security
programs and activities. However, this total does not include funding
for some USAID programs and activities that have a food security
component, but also have other goals and purposes. In addition, we
determined that it likely does not include all supplemental
appropriations for the agricultural and other programs and activities
reported. Hence, the total actual level of funding is likely greater.
Overall, based on our follow-up discussions with the agencies, we
determined that their responses to the data collection instrument had
covered their major food security programs, but that there were
weaknesses in their reporting on other programs that addressed aspects
of food security. In addition, the agencies reported the funding data
using different measures, such as planned appropriations, obligations,
and expenditures. We determined that the reported funding data were
sufficiently reliable to indicate the relative size of the major
agencies' efforts in terms of approximate orders of magnitude, and
included the funding information provided by the agencies--as amended
during the course of our follow-up inquiries--in appendix III.
However, due to the limitations in the funding data reported by the
agencies, we cannot make precise comparisons of the agencies' funds
for food security in fiscal year 2008, nor can we provide a precise
total. As a result, we present rounded totals for funding in our
discussion of our findings.
To assess progress in developing an integrated governmentwide strategy
to address global food insecurity--as well as potential
vulnerabilities of that strategy--we reviewed selected reports,
studies, and papers issued by U.S. agencies, multilateral
organizations, and bilateral donors. These resources were chosen
because they represent a wide range of perspectives on the issue of
food insecurity in a number of countries in the world and a process of
developing a governmentwide strategy and were written by leading
authorities and institutions in the field.
In Washington, D.C., we interviewed officials from the National
Security Council Interagency Policy Committee on Agriculture and Food
Security to discuss the interagency process to develop a
governmentwide food security strategy. We reviewed the initial
Consultation Document that State issued in September 2009, which is
regarded as the strategy under development. Similarly, we discussed
the forthcoming U.S. global food security strategy with the officials
in the agencies that are developing it, but were not able to fully
consider the final draft for this review. At the time of our review,
the Global Hunger and Food Security Initiative working team was in the
process of finalizing the strategy, along with an implementation
document and a results framework that will provide a foundation for
country selection, funding, and mechanisms to monitor and evaluate the
strategy.
Although the governmentwide food security strategy is still under
development, we identified six desirable characteristics of an
effective national strategy (see appendix IV) in our prior work,
which, in our view, would help shape the policies, programs,
priorities, and resource allocations that would enable federal
agencies and other stakeholders to make sound decisions and ensure
accountability. We have previously developed and used these criteria
in other contexts, such as assessments of the administration's
strategies for combating terrorism, rebuilding Iraq, protecting
intellectual property rights, and guiding U.S. activities related to
Somalia.
We conducted fieldwork in Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Ghana, Haiti, and
Malawi. We selected these countries for fieldwork because the United
States has multiple active programs addressing food insecurity there.
The proportion of the chronically hungry in these countries--based on
the Food and Agriculture Organization's most recent estimates--ranged
from 9 percent of the population in Ghana to 58 percent in Haiti. In
addition, we also selected these countries to ensure geographic
coverage of U.S. global efforts in Africa, Asia, and the Western
Hemisphere. While this selection is not representative, it ensured
that we had variation in the key factors we considered. We do not
generalize the results of our fieldwork beyond our selection, and we
use fieldwork examples to demonstrate state of food insecurity in the
countries we visited and U.S. efforts to date. In the countries that
we selected for fieldwork, we met with U.S. mission staff and host
government, donor, and NGO representatives. We also visited numerous
project sites, smallholder farmer groups, and distribution sites
funded by the U.S. government and other donors. In addition, we
attended the 2009 World Food Summit as an observer and met with the
Rome-based UN food and agriculture agencies--namely, the Food and
Agriculture Organization, World Food Program, and the International
Fund for Agricultural Development, as well as the U.S. Mission to the
United Nations and representatives of other donor countries such as
United Kingdom's Department for International Development, among
others.
We conducted this performance audit from February 2009 to March 2010
in accordance with generally accepted government auditing standards.
Those standards require that we plan and perform the audit to obtain
sufficient, appropriate evidence to provide a reasonable basis for our
findings and conclusions based on our audit objectives. We believe
that the evidence obtained provides a reasonable basis for our
findings and conclusions based on our audit objectives.
[End of section]
Appendix II: GAO's Data Collection Instrument:
The following is the data collection instrument that we administered
in July 2009 to the 10 agencies that participated in the Food Security
Sub-Policy Coordinating Committee on Food Price Increases and Global
Food Security.
United States Government Accountability Office:
Washington, DC 20548:
GAO Information Request: U.S. Global Food Security Strategy:
Agency Listing of Global Food Security-Related Programs and Activities:
The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) is conducting a review
of the U.S. government's global food security strategy. A key
component of our review is to prepare a comprehensive inventory of
programs and activities that address global food insecurity in
developing countries.[Footnote 55] Respondents are requested to
identify both programs and activities that directly address global
food insecurity (for example, food aid or assistance for agricultural
development), as well as programs and activities that are maintained
for other purposes but that contribute to global food security efforts
(for example, humanitarian assistance or health assistance with
nutritional components).
In this data collection instrument, we ask you to respond to the
questions listed below to identify the relevant activities at your
agency. Please provide information on all programs and efforts within
your agency focused on global food security-related operations for
fiscal year 2008. Feel free to add additional lines or sheets of paper
if necessary.
Scope of Information Request:
"Food security exists when all people, at all times, have physical and
economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food that meets
their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy
life" (World Food Summit, 1996). This widely accepted definition of
food security encompasses several dimensions:
Food availability: Food is available in a country or local market from
domestic production or imports, including food aid.
Food access: People have access to food either by producing it
themselves, earning income to acquire it, or receiving assistance
through safety nets.
Utilization: People are able to process and prepare food and utilize
its essential nutrients through adequate diet, clean water,
sanitation, and health care.
We are seeking high-level information on your agency's food security
programs and activities.
We recognize that your agency may not have a formal and explicit food
security policy or strategy, or that food security may be a component
of a more broadly defined strategy. Our primary interest is to
understand the place of food security in your agency's mission and to
capture programs and activities that your agency views as food
security-related. Consequently, this instrument consists of two parts.
In Part I, we ask you to describe your agency's approach to food
security; in Pan 11, we ask for more specific information by type of
assistance or activity. Note that we are interested in efforts that
may have the status of a program as well as activities that may not
have this status.
Part I: Agency Views on Global Food Security:
1) How, if at all, is food security referred to in your agency's
overall mission statement?
2) Does your agency have an official definition of global food
security? If so, what is it?
3)1f you have any other comments about your agency's food security
programs or activities or your agency's role in coordinating these
programs and activities, please provide them here.
Part II: Food Security-Related Programs and Activities:
Section 1: Does your agency have any units or entities that provide
any of the following types of assistance to developing countries?
A. Food aid, including:
Al. Emergency food aid: Yes/No;
A2. Non-emergency food aid: Yes/No.
B. Nutritional assistance, including:
B1. Supplementary feeding and micronutrient supplementation: Yes/No;
B2. Nutritional education, counseling, and assessment: Yes/No;
B3. Assistance focusing on especially vulnerable groups (such as
pregnant and lactating women and children): Yes/No.
C. Assistance for agricultural development, including assistance for:
C1. Agricultural technologies (such as biotechnology or
nanotechnology): Yes/No;
C2. Fanning techniques (such as no-till farming or integrated pest
management) and agricultural inputs (seeds and fertilizer): Yes/No;
C3. Agricultural value chains, including investments in food
processing and storage: Yes/No;
C4. Agricultural market development: Yes/No;
C5. Agricultural risk management (such as crop insurance, post-harvest
conservation): Yes/No;
C6. Agricultural R&D, education or training (including farmer-to-
farmer programs): Yes/No;
C7. Irrigation and watershed management: Yes/No;
C8. Maintaining the natural resource base (such as soil and
biodiversity conservation, adaptation to climate change): Yes/No.
D. Assistance for rural development, including assistance for:
D1. Land tenure reform (such as women's land ownership rights): Yes/No;
D2. Rural infrastructure (roads, energy production, etc.): Yes/No;
D3. Access to micro-loans or other forms of credit: Yes/No.
E. Support for safety nets (broadly defined as policies to protect
basic livelihoods) that have a food security component: Yes/No.
F. Encouraging policy reform, including:
F1. Government food security-oriented policy reform: Yes/No;
F2. Encouraging private sector investment: Yes/No;
F3. Strengthening national and regional trade and transport corridors:
Yes/No.
G. Information on and monitoring of the global food security
situation: Yes/No.
H. Any other type of food security assistance (please describe on a
separate sheet of paper): Yes/No.
I. Future challenges to food security that your agency is considering:
Yes/No.
If you answered "yes" to any of these items, please provide the names
of the units or entities and a brief description of the programs or
activities on the following pages.
Section 2: Programs or Activities:
1a) Program type: (Please report using the letter associated with the
program/activity in the table above, for example "A" for Food Aid, "B"
for Nutritional Assistance, etc.)
1b) Responsible unit: (Please give us the name of the unit in your
agency, e.g., division, office, branch, bureau, that is responsible
for this program/activity, etc.)
1c) Brief description of the program/activity:
1d) Brief description of any funding data available on the
program/activity (for example, are reliable--that is, complete,
consistent and accurate--data available on appropriations. obligations
and expenditures for the program or activity? If so, what is the
source and lor what lime periods are they available?)
1e) Funding data for this program for FY 2008 (If you have reliable
funding data for FE 2008, please provide them. If reliable data on
appropriations, obligations, expenditures are oat available, please
indicate that is the case. If your agency has any other type of
reliable funding data, we would also like to know about them. We would
like you to report all reliable types offending data on these programs
or activities that your agency may have for FY 2008.)
i. Appropriations:
ii. Obligations:
iii. Expenditures:
iv. Other:
1f) Brief description of any monitoring and/or evaluation your agency
conducts of this program/activity:
[End of section]
Appendix III: Summary Description of U.S. Agencies' Reported Food
Security Activities and Funding:
The following tables summarize the responses of 10 U.S. agencies to
our data collection instrument regarding their global food security
programs and activities and associated funding levels in fiscal year
2008. The summaries are listed by agency in order from highest to
lowest amount of funding reported. The totals in each summary table
may not match the sum of individual rows due to rounding.
U.S. Agency for International Development:
Table 3 summarizes the U.S. Agency for International Development's
(USAID) funding for global food security in fiscal year 2008. USAID
reported providing the broadest array of programs and activities and
the largest amount of funding.
Table 3: Summary of USAID's Reported Funding for Global Food Security,
Fiscal Year 2008A:
Types of activities: A. Food aid: Emergency food aid;
Foreign Assistance Standardized Program Subelement[B,C]: 5.1.2.3.
Health, Food and Nutrition Commodities and Services;
Description of the program subelement: Procure goods and services;
distribute food; and support food-based market assistance, nutrition
surveillance, primary health care, reproductive health, health
surveillance, mobile clinics, supplementary feeding, community-and
center-based therapeutic care, and educational services;
Reported funding[D]: $1,980,740,840[E].
Types of activities: B. Nutrition: Assistance focusing on especially
vulnerable groups;
Foreign Assistance Standardized Program Subelement[B,C]: 3.1.6.6.
Maternal and Young Child Nutrition, Including Micronutrients;
Description of the program subelement: Deliver maternal and child
iron, zinc, vitamin A, iodine, and other key micronutrients through
supplementation, fortification, and other delivery approaches. Support
breastfeeding promotion, infant and young child feeding, community-
based growth promotion, activities to increase partners'/fathers'
knowledge and support, management of acute and severe child
malnutrition, nutrition of pregnant and lactating mothers and
adolescent girls, monitoring the nutrition status of maternal and
child populations, and targeted supplemental feeding;
Reported funding[D]: $134,121,318.
Types of activities: C. Agricultural development:
* Agricultural technologies;
* Farming techniques;
* Agricultural research and development, education, and training;
Foreign Assistance Standardized Program Subelement[B,C]: 4.5.1.3.
Agricultural Market Standards and Regulations;
Description of the program subelement: Improve laws, institutions, and
policies that impact market transactions of agricultural goods,
inputs, practices, and services. This includes international policies
such as agriculture-related agreements of the WTO; domestic science-
based regulation to ensure food, feed, and environmental safety; and
market-based or industry-led quality grades, standards, and
certification;
Reported funding[D]: $12,176,622.
Types of activities: C. Agricultural development:
* Agricultural technologies;
* Farming techniques;
* Agricultural research and development, education, and training;
Foreign Assistance Standardized Program Subelement[B,C]: 4.5.2.1.
Research and Technology Dissemination;
Description of the program subelement: Support scientific research and
technology, including biotechnology that generates improvements in
production systems (crop, livestock, farm, forest, and fisheries),
value-added products, and management practices leading to sustainable
productivity gains, mitigation of risk, and income growth. It also
supports dissemination and adoption of productivity-enhancing and post
harvest technologies, value-added products, and management practices
in these areas by reducing the barriers that may constrain male or
female producers, processors, and manufacturers;
Reported funding[D]: $67,825,273.
Types of activities: C. Agricultural development:
* Irrigation and watershed management;
* Maintaining the natural resource base;
Foreign Assistance Standardized Program Subelement[B,C]: 4.5.2.2. Land
and Water Management;
Description of the program subelement: Develop and invest in the
quantity and quality of land and water resources, including irrigation
and soil fertility, riparian and range management, and water resources
to improve and sustainably increase agricultural productivity and
incomes. This includes related land and water administration systems;
Reported funding[D]: $35,296,141.
Types of activities: C. Agricultural development: Agricultural risk
management;
Foreign Assistance Standardized Program Subelement[B,C]: 4.5.2.3.
Rural and Agricultural Finance;
Description of the program subelement: Increase equitable access to
financial services by male and female farmers in rural areas and for
agricultural enterprises to purchase necessary inputs; introduce new
technologies; expand productive capacity; and finance storage,
transport, and marketing costs. Also includes access to mechanisms and
products that reduce seasonal income and consumption variability,
protect and build assets, and mitigate price and weather risk;
Reported funding[D]: $13,193,910.
Types of activities: C. Agricultural development: Agricultural value
chains, including investments in food processing and storage;
Foreign Assistance Standardized Program Subelement[B,C]: 4.5.2.4.
Agribusiness and Producer Organizations;
Description of the program subelement: Support the growth of small and
medium agro-enterprises, including producer
organizations/associations, which are engaged in producing, marketing,
or adding value (e.g. processing and quality enhancement) to crop,
livestock, forestry, and fishery products. Support addresses the needs
and capacities of both men and women producers and includes such areas
as adoption of technology and technical processes, businesses and
human resources management, environmental regulatory compliance, and
organizational governance;
Reported funding[D]: $99,066,521.
Types of activities: C. Agricultural development:
* Agricultural market development;
* Strengthening national and regional trade and transport corridors;
Foreign Assistance Standardized Program Subelement[B,C]: 4.5.2.5.
Markets and Trade Capacity;
Description of the program subelement: Build capacity to link small-
scale producers (men and women), pastoralists, and small to medium
enterprises to the economic opportunities of commercial markets. This
includes both input and output markets at the local, regional, and
international levels. Interventions include areas such as the
development of risk management strategies; warehouse receipt,
agricultural commodity trading and accessible market information
systems; meeting market standards;
and public and private investments that support efficient agricultural
marketing such as storage facilities, cold storage, packaging
facilities, and agricultural processing facilities;
Reported funding[D]: $41,124,976.
Types of activities: D. Rural development:
Foreign Assistance Standardized Program Subelement[B,C]: [Empty];
Description of the program subelement: [Empty];
Reported funding[D]: [Empty].
Types of activities: E. Safety nets: Support for safety nets that have
a food security component;
Foreign Assistance Standardized Program Subelement[B,C]: 4.5.2.7.
Agricultural Safety Nets and Livelihood Services;
Description of the program subelement: Support risk management and
economic diversification, transfer and adaptation of proven
technologies and human organization innovations to increase market
access, food or cash transfers in exchange for public works; and
resource transfers and/or agricultural inputs (e.g. seeds, tools, and
livestock) which enable male and female producers to try new
technologies and production methods that would otherwise not be
available to them;
Reported funding[D]: $100,472,483.
Types of activities: F. Policy reform: Government food security-
oriented policy reform;
Foreign Assistance Standardized Program Subelement[B,C]: 4.5.1.1.
Agricultural Resource Policy;
Description of the program subelement: Support institutions and
equitable policies that foster sustainable utilization of land, water,
plant, and animal resources to enhance agricultural productivity and
incomes, increase resource quality and quantity, and decrease
degradation of productive resources. This includes access to and
securing property rights over agricultural resources, including by
female headed households and returning internally displaced persons
and refugees, and it includes increasing returns of agricultural labor;
Reported funding[D]: $10,797,010.
Types of activities: F. Policy reform: Government food security-
oriented policy reform;
Foreign Assistance Standardized Program Subelement[B,C]: 4.5.1.2. Food
Policy;
Description of the program subelement: Support institutions, policies
and incentives aimed at ensuring that adequate, safe, and nutritious
food is available;
markets function efficiently;
and that low-income groups and those vulnerable to food insecurity
(e.g., female farmers with small land holdings, female-headed
households, children, and HIV affected) are able to access and
appropriately utilize that food;
Reported funding[D]: $5,097,725.
Types of activities: F. Policy reform: Government food security-
oriented policy reform;
Foreign Assistance Standardized Program Subelement[B,C]: 4.5.1.4.
Public Investment Policy;
Description of the program subelement: Improve institutions and
policies that encourage increased and more effective public and
private investments in agricultural institutions and infrastructure to
provide the basis for expanded productivity in the agricultural
sector. This includes support for (1) scientific and technological
advances through research and development, (2) governmental actions
that provide a positive climate for innovation and investment, and (3)
efforts to comply with international treaties and encourage
international cooperation and public-private partnerships;
Reported funding[D]: $7,353,401.
Types of activities: G. Information on and monitoring of the global
food security situation: Information on and monitoring of the global
food security situation;
Foreign Assistance Standardized Program Subelement[B,C]: 4.5.2.6.
Emerging Agricultural Threats;
Description of the program subelement: Strengthen plant and animal
disease surveillance and the control of emerging agricultural pests
and diseases (e.g. Wheat Stem Rust) to mitigate productivity losses,
allow access to international markets, reduce risks to human health,
improve food safety, and reduce the risk of introduction of diseases
into the United States;
Reported funding[D]: $2,373,746.
Types of activities: H. Other types of food security assistance:
Foreign Assistance Standardized Program Subelement[B,C]: [Empty];
Description of the program subelement: [Empty];
Reported funding[D]: [Empty].
Types of activities: I. Future challenges to food security:
Foreign Assistance Standardized Program Subelement[B,C]: [Empty];
Description of the program subelement: [Empty];
Reported funding[D]: [Empty].
Types of activities: Total:
Reported funding[D]: $2,510,000,000.
Source: GAO presentation of agency response to the data collection
instrument.
Notes:
[A] USAID relied on the Foreign Assistance Coordination and Tracking
System (FACTS) database to provide funding data in response to our
data collection instrument. FACTS is used by State and USAID to
record, on an annual basis, all planned appropriations for foreign
assistance funding that these agencies implement. FACTS uses the
standardized program structure, which is based on the U.S. Foreign
Assistance Framework and organized by objective, program area,
element, and subelement. Using the database, USAID identified
subelements that corresponded with the activities described in our
instrument (see appendix II). We reviewed descriptions of the
subelements and discussed the ones selected by USAID in subsequent
interviews with USAID officials. Based on these discussions, we and
USAID identified the 13 subelements listed in the table as being
primarily for global food security. A subelement may contain different
types of food security activities: for example, subelement 4.5.2.5 for
Markets and Trade capacity supports food security-related agricultural
development as well as policy reforms in countries receiving U.S.
assistance. We also discussed with USAID officials the procedures for
entering FACTS data. We determined that FACTS data were not accurate
for the subelement covering emergency food aid and relied instead on
another USAID source for the emergency food aid funding.
[B] Subelement information and descriptions come from the Foreign
Assistance Standardized Program Structure and Definitions.
[C] In addition to the 13 subelements that we have determined as
primarily containing food security programs and activities, we also
identified 12 other subelements, which include some food security
activities (4.2.2.1, 4.2.2.3, 4.4.1.8, 4.4.3.3, 4.7.1.2, 4.7.4.1,
4.8.1.2, 4.8.1.4, 4.8.2.4, 5.1.2.1, 5.1.2.5, and 5.2.1.1) and whose
combined planned appropriations exceeded $850 million in fiscal year
2008. However, the FACTS database does not allow us to determine what
proportion of the reported funding for these 12 subelements supported
food security activities. This table does not include Food for Peace
Title II nonemergency food aid funding for programs and activities,
such as basic education and social assistance, that fall outside the
13 subelements listed in the table.
[D] Planned appropriations obtained from FACTS, including supplemental
appropriations, for fiscal year 2008 as of February 2010, unless noted
otherwise.
[E] This number is for emergency food aid only and comes from USAID's
International Food Assistance Report for fiscal year 2008. This amount
does not include funding for some other USAID programs and activities--
such as disaster relief or nutritional assistance that may have some
food security components--that fall under program subelement 5.1.2.3.
According to FACTS, planned appropriations for those programs and
activities in fiscal year 2008 were about $180 million.
[End of table]
Millennium Challenge Corporation:
Table 4 summarizes the Millennium Challenge Corporation's (MCC)
funding obligations for agricultural and rural development in fiscal
year 2008.
Table 4: Summary of MCC's Reported Funding for Global Food Security,
Fiscal Year 2008:
Types of activities: A. Food aid:
Description: [Empty];
Reported funding[A]: [Empty].
Types of activities: B. Nutrition:
Description: [Empty];
Reported funding[A]: [Empty].
Types of activities: C. Agricultural development;
Description: MCC invests in agricultural technology transfer,
irrigation and water management, and agricultural research. Examples
of MCC-supported agricultural development activities include:
construction and rehabilitation of irrigation systems; horticulture,
crop, and livestock productive capacity; post-harvest facilities, farm
service centers, and warehouses; training farmers and organizing
farmer associations; business development services, market
information, and training to farmers and entrepreneurs on improved
production and higher-profit agriculture enterprises; and capacity-
building of agriculture ministries;
Reported funding[A]: $329,190,000.
Types of activities: D. Rural development;
Description: MCC invests in land tenure and property rights, transport
infrastructure, and access to credit. Examples of MCC-supported rural
development activities include: land titling and administration and
management, formalizing property rights; port modernization and ferry
services; fish landing sites and fishers' facilities; construction and
rehabilitation of primary and rural road segments and bridges to
increase commerce and connect communities to markets; access to rural
finance by building banking and financial service capacities and
offering line of credit to farmers and agribusinesses; capital
investment and crop insurance to small producers; and creation of
investment fund for agribusiness small and medium enterprises;
Reported funding[A]: $582,530,000.
E. Safety nets:
Description: [Empty];
Reported funding[A]: [Empty].
F. Policy reform:
Description: [Empty];
Reported funding[A]: [Empty].
G. Information on and monitoring of the global food security situation:
Description: [Empty];
Reported funding[A]: [Empty].
H. Other types of food security assistance:
Description: [Empty];
Reported funding[A]: [Empty].
I. Future challenges to food security:
Description: [Empty];
Reported funding[A]: [Empty].
Types of activities: Total:
Reported funding[A]: $912,000,000.
Source: GAO presentation of agency response to the data collection
instrument.
[A] MCC obligates funding for multiple years (usually five) at the
time when MCC's compact with a recipient country enters into force.
MCC's total obligations for fiscal years 2005-2009 were approximately
$1.1 billion for agricultural development and $2.2 billion for rural
development.
[End of table]
Department of the Treasury:
Table 5 presents GAO's estimate of U.S. contributions made by the
Department of the Treasury (Treasury) to multilateral development
banks for agricultural development, rural development, and policy
reform in fiscal year 2008.
Table 5: Summary of the Department of the Treasury's Reported Funding
for Global Food Security, Fiscal Year 2008:
Types of activities: A. Food aid:
Description: [Empty];
Reported funding: [Empty].
Types of activities: B. Nutrition:
Description: [Empty];
Reported funding: [Empty].
Types of activities: C. Agricultural development:
Types of activities: D. Rural development;
Description: Treasury participates in the multilateral development
banks--such as the World Bank, African Development Bank, Asian
Development Bank, Inter-American Development Bank, and International
Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD)--which provide grants and
loans for agricultural and rural development. In the case of IFAD, a
representative of Treasury's Office of International Affairs serves in
a leadership role as a member of the Board of Directors.
Total fiscal year 2008 financing for public and private sector
investments in agricultural development, including rural development
and policy reform, from the MDBs was $4.9 billion, including the
estimated U.S. contribution of $817 million. The U.S. contribution
includes $358 million in highly concessional loans[B] and grants to
the world's poorest countries and $459 million in loans middle-income
and creditworthy low-income developing countries.;
Reported funding: $817,000,000[A].
Types of activities: E. Safety nets:
Description: [Empty];
Reported funding: [Empty].
Types of activities: F. Policy reform;
Description: Treasury reported that it is involved in the area of food
security-related policy reform and the estimated U.S. contribution of
$817 million supports this involvement as well;
[Empty].
Types of activities: G. Information on and monitoring of the global
food security situation:
Description: [Empty];
Reported funding: [Empty].
Types of activities: H. Other types of food security assistance:
Description: [Empty];
Reported funding: [Empty].
Types of activities: I. Future challenges to food security:
Description: [Empty];
Reported funding: [Empty].
Types of activities: Total:
Reported funding: $817,000,000.
Source: GAO presentation of agency response to the data collection
instrument.
[A] The funding amount is a GAO estimate, confirmed by Treasury. The
total of $817 million is based on (1) agricultural sector lending
commitments made in fiscal year 2008 by the multilateral development
banks (World Bank Group, African Development Bank and Fund, Asian
Development Bank and Fund, Inter-American Bank and Fund for Special
Operations, European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and the
International Fund for Agricultural Development); (2) the U.S. share
of capital in the banks which lend to middle-income and creditworthy
low-income countries; and/or (3) the U.S. share of total resources
provided to the multilateral development banks' concessional windows
from donor contributions for the replenishment active in fiscal year
2008; and (4) distinguishing between support to the poorest countries
($358 million) and to middle-income and creditworthy low-income
developing countries ($459 million).
[B] The multilateral development banks' concessional lending windows
require donor contributions periodically to replenish resources to
provide assistance to the poorest countries. The replenishment share
measures the share of each donor's contribution to the total of all
donor contributions to a particular replenishment. The U.S. share for
this analysis is derived from the multilateral development banks'
concessional window replenishment active in fiscal year 2008.
[End of table]
U.S. Department of Agriculture:
Table 6 summarizes the U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) funding
obligations for global food security programs and activities in fiscal
year 2008.
Table 6: Summary of USDA's Reported Funding for Global Food Security,
Fiscal Year 2008:
Types of activities; A. Food aid: Emergency food aid;
Description; The Bill Emerson Humanitarian Trust is a food commodity
reserve for emergency humanitarian needs in developing countries.;
Reported funding: $256,000,000.
Types of activities; A. Food aid: Nonemergency food aid for
development;
Description; The Food for Progress program, implemented in 41
developing countries by the Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS),
supports the expansion of private enterprise and agricultural sector
in developing countries. Under this program, U.S. commodities are sold
in recipient countries and the proceeds are used to fund projects in
agriculture, infrastructure, or economic development;
Reported funding: $175,200,000.
Types of activities; A. Food aid: Nonemergency food aid for
development;
Description; The McGovern-Dole International Food for Education and
Child Nutrition program, implemented in 28 developing countries by
FAS, supports education and child development through school lunches,
food for work, and take-home rations;
Reported funding: $99,300,000.
Types of activities; B. Nutrition:
Types of activities; C. Agricultural development:
* Agricultural research and development, education, and training;
* Agricultural market development;
Description; FAS runs several technical assistance and faculty
exchange programs (the Borlaug Fellowship Program, Cochran Fellowship
Program, Faculty Exchange Program, Scientific Cooperation Research
Program, and Emerging Markets Program) to facilitate agricultural
development in many countries around the world;
Reported funding: $6,684,155.
Types of activities; C. Agricultural development:
* Agricultural research and development, education, and training;
* Agricultural market development;
Description; The Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service supports
training activities for capacity building training in disease and
animal health inspection in agriculture, and the Food Safety and
Inspection Service funds meat and poultry inspection seminars for
foreign agricultural officials.
A significant portion of USDA's nonemergency food aid funding is used
to support agricultural development activities in developing countries;
Reported funding: $1,735,000.
Types of activities; D. Rural development:
Description: [Empty];
Reported funding: [Empty].
Types of activities; E. Safety nets:
Description: [Empty];
Reported funding: [Empty].
Types of activities; F. Policy reform:
Description: [Empty];
Reported funding: [Empty].
Types of activities; G. Information on and monitoring of the global
food security situation;
Description; The Economic Research Service (ERS) carries out food
security country assessments and analysis of global food supply,
demand, and price conditions. In addition, in 2008 ERS analyzed the
impact of increased biofuels production on food security in sub-
Saharan Africa;
Reported funding: $554,326.
Types of activities; Total:
Reported funding: $540,000,000.
Source: GAO presentation of agency response to the data collection
instrument.
[End of table]
Department of State:
Table 7 summarizes the Department of State's (State) funding for
global food security programs and activities in fiscal year 2008.
Table 7: Summary of State's Reported Funding for Global Food Security,
Fiscal Year 2008:
Types of activities: A. Food aid;
* Emergency food aid;
* Nonemergency food aid;
Description: State's Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration
(PRM) provides aid and sustainable solutions for refugees, victims of
conflict, and stateless people around the world, through repatriation,
local integration, and resettlement in the United States[A]. PRM also
promotes the U.S. population and migration policies;
Reported funding: $44,397,453[B].
Types of activities: B. Nutrition:
Description: [Empty];
Reported funding: [Empty].
Types of activities: C. Agricultural development:
* Agricultural technologies;
* Farming techniques;
* Agricultural risk management;
* Agricultural research and development, education or training;
* Maintaining the natural resource base;
Description: State's Bureau of International Organization Affairs pays
U.S. assessed contribution[C] to the Food and Agriculture Organization
(FAO) of the United Nations;
Reported funding: $109,349,295.
Types of activities: C. Agricultural development:
* Agricultural technologies;
* Farming techniques;
* Agricultural risk management;
* Agricultural research and development, education or training;
* Maintaining the natural resource base;
Description: State contributes funding to several technical assistance
and exchange programs that are implemented by the Department of
Agriculture and promote agricultural development, including the Former
Soviet Union Cooperative Research Program, the Caucasus Agricultural
Development Initiative, the Cochran Fellowship Program, the Faculty
Exchange Program, and the Support for Eastern European Democracy
Program;
Reported funding: $12,685,000.
Types of activities: C. Agricultural development:
* Agricultural technologies;
* Farming techniques;
* Agricultural risk management;
* Agricultural research and development, education or training;
* Maintaining the natural resource base;
Description: Bureau of Oceans, Environment and Science (OES) promotes
sustainable agriculture, sustainable natural resource management, and
environmental protection in the Dominican Republic and member
countries of the Central America Free Trade Agreement;
Reported funding: $1,000,000.
Types of activities: C. Agricultural development:
* Agricultural technologies;
* Farming techniques;
* Agricultural risk management;
* Agricultural research and development, education or training;
* Maintaining the natural resource base;
Description: Bureau of Economic, Energy, and Business Affairs (EEB)
funds speakers' programs to support and educate foreign governments on
the importance of agricultural biotechnology. In fiscal year 2008, EEB
promoted the understanding of agricultural biotechnology as a tool for
improved food security in developing countries; encouraged the
adoption of fair, transparent, and science-based policies and
practices in other countries; and supported biotechnology applications
for biofuels;
Reported funding: $207,091.
Types of activities: D. Rural development:
Description: [Empty];
Reported funding: [Empty].
Types of activities: E. Safety nets;
Description: PRM supports food security and livelihoods programs
targeting refugee and returnee populations, using funding listed above
under "Food aid;"
Reported funding: [Empty].
Types of activities: F. Policy reform;
Description: In addition to agricultural development, U.S. assessed
contribution to FAO, listed above under "Agricultural development,"
supports policy reform on issues related to global food security;
Reported funding: [Empty].
Types of activities: G. Market intelligence, information and
monitoring:
Description: [Empty];
Reported funding: [Empty].
Types of activities: H. Other types of food security assistance:
Description: OES supports the building of a global partnership to
advance point-of-use approaches for treating and storing water at the
household level, strengthening global advocacy on sanitation, and
advancing the development of water safety plans;
Reported funding: $250,000.
Types of activities: I. Future challenges to food security:
Description: [Empty];
Reported funding: [Empty].
Types of activities: Total;
Reported funding: 168,000,000.
Source: GAO presentation of agency response to the data collection
instrument.
Notes:
[A] According to PRM, "repatriation" means going home when no longer
at risk of persecution, "local integration" means settling permanently
in the country to which one has fled, and "resettlement" means
settling permanently in a third country.
[B] Funding information is based on total project costs (food and non-
food activities). In addition, this funding includes support for
safety nets programs reported later in the table, as State reported
one number for both types of activities.
[C] Assessed contributions are payments that the United States makes
to more than 40 international organizations, including FAO, in which
the United States is a member pursuant to treaties, conventions, or
specific acts of Congress. These contributions are assessed "dues" for
belonging to these organizations.
[End of table]
U.S. Trade and Development Agency:
Table 8 summarizes the U.S. Trade and Development Agency's (USTDA)
funding obligations for global food security-related programs and
activities in fiscal year 2008.
Table 8: Summary of USTDA's Reported Funding for Global Food Security,
Fiscal Year 2008:
Types of activities: A. Food aid:
Description: [Empty];
Reported funding[A]: [Empty].
Types of activities: B. Nutrition:
Description: [Empty];
Reported funding[A]: [Empty].
Types of activities: C. Agricultural development: Assistance to the
agribusiness sector;
Description: USTDA agribusiness activities are related to growing,
cultivation and processing of agricultural, aquaculture, and forestry
products. Although a very broad definition, it is nevertheless
consistent with the way it is often utilized (e.g., food processing,
storage and transport, and irrigation). This assistance is provided to
China, Egypt, and Morocco;
Reported funding[A]: $852,054.
Types of activities: C. Agricultural development: Assistance to the
water and environment sectors;
Description: USTDA groups water and environment sectors together
because of a close relationship between many large water control and
supply projects and the environment (e.g. air quality and solid waste;
water supply and control to support agricultural development). This
assistance is provided to Jordan, Mexico, Morocco, and the Philippines;
Reported funding[A]: $1,173,263.
Types of activities: D. Rural development: Assistance to the
transportation sector;
Description: USTDA transportation projects emphasize the movement of
people and goods--specifically, upgrading airports, highways, mass
transit, railways, and shipping and ports to support the development
of a modern infrastructure and a fair and open trading environment
(e.g., improving transportation networks to facilitate the transport
of food from farm to market). This assistance is provided to Brazil,
Chile, China, Colombia, India, Mexico, Panama, and Trinidad and Tobago;
Reported funding[A]: $3,640,375.
Types of activities: D. Rural development: Assistance to the energy
sector;
Description: USTDA funds activities in support of projects designed to
generate, transmit, and distribute power and heat to the food industry
(e.g., electricity distribution and transmission to end users or food
suppliers for cold storage, and promotion of renewable resources to
produce electricity). This assistance is provided to Indonesia,
Jamaica, Jordan, the Philippines, and Uganda;
Reported funding[A]: $1,280,553.
Types of activities: E. Safety nets:
Description: [Empty];
Reported funding[A]: [Empty].
Types of activities: F. Policy reform:
Description: [Empty];
Reported funding[A]: [Empty].
Types of activities: G. Information on and monitoring of the global
food security situation:
Description: [Empty];
Reported funding[A]: [Empty].
Types of activities: H. Other types of food security assistance:
Assistance to the service sector;
Description: USTDA funds activities in this sector for those country
entities that provide services to their clients, such as banking and
finance to improve access to credit to support the food industry,
government administration, and retail and wholesale, among others
(e.g., improvement of host government services, namely tax collection,
social security);
Reported funding[A]: $1,355,740.
Types of activities: H. Other types of food security assistance:
Multisectoral assistance;
Description: Multisector activities encompass projects that do not fit
into any of the specific sectoral classifications and include USTDA
activities that are designed to support projects in more than one
sector yet support global food security efforts (e.g., transportation
and construction). This assistance is provided to El Salvador, Ghana,
and Morocco;
Reported funding[A]: $819,993.
Types of activities: H. Other types of food security assistance:
Assistance to the telecommunications sector;
Description: USTDA's telecommunications activities focus on the
transfer of voice and data communications from one location to another
to provide vital monitoring and other forecasting capabilities that
could be useful in the agricultural sector (e.g., a water monitoring
information technology). This assistance is provided to China;
Reported funding[A]: $41,621.
Types of activities: I. Future challenges to food security:
Description: [Empty];
Reported funding[A]: [Empty].
Types of activities: Total:
Reported funding[A]: $9,200,000.
Source: GAO presentation of agency response to the data collection
instrument.
Note:
[A] The table summarizes actual funding provided by USTDA in fiscal
year 2008. In addition, USTDA regularly responds to and supports
project requests for agricultural technologies, land tenure reform,
encouraging private sector investment, and future challenges to global
food security.
[End of table]
Department of Defense:
Table 9 summarizes the Department of Defense's (DOD) Defense Security
Cooperation Agency's funding obligations for disaster relief and
humanitarian assistance with global food security components in fiscal
year 2008.
Table 9: Summary of DOD's Reported Funding for Global Food Security,
Fiscal Year 2008:
Types of activities: A. Food aid: Emergency food aid;
Description: The Defense Security and Cooperation Agency (DSCA)
manages the storage and transportation of humanitarian daily
rations[A] to countries experiencing adverse effects from war, famine,
floods, or earthquakes;
Reported funding: $1,500,000.
Types of activities: B. Nutrition:
Description: [Empty];
Reported funding: [Empty].
Types of activities: C. Agricultural development:
* Irrigation and watershed management;
* Maintaining the natural resource base;
Description: DSCA manages the Overseas Humanitarian Disaster and Civic
Aid (OHDACA) appropriation, which funds disaster relief and
humanitarian assistance projects developed by the six geographic
Combatant Commands. The United States Africa Command, Southern
Command, and Pacific Command used some of these funds for projects
directed at flood control and building of wells in developing
countries in fiscal year 2008;
Reported funding: $2,100,000.
Types of activities: D. Rural development: Rural infrastructure;
Description: The United States Africa Command, Southern Command, and
Pacific Command used Overseas Humanitarian Disaster and Civic Aid
funds to construct roads, bridges, and water treatment facilities in
developing countries in fiscal year 2008;
Reported funding: $4,800,000.
Types of activities: E. Safety nets:
Description: [Empty];
Reported funding: [Empty].
Types of activities: F. Policy reform:
Description: [Empty];
Reported funding: [Empty].
Types of activities: G. Information on and monitoring of the global
food security situation:
Description: [Empty];
Reported funding: [Empty].
Types of activities: H. Other types of food security assistance:
Description: [Empty];
Reported funding: [Empty].
Types of activities: I. Future challenges to food security:
Description: [Empty];
Reported funding: [Empty].
Types of activities: Total:
Reported funding: $8,400,000.
Source: GAO presentation of agency response to the data collection
instrument.
[A] Humanitarian daily rations contain approximately 2,400 calories
and conform to a range of cultural or religious dietary restrictions.
In addition, nutritional content is tailored for populations near
starvation or fleeing from catastrophe.
[End of table]
The Peace Corps:
Table 10 summarizes the Peace Corps' response to our data collection
instrument. The Peace Corps did not report any funding data.
Table 10: Summary of the Peace Corps' Response on Global Food
Security, Fiscal Year 2008:
Types of activities: A. Food aid:
Description: [Empty];
Reported funding: [Empty].
Types of activities: B. Nutrition:
* Nutritional education, counseling, and assessment;
* Assistance focusing on especially vulnerable groups;
Description: Peace Corps volunteers provide nutritional assistance
through education and capacity building, such as classroom health
education for students and health care providers; informal educational
health sessions; and technical support and organizational development
for local nongovernmental and community-based organizations;
Reported funding: The Peace Corps did not report any funding data.
Types of activities: C. Agricultural development:
* Farming techniques;
* Agricultural research and development, education and training;
* Irrigation and watershed management;
* Maintaining the natural resources base;
Description: Peace Corps volunteers improve communities' food security
by implementing sustainable practices, promoting crop diversification,
and encouraging production of more nutritious foods. Peace Corps
volunteers assist with launching or expanding small-scale
agribusinesses, as well as train and advise cooperatives and producer
associations on business planning, marketing, financial management,
product design and distribution;
Reported funding: The Peace Corps did not report any funding data.
Types of activities: D. Rural development: Access to microloans or
other forms of credit;
Description: Peace Corps volunteers provide technical support to
microfinance institutions, credit unions, and nongovernmental
organizations with microcredit programs, and train villagers to set up
and manage their village savings and loan associations;
Reported funding: The Peace Corps did not report any funding data.
Types of activities: E. Safety nets:
Description: [Empty];
Reported funding: [Empty].
Types of activities: F. Policy reform:
Description: [Empty];
Reported funding: [Empty].
Types of activities: G. Information on and monitoring of the global
food security situation:
Description: [Empty];
Reported funding: [Empty].
Types of activities: H. Other types of food security assistance:
Description: [Empty];
Reported funding: [Empty].
Types of activities: I. Future challenges to food security:
Description: [Empty];
Reported funding: [Empty].
Source: GAO presentation of agency response to the data collection
instrument.
[End of table]
Office of the U.S. Trade Representative:
Table 11 summarizes the U.S. Trade Representative's (USTR) response to
our data collection instrument. USTR did not report any funding data.
Table 11: Summary of USTR's Response on Global Food Security, Fiscal
Year 2008:
Types of activities: A. Food aid:
Description: [Empty];
Reported funding: [Empty].
Types of activities: B. Nutrition:
Description: [Empty];
Reported funding: [Empty].
Types of activities: C. Agricultural development:
Description: [Empty];
Reported funding: [Empty].
Types of activities: D. Rural development:
Description: [Empty];
Reported funding: [Empty].
Types of activities: E. Safety nets:
Description: [Empty];
Reported funding: [Empty].
Types of activities: F. Policy reform:
* Encouraging private sector investment;
* Strengthening national and regional trade and transportation
corridors;
Description: USTR develops and coordinates U.S. international trade,
commodity, and direct investment policies, and oversees negotiations
with other countries. USTR is engaged in interagency consultations and
has recently created an interagency subcommittee at the Trade Policy
Staff Committee to coordinate trade policy elements of the
administration's global food security initiative;
Reported funding: USTR did not report any funding data.
Types of activities: G. Information on and monitoring of the global
food security situation:
Description: [Empty];
Reported funding: [Empty].
Types of activities: H. Other types of food security assistance:
Description: [Empty];
Reported funding: [Empty].
Types of activities: I. Future challenges to food security:
Description: [Empty];
Reported funding: [Empty].
Source: GAO presentation of agency response to the data collection
instrument.
[End of table]
Office of Management and Budget:
Table 12 summarizes the Office of Management and Budget's (OMB)
response to our data collection instrument. OMB stated that it is not
an implementing agency for global food security activities, and as
such does not have programs, activities, or funding to report.
Table 12: Summary of OMB's Response on Global Food Security, Fiscal
Year 2008:
Types of activities: A. Food aid;
Description: OMB:
* Analyzes agency budget requests (annual and supplemental) for global
food security;
* Advises the White House and other components of the Executive Office
of the President on the resource options available to support the
development of new global food security initiatives;
* Participates in interagency consultations on global food security
issues;
Reported funding: OMB did not report any funding data.
Types of activities: B. Nutrition:
Description: [Empty];
Reported funding: [Empty].
Types of activities: C. Agricultural development:
Description: [Empty];
Reported funding: [Empty].
Types of activities: D. Rural development:
Description: [Empty];
Reported funding: [Empty].
Types of activities: E. Safety nets:
Description: [Empty];
Reported funding: [Empty].
Types of activities: F. Policy reform:
Description: [Empty];
Reported funding: [Empty].
Types of activities: G. Information on and monitoring of the global
food security situation:
Description: [Empty];
Reported funding: [Empty].
Types of activities: H. Other types of food security assistance:
Description: [Empty];
Reported funding: [Empty].
Types of activities: I. Future challenges to food security:
Description: [Empty];
Reported funding: [Empty].
Source: GAO presentation of agency response to the data collection
instrument.
[End of table]
[End of section]
Appendix IV: GAO's Desirable Characteristics for a National Strategy:
Table 13 provides a brief description and examples of the elements of
the desirable characteristics for a national strategy that we
identified in prior GAO work.
Table 13: GAO's Desirable Characteristics for a National Strategy:
Desirable characteristic: Purpose, scope, and methodology;
Brief description: Addresses why the strategy was produced, the scope
of its coverage, and the process by which it was developed;
Examples of elements:
* Statement of broad or narrow purpose, as appropriate;
* How it compares and contrasts with other national strategies;
* What major functions, mission areas, or activities it covers;
* Principles or theories that guided its development;
* Impetus for strategy (e.g., statutory requirement or event);
* Process to produce strategy (e.g., interagency task force; state,
local, or private input);
* Definition of key terms.
Desirable characteristic: Problem definition and risk assessment;
Brief description: Addresses the particular national problems and
threats the strategy is directed towards;
Examples of elements:
* Discussion or definition of problems, their causes, and operating
environment;
* Risk assessment, including an analysis of threats and
vulnerabilities;
* Quality of data available (e.g., constraints, deficiencies, and
"unknowns").
Desirable characteristic: Goals, subordinate objectives, activities,
and performance measures;
Brief description: Addresses what the strategy is trying to achieve,
steps to achieve those results, as well as the priorities, milestones,
and performance measures to gauge results;
Examples of elements:
* Overall results desired (i.e. "end-state");
* Hierarchy of strategic goals and subordinate objectives;
* Specific activities to achieve results;
* Priorities, milestones, and outcome-related performance measures;
* Specific performance measures;
* Process for monitoring and reporting on progress;
* Limitations on progress indicators.
Desirable characteristic: Resources, investments, and risk management;
Brief description: Addresses what the strategy will cost, the sources
and types of resources and investments needed, and where resources and
investments should be targeted by balancing risk reductions and costs;
Examples of elements:
* Resources and investments associated with the strategy;
* Types of resources required, such as budgetary, human capital,
information technology, research and development, contracts;
* Sources of resources (e.g., federal, state, local, private;
* Economic principles, such as balancing benefits and costs;
* Resource allocation mechanisms, such as grants, in-kind services,
loans, and user fees;
* Tools of government (e.g., mandates or incentives to spur action);
* Importance of fiscal discipline;
* Linkage to other resource documents (e.g., federal budget);
* Risk management principles.
Desirable characteristic: Organizational roles, responsibilities, and
coordination;
Brief description: Addresses who will be implementing the strategy,
what their roles will be compared to others, and mechanisms for them
to coordinate their efforts;
Examples of elements:
* Roles and responsibilities of specific federal agencies,
departments, or offices;
* Roles and responsibilities of state, local, private, and
international sectors;
* Lead, support, and partner roles and responsibilities;
* Accountability and oversight framework;
* Potential changes to current organizational structure;
* Specific processes for coordination and collaboration;
* How conflicts will be resolved.
Desirable characteristic: Integration and implementation;
Brief description: Addresses how a national strategy relates to other
strategies' goals, objectives and activities--and to subordinate
levels of government and their plans to implement the strategy;
Examples of elements:
* Integration with other national strategies (horizontal);
Integration with relevant documents from implementing organizations
(vertical);
* Details on specific federal, state, local, or private strategies and
plans;
* Implementation guidance;
* Details on subordinate strategies and plans for implementation
(e.g., human capital and enterprise architecture).
Source: GAO.
[End of table]
[End of section]
Appendix V: Comments from the Department of State:
Note: GAO comments supplementing those in the report text appear at
the end of this appendix.
United States Department of State:
Chief Financial Officer:
Washington, D.C. 20520:
March 1, 2010:
Ms. Jacquelyn Williams-Bridgers:
Managing Director:
International Affairs and Trade:
Government Accountability Office:
441 G Street, NW:
Washington, D.C. 20520:
Dear Ms. Williams-Bridgers:
We appreciate the opportunity to review your draft report, "Global
Food Security: U.S. Agencies Progressing on Governmentwide Strategy,
but Approach Faces Several Vulnerabilities," GAO Job Code 320664.
The enclosed Department of State comments are provided for
incorporation with this letter as an appendix to the final report.
If you have any questions concerning this response, please contact
Scott Alexander, Special Assistant, Office of the Counselor at
(202) 647-4690.
Sincerely,
Signed by:
James L. Millette:
cc:
GAO - Phil Thomas:
C ” Cheryl Mills:
State/GIG ” Tracy Burnett:
[End of letter]
Department of State Comments on GAO Draft Report:
Global Food Security: U.S. Agencies Progressing on
Governmentwide Strategy, but Approach Faces Several Vulnerabilities
(GAO-10-352, GAO Code 320664):
Thank you for the opportunity to comment on your draft report entitled
"Global Food Security: U.S. Agencies Progressing on Governmentwide
Strategy, but Approach Faces Several Vulnerabilities." The State
Department welcomes this report, and appreciates its timely input. We
have submitted detailed technical review comments, and in doing so we
also provided the draft public consultation document and acknowledge
the forthcoming FY201 1 Congressional Budget Justification for the
initiative which should he released within this month. We believe that
these documents will provide greater clarity for the final report, and
we look forward to its publication. Within this month, the State
Department will be releasing an implementation document for the Global
Hunger and Food Security Initiative (GHFSI). Many issues raised in
this draft Report will be addressed more fully in the implementation
document and we appreciate the collaborative benefits of having the
GAO's input as we develop the
implementation strategy.
First Recommendation: Develop an Operational definition of Food
Security: The draft Report highlights a critical issue for the GHFSI--
the difficulty of gathering comprehensive data on food security
programs and activities across the U.S. government. The Department of
State agrees with the benefits of having a common definition of food
security that would extend to all agencies across the government, and
also notes that the definition of food security that the GAO uses is
much broader than the operational definition within the defined budget
for the Global Hunger and Food Security Initiative. The GHFSI will lay
out a clear programmatic definition based on a common results
framework with goals, objectives, and indicators. These two
definitions arc not incompatible; rather the GHFSI operational
definition is a sub-set of the larger definition that GAO developed in
the course of drafting this Report.
Within the GHFSI budget, food security will be defined by programs
that quantifiably impact the objectives of a) increasing economic
performance of the agriculture sector; b) improving nutritional status
and; c) improving the capacity of vulnerable households to meet their
food needs. Through an interagency process, we will develop a strong
results framework with indicators that monitor progress on meeting the
above objectives. All agencies participating in the GHFSI will be
measured using this common framework for accountability.
The GAO also recommends the Secretary of State should work with the
NSC to "establish a methodology for consistently reporting
comprehensive data across agencies; and periodically inventory the
food security-related programs and associated costs for each of these
agencies." As noted above, all agencies participating in the
Initiative and funded by the budget of the Initiative will use the
common framework to measure progress of programs and investments
towards the common goals of the Initiative. While we support the
concept of a common data set across the U.S. government for food
security, the significance of the costs incurred in doing so would
need to be weighed against the inherent value provided by this
individual data set. The Department of State would be ready to work
with the GAO to identify other offices or agencies where central
database core competencies exist to collect this kind of data across
multiple government agencies.
Second Recommendation: Mitigate the Risks Associated with the Host
Country-Led Approach:
Another issue of concern highlighted by the Report is that a country-
led process--a core principle of GHFSI creates vulnerabilities
including risks associated with weak host governments; a shortage of
expertise in agriculture and food security at U.S. agencies that could
provide technical support to host governments; and difficulties in
aligning host governments' policy priorities with those of donors. The
draft Report makes a specific recommendation to delineate measures
that will mitigate these risks when developing the Initiative's
implementation strategy. The Department of State has recognized the
vulnerabilities that are associated with a country-led approach and
will incorporate mechanisms in our implementation strategy that help
to manage these risks.
While there may be uncertainties and necessary flexibilities required
in a country-led approach, the Department of State believes that such
an approach provides the greatest opportunities for host country
leadership and sustained effort, especially in the areas of promoting
policy reform, encouraging private sector involvement and affecting
change at the local level.
FACTS and FACTS Info:
GAO has conducted several previous analyses of FACTS and FACTS Info
and has provided helpful recommendations. For example, GAO made
suggestions for better managing and mitigating the risks associated
with making changes to FACTS, and these recommendations have been
implemented, including a weekly review of a risk registry with the
FACTS Executive Sponsor. GAO has also recognized in past reports that
the Department of State and US AID processes maintain a low risk of
corrupt or incomplete data. In the current draft Report, the GAO
highlights an issue which it terms a "discrepancy." USA II) and State
believe that GAO inadvertently compared unlike data sets, leading to
the perception of a discrepancy. Specifically, USAID accurately
reports to Congress and the public its Title II food aid resources via
the annual International Food Assistance Report. Towards the end of FY
2008, USAID received a large supplemental appropriation for food aid,
which was not recorded immediately as an Operational Plan modification
and was not, therefore, reflected in the report GAO reviewed. The
Department of State and USAID stand by the accuracy and completeness
of the data contained in the FACTS Info database, and regret that this
issue was not fully explained to GAO at the time of its research.
The Department of State thanks you for sending your draft Report, and
we look forward to working with GAO in the future.
The following are GAO's comments on the Department of State's (State)
letter dated March 1, 2010.
GAO comments:
1. The implementation of our recommendations, including developing an
operational definition of food security that is accepted by all U.S.
agencies, will help to ensure the successful implementation of the
evolving strategy going forward--a position that State generally
agrees with. However, we note that the defined budget for the Global
Hunger and Food Security Initiative (GHFSI) does not include food aid,
which is recognized as an integral part of food security.
2. The limitations we found in the Foreign Assistance Coordination and
Tracking System (FACTS) could be addressed by improving operating
procedures and therefore need not be costly. Specifically, (1) an
operational definition of food security could be provided along with
guidance on the programs and activities that it covers, and (2) a
requirement could be made that supplemental appropriations be entered
into the system, as allowed for by FACTS' current structure. In
addition, technical comments received from the Office of Management
and Budget suggest that the budget database that it maintains may be
able to address our recommendation to establish a methodology for
consistently reporting comprehensive data across agencies and
periodically inventory agencies' food security-related programs and
funding.
3. We do not question the appropriateness of the host country-led
approach. However, we do point out the potential weaknesses of the
approach as risks that the administration should mitigate to ensure
successful implementation of the strategy, and State provides its
assurance that the GHFSI implementation strategy will incorporate
mechanisms to help manage the risks that a country-led approach
presents. We note that the weak capacity of host governments is a
systemic problem in many developing countries, particularly in sub-
Saharan Africa. We emphasize the need for the U.S. government to be
clear on its application of the criteria that the GHFSI strategy has
delineated for identifying and selecting Phase I and Phase II
countries, which we note include, among other things, host government
commitment, leadership, and governance. We note, for example, that two
of the five countries currently under consideration as Phase II
countries--Rwanda and Tanzania--have not met their own pledges to
commit 10 percent of government spending to agriculture.
4. We compared the data in FACTS to data in other sources that
reported funding for food security, such as the annual International
Food Assistance Report (IFAR) and several years of congressional
budget justifications because that is a standard methodology for
assessing data reliability. Our goal, as State and USAID officials
were aware through months of discussion, was to collect the most
complete and accurate data possible on food security funding. With
that in mind, we requested data on supplemental appropriations and
were given data tables that included some supplemental appropriations
data. In addition, when we alerted USAID officials to the discrepancy
we found in the Title II emergency food aid data, they advised us to
use the complete funding data reported in IFAR rather than the
incomplete data that were reported in FACTS. State's comments confirm
our finding that FACTS is limited in its capacity to track all food
security funding. While FACTS contains reasonably complete and
accurate data for initial food security appropriations, it lacks
complete data for supplemental appropriations. This is a serious
limitation inasmuch as the largest U.S. food aid program received a
supplemental appropriation of $850 million in fiscal year 2008.
[End of section]
Appendix VI: Comments from the Department of the Treasury:
Note: GAO comments supplementing those in the report text appear at
the end of this appendix.
Department Of The Treasury:
Washington, D.C. 20220:
February 26, 2010:
Mr. Thomas Melito:
Director, International Affairs and Trade:
Government Accountability Office:
441 G Street N.W.
Washington, DC 20548:
Dear Mr. Melito:
Thank you for the opportunity to comment on the draft report regarding
the U.S. government's efforts to develop a government-wide food
security strategy. The Department oldie Treasury is proud of the role
it plays in furthering U.S. and global efforts to reduce food
insecurity and promote agricultural development around the world. We
broadly agree with the draft report's two main conclusions: 1) the
importance of consistent operational reporting on U.S. food security
efforts; and 2) the need to finalize an integrated U.S. government-
wide strategy for food security.
Issues with Attributing Multilateral Institutions' Food Security
Assistance:
On the first conclusion, we fully support the need for consistent
financial reporting and appreciate the GAO's recognition that U.S.
participation in the international financial institutions (IFIs) is an
important component of the U.S. Government's response to global food
insecurity. I want to emphasize, however, that the amount of funding
attributable to Treasury is not direct appropriations but a GAO
estimate of the U.S. "share" of agriculture and rural development
assistance financed by the international financial institutions.
Furthermore, since U.S. bilateral food security assistance is provided
on a grant basis, it would be more appropriate in the future to focus
on the highly concessional loans and grants provided by the
concessional windows of the multilateral development banks (MDBs) to
the world's poorest countries. Lending to middle-income countries,
which is tied to market-based interest rates and accounts for 56
percent of the estimated food security financing attributable to
Treasury in this draft report, is not truly comparable to U.S.
bilateral assistance either in its financial terms or its recipients.
Additionally, it should be noted that the IFIs typically report
activities on a sectoral basis (such as agriculture or rural
development), and not by issue areas (such as Mod security). In this
regard, a U.S. government-wide definition of food security and efforts
to accurately measure expenditures in this area may not be wholly
reflected in accounting from the IFIs.
Finalizing a U.S. Food Security Strategy:
With regard to the second conclusion, the interagency working team has
made significant progress and a finalized strategy will be ready in
the next several months. While we recognize the GAO's concern about
pursuing a country-led development strategy, we believe that the
effectiveness of a country-led approach is borne out by several
decades of development experience. Furthermore, the interagency
working group recognizes many of the potential problems in a country-
led approach, such as limited recipient country capacity, and has taken
steps to address those problems, including by proposing to increase
the amount of technical assistance to our initiative focus countries.
As noted in the draft report, an important component of the U.S. food
security strategy for which Treasury has primary responsibility is a
new multi-donor trust fund administered by the World Bank ” the Global
Agriculture and Food Security Program (GAFSP). Created in response to
a call from G-20 leaders in Pittsburgh in September 2009, GAFSP will
provide an additional source of grant financing and development
expertise to support technically sound, country-led food security
strategies. The GAFSP will complement our bilateral food security
activities by leveraging the financial resources of other donors,
utilizing the technical capacity of the multilateral development
banks, and financing projects and activities unlikely to be funded
adequately by bilateral donors. We expect that the GAFSP will be
operational by mid-2010.
Sincerely,
Signed by:
Karen Mathiasen:
Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary:
International Development Finance and Debt:
The following are GAO's comments on the Department of the Treasury's
(Treasury) letter dated February 26, 2010.
GAO comments:
1. We recognized the difference between concessional windows and
nonconcessional windows and noted the breakdown between funding to
poor and middle-income countries:
2. The definitional issue is a challenge in estimating or determining
the funding level for food security provided by the international
financial institutions. Accordingly, we discussed this issue with
Treasury and mutually agreed on the method to calculate U.S.
contributions to multilateral development banks that address global
food insecurity. We mutually agreed to use a percentage of the banks'
funding for agricultural development--which is key to food security--
as a way to estimate food security funding. The percentage is based on
U.S. contributions to the banks.
3. We do not question the appropriateness of the host country-led
approach. However, we do point out the potential weaknesses of the
approach as risks that the administration should mitigate to ensure
successful implementation of the strategy.
[End of section]
Appendix VII: Comments from the U.S. Agency for International
Development:
Note: GAO comments supplementing those in the report text appear at
the end of this appendix.
USAID:
From The American People:
U.S. Agency for International Development:
1300 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW:
Washington, DC 20523:
[hyperlink, http://www.usaid.gov]
February 26, 2010:
Thomas Melito:
Director:
International Affairs and Trade:
U.S. Government Accountability Office:
Washington, DC 20548:
Dear Mr. Melito,
I am pleased to provide the U.S. Agency for International
Development's (USAID) formal response to the GAO draft report
entitled: "Global Food Security: U.S. Agencies Progressing on
Governmentwide Strategy, but Approach Faces Several Vulnerabilities"
(GAO-10-352).
The enclosed USAID comments are provided for incorporation with this
letter as an appendix to the final report.
Thank you for the opportunity to respond to the GAO draft report and
for the courtesies extended by your staff in the conduct of this audit
review.
Sincerely,
Signed by:
Drew W. Luten:
Senior Deputy Assistant Administrator:
Bureau for Management:
Enclosure: a/s:
[End of letter]
USAID Comments On GAO Draft Report No. GA0-10-352:
As the lead implementing agency within the U.S. Government in the area
of food security, the U.S. Agency of International Development (USAID)
is pleased to offer its comments on the GAO Report to Congressional
Committees, Global Food Security: U.S. Agencies Progressing on
Governmentwide Strategy, but Approach Faces Several Vulnerabilities.
The report comes at an important time as the President and Secretary
of State have made food security a high priority within U.S. foreign
assistance and USAID has played a central role in shaping the strategy
and implementation planning.
We are pleased to see GAO note the very significant progress on
developing a government wide global hunger and food security strategy
and believe that the implementation plan under development will
address a number of the concerns raised in the report.
We agree with the recommendation that central to building a whole of
government approach will be a common definition for food security. The
Global Hunger and Food Security Initiative (GHFSI) lays out a clear
programmatic definition based on a common results framework with
goals, objectives, and indicators.
The revised public strategy, Feed the Future: The Global Hunger and
Food Security Initiative Strategy, contains a definition for the
initiative that will be applied to all U.S. Agencies working towards
the goals of this initiative. Equally important, as part of the
initiative, we will be putting in place a number of operational steps
that further align the efforts of multiple agencies and allow us to
better report on those combined efforts. As evidenced by the
Congressional Budget Justification (CBJ) request for FY2010 and the
forthcoming for FY2011, we arc developing a top down budget for the
global hunger and food security initiative from the outset, rather
than attributing spending afterwards, which more explicitly describes
the initiative components of food security funding for State and USAID
and better links strategy to resource levels. We are also developing
interagency annual work plans that will facilitate a common reporting
system that accounts for the contributions of other U.S. government
agencies in implementing the global hunger and food security
initiative. Most importantly, through an interagency process we will
develop a strong results framework and indicators to monitor progress
that will be applied to all agencies' programs that are a part of the
initiative. This will establish a common framework of accountability
and reporting across agencies against the goals and objectives of the
global hunger and food security initiative. It will also focus our
efforts to better build synergies across the resources and expertise
of different agencies.
The GAO report contains certain broad generalizations about data
managed by the Department of State and USAID that result from its
comparison of data sets that are not comparable. The process that
State and US AID use to maintain a low risk of corrupt or incomplete
data has been recognized by previous GAO studies as fully compliant
with GAO recommendations. Both the Department of State and USAID stand
by the accuracy and completeness of the data contained in the Foreign
Assistance Coordination and Tracking System (FACTS) Info database.
Specifically, with respect to the completeness of data from USAID, on
an annual basis, USAID reporting of Title II food aid resources is
accurately provided to Congress and the public domain via the annual
International Food Assistance Report. Towards the end of FY 2008,
USAID received a large supplemental for food aid, which was not
recorded immediately as an Operational Plan modification, because, as
supplemental appropriations, it was not required to be approved as
part of an Operational Plan.
Most significant, the report has identified important vulnerabilities
in pursuing a country-led approach to food security. In making this a
key principle for the U.S. strategy, we are addressing the dual
challenges of aligning our strategy with the country-led approach and
coordinating implementation with other donors and development
partners. Coordination is a significant tool to build greater
consensus and cohesion on policy issues and leverage the resources and
commitment of other partners, rather than relying solely on a
bilateral dialog. Our outreach through the Group of Eight (G8), Group
of Twenty (G20), and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)
Summit last November demonstrates the ability to arrive at a common
approach and see coordinated action move forward in implementing this
approach. The Comprehensive African Agricultural Development Program
provides a framework for deepening that coordinated approach in
Africa, but also provides a roadmap and supplements the capacity of
countries in the development of technical sound investment strategies
for food security.
In addition to building coalitions, the U.S. will implement our
support in two phases. In the first phase, the U.S. will support the
country”led investment plan development at a lower level of funding,
emphasizing strengthening the enabling environment (including host
country capacity) for more robust subsequent food security
programming. We will then undertake a rigorous review of the technical
quality of that investment plan, ensure it reflects an inclusive
process of consultation with stakeholders, and represents a
significant commitment of the host government itself. Through this
review, the U.S. will reserve discretion on what we fund in the
country-led approach and perform due diligence on the quality of
potential U.S. support for the country's plan. Only after these
reviews will the U.S. commit to a higher level of investment in
implementation. This two-phased approach reduces the risks associated
with limited country capacity and potential significant conflicts with
U.S. perspectives on sound development policy.
Investing in country-owned plans that support results-based programs
and partnerships is both good development practice, as unanimously
endorsed at the FAO Summit, and more likely to achieve the desired
results than donor-driven programs.
Lastly, as we noted in our technical comments, USAID has been
examining our staffing to ensure we have high quality technical
personnel in the field to engage with governments and oversee more
diverse mechanisms for technical assistance in support of this
strategy. With 79 agricultural officers on staff today, ranging from
senior managers to new Foreign Service officers brought on board over
the last year, we are well positioned to launch this priority agenda.
The Development Leadership Initiative continues to add to the ranks of
new agriculture officers along with other important technical areas
such as economic growth. private sector development, humanitarian
assistance, and health, among others. We are giving priority to
aligning our best staff to positions in the focus countries and
regions to ensure we deliver on the important goals of reducing
poverty and hunger in the global and national interest.
The following are GAO's comments on the U.S. Agency for International
Development's (USAID) letter dated February 26, 2010.
GAO comments:
1. We recognize the progress that U.S. agencies are making toward the
development of the strategy, Feed the Future: The Global Hunger and
Food Security Initiative Strategy. The implementation of our
recommendations, including developing an operational definition of
food security that is accepted by all U.S. agencies, will help to
ensure the successful implementation of the evolving strategy.
2. We compared the data in the Foreign Assistance Coordination and
Tracking System (FACTS) to data in other sources that reported funding
for food security, such as the annual International Food Assistance
Report (IFAR) and several years of congressional budget justifications
because that is a standard methodology for assessing data reliability.
Our goal, as USAID officials were aware through months of discussion,
was to collect the most complete and accurate data possible on food
security funding. With that in mind, we requested data on supplemental
appropriations and were given data tables that included some
supplemental appropriations data. In addition, when we alerted USAID
officials to the discrepancy we found in the Title II emergency food
aid data, they advised us to use the complete funding data reported in
IFAR rather than the incomplete data that were reported in FACTS.
3. USAID'S comments confirm our finding that FACTS is limited in its
capacity to track all food security funding. While FACTS contains
reasonably complete and accurate data for initial food security
appropriations, it lacks compete data for supplementary
appropriations, which is a serious limitation inasmuch as the largest
U.S. food aid program received a supplemental appropriation of $850
million in fiscal year 2008.
4. We do acknowledge the roles of all development partners, including
host governments, multilateral organizations, bilateral donors, and
other entities such as nongovernmental organizations, philanthropic
foundations, private sector organizations, and academic and research
organizations--with whom U.S. agencies will have to coordinate their
efforts. As with other donors, the United States is supporting the
Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Program (CAADP) to help
ensure a coordinated approach. However, we note that the data suggest
that the vast majority of African countries have not met their own
commitments to direct 10 percent of government spending to
agriculture. This calls into question many of these countries'
commitment to agricultural development [OR to raising agricultural
productivity??] which, in turn, could impact the development of
technically sound investment strategies for food security that reflect
the reality of these countries' capacity to implement their own
strategies, with donor support and assistance.
5. While the two-phased approach in selecting countries for GHFSI
assistance may reduce the risks associated with limited host country
capacity and potential significant conflicts with U.S. perspectives on
sound development policy, we note that two of the five countries
currently under consideration as Phase II countries--Rwanda and
Tanzania--have not met their 10-percent CAADP pledges (see comment 4).
In identifying and selecting Phase I and Phase II countries, the U.S.
government should be clear on its application of the criteria that the
GHFSI strategy has delineated, which we note include, among other
things, host government commitment, leadership, and governance.
6. We acknowledge the recent steps that USAID is taking to rebuild its
staff with technical expertise in agriculture and food security, which
we believe is necessary to enhance the agency's efforts to help
strengthen the capacity of host governments in these areas.
[End of section]
Appendix VIII: Comments from the U.S. Department of Agriculture:
Note: GAO comments supplementing those in the report text appear at
the end of this appendix.
United States Department of Agriculture:
Foreign Agricultural Service:
1400 Independence Ave, SW:
Stop 1001:
Washington, DC 20250-1001:
February 22, 2010:
Mr. Thomas Melito
Director, International Affairs and Trade:
United States Government Accountability Office:
441 G Street, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20548:
Dear Mr. Melito:
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) appreciates this opportunity
to comment on the Government Accountability Office (GAO) draft report
"Global Food Security: U.S. Agencies Progressing on Governmentwide
Strategy, but Approach Faces Several Vulnerabilities" (GA0-10-352).
The draft report contains a recommendation that the Secretary of State
work with the Interagency Policy Committee to develop an operational
definition of food security, establish a methodology for reporting
comprehensive data across agencies, periodically inventory the food
security related programs and associated costs, and delineate measures
to mitigate the risks associated with the host country-led approach.
This recommendation gives the Department of State the lead role,
despite acknowledging that USDA and the U.S. Agency for International
Development (USAID) offer the broadest array of food security programs
and activities (Figure 3, page 14). We believe that greater use of
both USAID's and USDA's expertise should be at the core of developing
the mitigation measures recommended by GAO.
GAO notes that a shortage of expertise in agriculture and food
security can constrain efforts to strengthen host government
capacities, yet while USAID and USDA offer the most programs, USDA
only ranks fourth in terms of funding. Since most of that funding is
for reimbursable projects, USDA is limited in its ability to tap into
our expertise and capacity in any on-going way. Limited resources also
result in a limited in-country presence and tight travel budgets,
which hamper the ability of USDA to develop, monitor and evaluate food
security projects. We are taking steps to increase our presence in
Africa (see below) in part to respond to the growing role of Africa in
our food security and trade portfolios.
The draft does not fully describe the benefits for the country-led
approach but contains a heavy focus on the perceived vulnerabilities
of it. Most experts believe such an approach builds host country buy-
in and provides a greater chance of sustained benefit, especially in
the area of policy reform, which in turn encourages private sector
involvement and affects change at the local level. The Millennium
Challenge Corporation's (MCC) use of a country-led approach provides
the U.S. Government (USG) with a baseline experience upon which to
build on relevant lessons.
A perceived inadequacy of critical technical support available from
USAID and USDA is offered as one weakness in the country-led approach.
In fact, non-government experts (e.g., from U.S. Land Grant Colleges
and University partners) have been, and continue to be, actively
engaged in providing short-term assistance. Peace Corps volunteers are
also involved in supporting such efforts. Private voluntary
organizations with their tremendous on the ground experience, as well
as private sectors that fuel economic activity also will play
important roles in the strategy implementation.
Another weakness cited is concern that a country-led approach may pose
problems if a country's policy position differs from USG policies.
However, this can occur regardless of approach. The strategy as it is
being developed places a heavy premium on insuring that the policy
environment is supportive before significant agricultural investments
will be made. The USG also believes there is a greater chance of
influencing in-country policies in the context of a dialogue with the
host country.
The draft notes that local scientific capacity is crucial to
sustainability in these country-led plans. USDA has contributed
significantly to helping build scientific capacity through programs
such as the Cochran and Norman E. Borlaug International Agricultural
Science and Technology Fellowship Programs, as well as through
partnerships with the Land Grant Universities. We believe that these
partnerships can be expanded in ways that build institutional capacity
in research and extension going forward.
USDA is addressing the need of additional resources for this effort
with increased programming and staffing. The Department's submission
to the 2009 global review cited in the draft is a clear indication of
USDA's awareness of this need. The global review relates to our long
term food security strategy.
As noted in the report, USDA has just named a new coordinator for
global food security. The coordinator will be setting up structures
within USDA to ensure that we are making the best use of our expertise
in research, extension, policy analysis, markets and trade, natural
resource management, and animal and plant safety, and to ensure that
USDA can participate fully in the whole of government food security
strategy.
For the short term, and using existing resources and program funding
flexibility, USDA can direct support where these resources can have
the most impact. The draft specifically mentions a current lack of
oversight for USDA programs in Africa. However, with the planned
September 2010 opening of a permanent office -- staffed by USDA Foreign
Service personnel -- in Addis Ababa, USDA will have an Agricultural
attaché in Ethiopia for the first time. In addition, we also have just
hired a program analyst stationed at the Embassy in Maputo,
Mozambique, who will work primarily on USDA's food assistance
programs. We also currently are advertising for two program monitors
who will support our global monitoring and program management efforts
at FAS/Washington, with a primary focus on projects in Africa.
As noted in this report, USDA included several multifaceted projects
that address policy-making and social, economic, and political
conflicts over resources at all levels. For example, with respect to
the Monarch Butterfly and Migratory Bird habitat projects, both
protect important forested landscapes in the highlands. By helping
keep these forests intact, we are protecting important watersheds upon
which agricultural production is dependent. Through engagement of
governments, NGOs, and communities, these projects aim to preserve the
very source of water and great a stable agricultural environment over
the longer-term.
Finally, while this GAO review focuses on the USG, a holistic approach
to global food security needs to acknowledge the importance not only
of better coordination within the USG structure but also better donor,
private sector, and multilateral efforts.
Sincerely,
Signed by:
M. Ann Tutwiler
Coordinator, Feed the Future Initiative:
Office of the Secretary:
Signed by:
John D. Brewer:
Administrator:
Foreign Agricultural Service:
The following are GAO's comments on the U.S. Department of
Agriculture's (USDA) letter dated February 22, 2010.
GAO comments:
1. We are making our second recommendation to the Secretary of State
to work in collaboration with the U.S. Agency for International
Development Administrator, the Secretary of Agriculture, the Chief
Executive Officer of the Millennium Challenge Corporation, the
Secretary of the Treasury, and other agency heads, as appropriate. We
recognize the important roles that all the relevant agencies play in
the Global Hunger and Food Security Initiative (GHFSI) currently led
by State as a whole-of-government effort. We also recognize the
expertise that agencies, such as USDA and USAID, offer, and encourage
fully leveraging their expertise, which is essential to U.S. efforts
to help strengthen host governments' capacity in a country-led
approach. USDA's expertise includes its relationships with U.S. land
grant colleges and university partners, as well as the science and
technology programs that the department supports.
2. We acknowledge USDA's limited in-country presence and tight travel
budgets--issues that agricultural attachés raised during our
fieldwork. We also acknowledge steps that USDA is taking to increase
its presence, especially in Africa, in light of the growing role of
Africa in USDA's food security and trade portfolios.
3. We do not question the appropriateness of the host country-led
approach. However, we do point out the potential weaknesses of the
approach as risks that the administration should mitigate to ensure
successful implementation of the strategy. We note that the weak
capacity of host governments is a systemic problem in many developing
countries.
4. We added a footnote to provide USDA's explanation for how the
migratory bird and monarch butterfly habitat management were related
to global food security.
5. Although our review focuses on U.S. efforts, we do acknowledge the
roles of all development partners, including host governments,
multilateral organizations, bilateral donors, and other entities such
as nongovernmental organizations, philanthropic foundations, private
sector organizations, and academic and research organizations.
[End of section]
Appendix IX: GAO Contact and Staff Acknowledgments:
GAO Contact:
Thomas Melito, (202) 512-9601, or melitot@gao.gov:
Staff Acknowledgments:
In addition to the individual named above, Phillip Thomas (Assistant
Director), Sada Aksartova, Carol Bray, Ming Chen, Debbie Chung, Martin
De Alteriis, Mark Dowling, Brian Egger, Etana Finkler, Kendall Helm,
Joy Labez, Ulyana Panchishin, Lisa Reijula, Julia Ann Roberts, Jena
Sinkfield, and Barbara Shields made key contributions to this report.
[End of section]
Related GAO Products:
International Food Assistance: A U.S. Governmentwide Strategy Could
Accelerate Progress toward Global Food Security. [hyperlink,
http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-10-212T]. Washington, D.C.: October
29, 2009.
International Food Assistance: Key Issues for Congressional Oversight.
[hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-09-977SP]. Washington,
D.C.: September 30, 2009.
International Food Assistance: USAID Is Taking Actions to Improve
Monitoring and Evaluation of Nonemergency Food Aid, but Weaknesses in
Planning Could Impede Efforts. [hyperlink,
http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-09-980]. Washington, D.C.: September
28, 2009.
International Food Assistance: Local and Regional Procurement Provides
Opportunities to Enhance U.S. Food Aid, but Challenges May Constrain
Its Implementation. [hyperlink,
http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-09-757T]. Washington, D.C.: June 4,
2009.
International Food Assistance: Local and Regional Procurement Can
Enhance the Efficiency of U.S. Food Aid, but Challenges May Constrain
Its Implementation. [hyperlink,
http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-09-570]. Washington, D.C.: May 29,
2009.
USAID Acquisition and Assistance: Challenges Remain in Developing and
Implementing a Strategic Workforce Plan. [hyperlink,
http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-09-607T]. Washington, D.C.: April. 28,
2009.
Foreign Aid Reform: Comprehensive Strategy, Interagency Coordination,
and Operational Improvements Would Bolster Current Efforts.
[hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-09-192]. Washington, D.C.:
April 2009.
GAO, Foreign Assistance: State Department Foreign Aid Information
Systems Have Improved Change Management Practices but Do Not Follow
Risk Management Best Practices. [hyperlink,
http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-09-52R]. Washington, D.C.: November
2008.
USAID Acquisition and Assistance: Actions Needed to Develop and
Implement a Strategic Workforce Plan. [hyperlink,
http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-08-1059]. Washington, D.C.: September
26, 2008.
International Food Security: Insufficient Efforts by Host Governments
and Donors Threaten Progress to Halve Hunger in Sub-Saharan Africa by
2015. [hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-08-680]. Washington,
D.C.: May 29, 2008.
Somalia: Several Challenges Limit U.S. International Stabilization,
Humanitarian, and evelopment Efforts. [hyperlink,
http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-08-351]. Washington, D.C.: February
19, 2008.
Foreign Assistance: Various Challenges Limit the Efficiency and
Effectiveness of U.S. Food Aid. [hyperlink,
http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-07-905T]. Washington, D.C.: May 24,
2007.
Foreign Assistance: Various Challenges Impede the Efficiency and
Effectiveness of U.S. Food Aid. [hyperlink,
http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-07-560]. Washington, D.C.: April 13,
2007.
Foreign Assistance: U.S. Agencies Face Challenges to Improving the
Efficiency and Effectiveness of Food Aid. [hyperlink,
http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-07-616T]. Washington, D.C.: March 21,
2007.
Intellectual Property: Strategy for Targeting Organized Piracy (STOP)
Requires Changes for Long-term Success. [hyperlink,
http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-07-74]. Washington, D.C.: November 8,
2006.
Darfur Crisis: Progress in Aid and Peace Monitoring Threatened by
Ongoing Violence and Operational Challenges. [hyperlink,
http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-07-9]. Washington, D.C.: November 9,
2006.
Rebuilding Iraq: More Comprehensive National Strategy Needed to Help
Achieve U.S. Goals. [hyperlink,
http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-06-788]. Washington, D.C.: July 11,
2006.
Results-Oriented Government: Practices That Can Help Enhance and
Sustain Collaboration among Federal Agencies. [hyperlink,
http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-06-15]. Washington, D.C.: October 21,
2005.
Maritime Security Fleet: Many Factors Determine Impact of Potential
Limits of Food Aid Shipments. [hyperlink,
http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-04-1065]. Washington, D.C.: September
13, 2004.
United Nations: Observations on the Oil for Food Program and Iraq's
Food Security. [hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-04-880T].
Washington, D.C.: June 16, 2004.
Combating Terrorism: Evaluation of Selected Characteristics in
National Strategies Related to Terrorism. [hyperlink,
http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-04-408T]. Washington, D.C.: February
3, 2004.
Foreign Assistance: Lack of Strategic Focus and Obstacles to
Agricultural Recovery Threaten Afghanistan's Stability. [hyperlink,
http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-03-607]. Washington, D.C.: June 30,
2003.
Foreign Assistance: Sustained Efforts Needed to Help Southern Africa
Recover from Food Crisis. [hyperlink,
http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-03-644]. Washington, D.C.: June 25,
2003.
Food Aid: Experience of U.S. Programs Suggest Opportunities for
Improvement. [hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-02-801T].
Washington, D.C.: June 4, 2002.
Foreign Assistance: Global Food for Education Initiative Faces
Challenges for Successful Implementation. [hyperlink,
http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-02-328]. Washington, D.C.: February
28, 2002.
Foreign Assistance: U.S. Food Aid Program to Russia Had Weak Internal
Controls. [hyperlink,
http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO/NSIAD/AIMD-00-329]. Washington, D.C.:
September 29, 2000.
Foreign Assistance: U.S. Bilateral Food Assistance to North Korea Had
Mixed Results. [hyperlink,
http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO/NSIAD-00-175]. Washington, D.C.: June
15, 2000.
Managing for Results: Barriers to Interagency Coordination.
[hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO/GGD-00-106]. Washington,
D.C.: March 29, 2000.
Foreign Assistance: Donation of U.S. Planting Seed to Russia in 1999
Had Weaknesses. [hyperlink,
http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO/NSIAD-00-91]. Washington, D.C.: March
9, 2000.
Foreign Assistance: North Korea Restricts Food Aid Monitoring.
[hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO/NSIAD-00-35]. Washington,
D.C.: October 8, 1999.
Food Security: Factors That Could Affect Progress toward Meeting World
Food Summit Goals. [hyperlink,
http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO/NSIAD-99-15]. Washington, D.C.: March
22, 1999.
Food Security: Preparations for the 1996 World Food Summit.
[hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO/NSIAD-97-44]. Washington,
D.C.: November 7, 1996.
[End of section]
Footnotes:
[1] At the 1996 World Food Summit, world leaders set a goal to halve
the total number of undernourished people worldwide by 2015 from the
1990 level. However, in 2000, the first of eight UN Millennium
Development Goals (MDG), referred to as MDG-1, was defined as a
commitment to halve the proportion of undernourished people. Both
goals apply globally as well as at the country and regional levels.
MDG-1 has two targets: first, between 1990 and 2015, to halve the
proportion of people whose income is less than $1 a day and second,
between 1990 and 2015, to halve the proportion of people who suffer
from hunger. The second target is measured by two progress indicators:
(1) the prevalence of underweight children under 5 years of age on the
basis of United Nations Children's Fund and World Health Organization
data and (2) the proportion of the population below the minimum level
of dietary energy consumption. In this report we focus on the latter
indicator, which is based on FAO's World Food Summit goal estimates.
[2] Members of the G8 are Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan,
Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Although it is not
a member of the G8, the European Commission also agreed to the
commitment.
[3] The President's budget for fiscal year 2011 includes $1.6 billion
for agricultural development and nutrition programs as part of a
multiyear plan that will rely on U.S. bilateral assistance and a new
multidonor facility administered by the World Bank.
[4] These include S. 384, Global Food Security Act, introduced on
February 5, 2009; HR 2795, Roadmap to End Global Hunger and Promote
Food Security Act of 2009, introduced on June 10, 2009; and HR 3077,
Global Food Security Act of 2009, introduced on June 26, 2009.
[5] FAO characterizes food security as a condition that exists when
all people, at all times, have physical, social, and economic access
to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs
and food preferences for an active and healthy life. Specifically,
food security includes three elements: (1) food availability, (2)
access, and (3) utilization. The declaration approved at the World
Summit on Food Security in November 2009 expanded FAO's
characterization to include stability as a fourth element. This fourth
element was added after we completed our data collection and analysis.
However, the FAO's characterization does not include an operational
definition that would indicate which programs and activities it covers.
[6] GAO, International Food Security: Insufficient Efforts by Host
Governments and Donors Threaten Progress to Halve Hunger in Sub-
Saharan Africa by 2015, [hyperlink,
http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-08-680] (Washington, D.C.: May 29,
2008).
[7] Many ongoing initiatives, such as the Chicago Initiative on Global
Agricultural Development and the Partnership to Cut Hunger and Poverty
in Africa, also recognize the importance of agricultural development
in achieving food security and are therefore focused on agricultural
development.
[8] We have previously developed and used these criteria in other
contexts, such as assessments of the Administration's strategies for
combating terrorism, rebuilding Iraq, protecting intellectual property
rights, and guiding U.S. activities related to Somalia. See GAO,
Combating Terrorism: Evaluation of Selected Characteristics in
National Strategies Related to Terrorism, [hyperlink,
http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-04-408T] (Washington, D.C.: Feb. 3,
2004); Rebuilding Iraq: More Comprehensive National Strategy Needed to
Help Achieve U.S. Goals, [hyperlink,
http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-06-788] (Washington, D.C.: July 11,
2006); Intellectual Property: Strategy for Targeting Organized Piracy
(STOP) Requires Changes for Long-term Success, [hyperlink,
http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-07-74] (Washington, D.C.: Nov. 8,
2006); and Somalia: Several Challenges Limit U.S. International
Stabilization, Humanitarian, and Development Efforts, [hyperlink,
http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-08-351] (Washington, D.C.: Feb. 19,
2008).
[9] In the absence of a commonly accepted governmentwide operational
definition of food security, we developed a working definition for our
data collection instrument based on a broad framework we established
in an earlier report (GAO-08-680), prior GAO work on international
food security, and our interactions with the agencies. See appendix II
for a copy of the data collection instrument.
[10] FAO monitors the state of food insecurity worldwide and
periodically updates its estimates of the undernourished populations
by country and by region. These estimates are published in FAO's
annual report The State of Food Insecurity in the World (SOFI), which
was first issued in 1999. The same estimates are used by the United
Nations to track progress toward the MDG hunger goal.
[11] See the State of Food Insecurity in the World 2009. Both the WFS
and the MDG targets to cut hunger are based on FAO's estimates of the
number of undernourished people. Because the MDG target is defined as
the ratio of the number of undernourished people to the total
population, it may appear that progress is being made when population
increases even though there may have been no reduction in the number
of undernourished people, according to FAO.
[12] In sub-Saharan Africa, the primary vehicle for addressing
agricultural development is the New Partnership for Africa's
Development (NEPAD) and its CAADP. NEPAD was established by the
African Union in July 2001 as a strategic policy framework for the
revitalization and development of Africa. Support to CAADP is
coordinated by a partnership platform, a group of senior
representatives of multilateral and bilateral donors.
[13] The UN High-Level Task Force on Global Food Security's progress
report, April 2008 - October 2009, reported indicative funding for
global food security by UN multilateral organizations from June 2008
until September 2009, as follows: World Bank, $12.2 billion;
International Monetary Fund, $9.2 billion; World Food Program, $5.6
billion; IFAD, $910.7 million; FAO, $394 million; United Children's
Fund, $146.3 million; UN Development Program (UNDP), $31.5 million;
and World Health Organization, $2.9 million.
[14] In L'Aquila the leaders of G8 countries pledged $20 billion for 3
years beginning in 2010. Subsequently, at the G20 Summit in
Pittsburgh, Belgium, Finland, Norway, and Switzerland pledged to
commit $2 billion to the effort, bringing the total to $22 billion.
[15] Also, in March 2009, the Alliance for a Green Revolution in
Africa signed in Accra, Ghana, a memorandum of understanding with the
Standard Bank of South Africa in Accra to provide a guarantee facility
of $100 million to assist smallholder farmers in Africa. Ghana's
Millennium Development Authority, which was established to implement
the Millennium Challenge Corporation compact with Ghana, is among the
contributing partners for the loan guarantee fund, which will be
offered at prevailing market interest rates.
[16] FAO's definition of the elements of food security is very high-
level and does not provide guidance on which programs and activities
it could cover.
[17] GAO, International Food Security: Insufficient Efforts by Host
Governments and Donors Threaten Progress to Halve Hunger in Sub-
Saharan Africa by 2015, [hyperlink,
http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-08-680] (Washington, D.C.: May 29,
2008).
[18] The multilateral development banks' concessional windows provide
development assistance to the world's poorest countries through highly
concessional loans or grants. Concessional loans have no interest
charge, 35 to 50 years maturities, 10-year grace periods, and a small
service charge on disbursed balances. The concessional window at the
World Bank is the International Development Association and it
provides interest-free long-term loans and grants to the world's 82
poorest countries which do not have the capacity to borrow on market
terms.
[19] Food for Progress and the McGovern-Dole Food for Education and
Child Nutrition are among the six main U.S. food aid programs. Food
for Progress involves emergency and nonemergency donation or credit
sale of commodities to developing countries and emerging democracies.
The McGovern-Dole Food for Education and Child Nutrition program
involves nonemergency donation of commodities and provision of
financial and technical assistance in foreign countries.
[20] Section 1207 of the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal
year 2006 (Pub. Law 109-163) provides authority for DOD to transfer to
State up to $100 million per fiscal year in defense articles,
services, training, or other support for reconstruction,
stabilization, and security activities in foreign countries. Congress
extended this authority through fiscal year 2010.
[21] The Trade Policy Staff Committee and the Trade Policy Review
Group, administered and chaired by USTR, are composed of 19 federal
agencies and offices and make up the subcabinet level mechanism for
developing and coordinating U.S. government positions on international
trade and trade-related investment issues.
[22] According to the Office of the Global AIDS Coordinator, under the
President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief planned nutritional
assistance in fiscal year 2008 was about $94 million.
[23] USAID reported data on planned appropriations (plans for
implementing current-year appropriated budgets); State provided
appropriations, obligations, and expenditures data for different
programs; DOD, MCC, USDA, and USTDA reported obligations data; and
Treasury's funding is a GAO estimate (for detailed summaries of each
agency's funding data, see appendix III). As planned appropriations
may not lead to obligations, this creates a concern that planned
appropriations may not reflect what USAID--the agency with the highest
level of funding for global food security--allocates to these programs
in a given fiscal year.
[24] FACTS has two components: one is the FACTS database, introduced
in December 2006, which is used to collect foreign assistance planning
and reporting data, including plans for implementing current-year
appropriated budgets and performance planning and reporting data. The
other is FACTS Info, deployed in October 2008, which is used to
aggregate, analyze, and report data on U.S. foreign assistance
programs implemented by State and USAID.
[25] See table 3 in appendix III for a detailed summary of USAID's
response to the data collection instrument.
[26] We did not include funding for these programs in the estimate of
USDA's global food security assistance. However, in its formal agency
comments on a draft of this report, USDA explained that both the
migratory bird and monarch butterfly habitat projects protect forested
landscapes in the highlands, thus protecting important watersheds upon
which agricultural production is dependent. According to USDA, these
projects aim to preserve water sources and create a stable
agricultural environment over the longer term.
[27] In its technical comments on a draft of this report, DOD
disagreed with this estimate and stated that it implements 3 to 5
percent of U.S. development assistance.
[28] These include the regular appropriations (Pub. Law No. 110-161)
of $1.2 billion and the supplemental appropriations (Pub. Law No. 110-
252) of $850 million in Food for Peace Title II funding for fiscal
year 2008.
[29] FACTS is designed to collect data on supplemental appropriations,
and the data tables we were given included some supplemental
appropriations for several subelements in our definition. However, we
determined that while the data for regular appropriations are
sufficiently reliable, the data for supplemental appropriations are
incomplete.
[30] In formal agency comments dated February 26, 2010, State
indicated that the department will be releasing an implementation
document for GHFSI within the next month. As part of technical
comments on a draft of this report, on February 22, 2010, State
provided to us an expanded draft of the Consultation Document that the
IPC has commented on.
[31] The lack of a comprehensive governmentwide information system is
a prevailing limitation that hinders data collection and analysis for
governmentwide programs, including those for global food security.
[32] Members of the task force at the U.S. Mission in Bangladesh
include USAID's Economic Growth Office, the Population, Health,
Nutrition and Education Office, the Democracy and Governance Office
and the Food, Disaster and Humanitarian Assistance Office; State's
Political and Economic Section and Public Affairs Office; and the
local hire staff of USDA and, remotely, the USDA representative in
India who covers Bangladesh.
[33] The Global Food Security Response Team was established to
coordinate the Global Food Security Program in 2008, which has since
been superseded by GHFSI in 2009.
[34] [hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-08-680].
[35] The G8 joint statement was agreed upon in L'Aquila, Italy, in
July 2009. The Comprehensive Framework for Action was issued in July
2008 by the UN High-Level Task Force on the Global Food Security
Crisis, which is chaired by the UN Secretary General with the FAO
Director-General as vice chair. The Declaration of the World Summit on
Food Security was adopted at the summit in Rome, Italy, in November
2009.
[36] State's Web site on global food security can be found at
[hyperlink, http://www.state.gov/s/globalfoodsecurity/index.htm].
[37] In our view, a results framework is an important tool for
monitoring and evaluation to ensure that the objectives of the
projects and ultimately the U.S. strategy are achieved. Our prior work
on various food aid programs found that U.S. agencies did not place a
great deal of importance on investing the necessary resources in
monitoring and evaluation. As the administration begins to implement a
governmentwide strategy, monitoring of food security programs will
serve to strengthen proper management and implementation of these
programs, and evaluation will be crucial to ensuring that best
practices and lessons learned are considered in the management and
implementation of existing programs and in designing new ones. See
GAO, International Food Assistance: USAID Is Taking Actions to Improve
Monitoring and Evaluation of Nonemergency Food Aid, but Weaknesses in
Planning Could Impede Efforts, [hyperlink,
http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-09-980] (Washington, D.C.: September
2009).
[38] These funding amounts are delineated in State's Fiscal Year
2011Congressional Budget Justification (CBJ). As of February 26, 2010,
State expected the CBJ for the initiative to be released within 10
days.
[39] To provide funding information in response to our data collection
instrument, USAID used FACTS while State did not.
[40] For example, State's Bureau for Population, Refugees and
Migration (PRM) reported funding information for global food security-
related activities using Abacus, PRM's system for program management,
not FACTS. When we found, as discuss earlier in this report, that the
FACTS data for fiscal year 2008 submitted by USAID did not contain a
large amount of emergency food aid funding, we were told by USAID
officials that the most up-to-date source of the food aid funding
information is the Food for Peace Information System, used by USAID's
Office of Food for Peace for program management and preparation of the
annual International Food Assistance Report.
[41] GAO, Managing for Results: Barriers to Interagency Coordination,
[hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO/GGD-00-106] (Washington,
D.C. Mar. 29, 2000). See also Results-Oriented Government: Practices
That Can Help Enhance and Sustain Collaboration among Federal
Agencies, [hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-06-15]
(Washington, D.C.: Oct. 21, 2005).
[42] Major donors and their commitments--totaling $22.7 billion--are
as follows: Australia, $464 million; Canada, $1.2 billion; the
European Commission, $3.8 billion; France, $2.3 billion; Germany, $3
billion; Italy, $450 million; Japan, $3 billion; the Netherlands, $2
billion; Spain, $729 million; Sweden, $563 million; the United
Kingdom, $1.8 billion; and the United States, $3.5 billion.
[43] The heads of state and government of the African Union, meeting
in Maputo, Mozambique, from July 10 through 12, 2003, issued a
Declaration on Agriculture and Food Security in Africa
(Assembly/AU/Decl. 7 (II)) that committed to allocating at least 10
percent of national budgetary resources for the implementation of
CAADP within 5 years.
[44] GAO, Millennium Challenge Corporation: MCC Has Addressed a Number
of Implementation Challenges, but Needs to Improve Financial Controls
and Infrastructure Planning, [hyperlink,
http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-10-52] (Washington, D.C.: Nov. 6,
2009).
[45] Investment requirements for the Second Strategic Plan for the
Transformation of Agriculture (PSTA-II) are laid out in the
Agricultural Sector Investment Plan 2009-2012 (ASIP).
[46] IFAD's evaluation shows that the sustainability rating has
improved in recent years, with the percentage of projects rated
satisfactory on sustainability rising from 56 percent in 2006-2007 to
70 percent in 2007-2008 worldwide.
[47] World Bank, Independent Evaluation Group, Annual Report of
Development Effectiveness 2008: Shared Global Challenges (Washington,
D.C., 2008).
[48] The Chicago Council on Global Affairs, Renewing American
Leadership in the Fight Against Global Hunger and Poverty: The Chicago
Initiative on Global Agricultural Development (Chicago, IL: 2009).
[49] J. Brian Atwood, M. Peter McPherson, and Andrew Natsios.
"Arrested Development: Making Foreign Aid a More Effective Tool."
Foreign Affairs, vol. 87, No. 6, p. 127 (2008).
[50] The vouchers offered average discounts of 64 percent (2005/2006)
to 92 percent (2008/2009) on the price of fertilizer.
[51] We did not include several agencies that now participate in the
National Security Council Interagency Policy Committee but did not
previously participate in the Food Security Sub-PCC, which was
dissolved in January 2009.
[52] The Food and Agriculture Organization's definition is very high-
level and does not provide guidance on which programs and activities
it could cover.
[53] GAO, International Food Security: Insufficient Efforts by Host
Governments and Donors Threaten Progress to Halve Hunger in Sub-
Saharan Africa by 2015, [hyperlink,
http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-08-680] (Washington, D.C.: May 29,
2008).
[54] USTDA provided appropriations, obligations, and expenditures data
but we only used its obligations data for fiscal year 2008.
[55] For our purposes, we define developing countries as those outside
the United States, Canada, Western and Central Europe, Australia, New
Zealand, Japan, and Israel.
[End of section]
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