Suzanne Zweben is a Senior Advisor in the Private Sector Department of Oxfam America. 

Lake Izabal in Guatemala is an area of great biodiversity and natural resource wealth. Photo: Edgar Orellana / Oxfam America

Companies included in the Behind the Brands scorecard have for the most part made progress on managing water resources.  Largely they recognize that access to water will be one of the greatest challenges of our time.  It’s projected that by 2025, just 12 years away, that 1.8 billion people will be living in countries or regions with absolute water scarcity.  Two-thirds of the world’s population is expected to have limited access to clean water.

This is one sustainability issue food and beverage companies grasp as core to their business; it will impact their ability to make products and touch the lives of their employees, consumers and the communities where they operate and from which they source.  Approximately 70 percent of the world’s freshwater is used for irrigation compared to 22 percent for other industrial use and only 8 percent for domestic use.  In developing countries, 70 percent of industrial wastes are dumped untreated into waters where they pollute the usable water supply, with the food sector estimated as responsible for 54 percent of organic water pollutants.

Oxfam’s Scorecard assessed three main aspects related to water:

(1) Human Right to Water: Has the company recognized the human right to water as defined by the UN?  Has the company committed to consult communities on plans to develop water resources, i.e. before a project has started?  Have grievance mechanisms been established in cases where water rights have been violated?  (A recent report by The Special Rapporteur on the human right to safe drinking water and sanitation, On the Right Track, addresses good practices in implementing the human right to water.  See Chapter 3 especially.)

(2) Transparency: Does the company disclose information on water withdrawals, discharges (i.e. the quality of water released into lakes and rivers), water-stressed regions where the company has operations, regions where the company operates that are at risk for water stress, and raw materials that come from regions subject to water-related risk?  (Seven of the ten companies companies assessed through the Behind the Brands scorecard disclose information through the Water Program of the Carbon Disclosure Project.)

(3) Supply Chain Management:  Does the company require its suppliers to report on their water use, risks and management?  Are requirements on water rights and use specified in a company’s supplier code?  Has the company set a specific target to reduce its water use along its whole value chain?

Food and beverage companies have played a central role in the CEO Water Mandate, which was launched by the UN Secretary-General to assist companies in the development, implementation, and disclosure of water sustainability policies and practices.  Yet no one company has taken significant steps on both the human right to water and supply chain management.  PepsiCo and The Coca-Cola Company have developed policies that take into account the effect of their activities on local communities’ access to water.  Nestle and Unilever have supplier codes or guidelines with specific requirements on water management.

Yet there is still a long way to go.  Because some progress has been made, many companies consider themselves leaders in the realm of sustainable water management, even if they are only addressing one or two of the three aspects of this challenge. But I’m waiting to see who the real leader is going to be—this company will leverage their influence across their supply chain to take on all three of the key fundamental issues of the human right to water, transparency, AND supply chain management.

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This post by Suzanne Zweben is part of a Behind the Brands blog series on Politics of Poverty that examines the seven issues relating to poverty and big food companies’ supply chains. Read more on land, women, farmers, transparency, workers, and climate change!

Frank Mechielsen is the Private Sector Lobbyist at Oxfam Novib.

Do the Top 10 companies featured in the Behind the Brands Scorecard have transparent policies? Do they share their practices with the public?

It is not easy to look beyond the tip of food system’s iceberg, to see how the farmers and workers produce our favourite brands. Who has produced the NESCAFÉ which I drink? Where do the coffee workers live who harvested the coffee beans? Which trader sold them to Nestlé? To whom did the cocoa farmers produce and sell their cocoa beans? What price did they get?

But Oxfam found in the Behind the Brands scorecard process that some companies are more transparent about their sourcing than others.

I was positively surprised that Mars, a private company, is relatively open about its sourcing volumes and buying agents. As a family corporation, Mars does not have shareholders peeking over its shoulders. Only Unilever is more open about the volumes of tea, palm oil, tomatoes, and other commodities it buys. And Nestlé is more transparent about the sourcing countries.

I was also impressed by Danone, which gets its highest thematic score of 6 on transparency. It is number two of the Big 10. The policies of Danone related to women, farmers, and land are weak, but at least the company is becoming more transparent about their sourcing because of their recently published forest footprint policy.

On the other end, it gets murky. We find General Mills with a score of 2 and Associated British Foods with a score of 3 on transparency. General Mills provides information about the volumes of palm oil only and disclosure about buying agents is limited to one cane sugar supplier. Associated British Foods does inform the public about the volumes of palm oil and sugar it buys, but no further information about the sourcing volumes of other commodities.

Oxfam also looked for evidence of food companies’ transparency in their lobbying activities. The European Transparency Register is a voluntary initiative for companies to provide some information about their political activities.  Neither General Mills nor Associated British Food report in Europe on their lobby activities and, according to the Global Reporting Initiative, are less transparent about their corporate reporting than most of the Big 10.

It’s what can’t be seen under the water that is dangerous. Food companies, more clarity required.

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This post by Frank Mechielsen is part of a Behind the Brands blog series on Politics of Poverty that examines the seven issues relating to poverty and big food companies’ supply chains. Read more on land, women, farmers, water, workers, and climate change!

Erinch Sahan is a Private Sector Policy Advisor at Oxfam Great Britain.

Badou Allouko on her farmland, where she grows cocoa to sell and vegetables for personal consumption, in Sankro, Ivory Coast in January. Photo: Peter DiCampo / Oxfam America

In a world where demand for agricultural production is growing, but supply is failing to keep up, small-scale producers are critical to our food security. With the right investment and inclusive business approaches, small-scale farmers can be immensely productive and a reliable source of supply.

Small-scale farmers are also becoming critical to the ‘Big 10’ food and beverage companies. Oxfam assessed how the policies and commitments of the Big 10 stack up in our Behind the Brands report. We found that most of the Big 10 are missing the mark in ensuring a fair deal for small-scale farmers. This is a missed opportunity, not only because small-scale producers are central to the supply-security concerns of the Big 10, but also because rural economic development is so strongly linked to small-scale agriculture.

Here’s the development case. While the world produces more than enough food to feed everyone, 900 million people go to bed hungry each night. 80% of these hungry people live in rural areas, mostly working as small-scale producers. As Bill Gates said in 2009 at the World Food Prize ceremony:

“Helping the poorest smallholder farmers grow more crops and get them to market is the world’s single most powerful lever for reducing hunger and poverty.”

There are over 400 million small-scale farms on which 1.5 billion small-holder and landless farmers earn their livelihoods and grow their food. Some of these farmers are able to crack into the global supply chain. Too often, these ‘lucky’ few are left baring disproportionate levels of risks and costs. The vast majority are left behind, excluded by business models that fail to invest in and adapt to the realities of small-scale agriculture.

Among the Big 10, Unilever tops Oxfam’s Scorecard on farmers with a score of 7 out of 10. Mars and Nestle come equal second, with a score of 5. Unilever is distinguished mostly by its Sustainable Agriculture Code, which sets out guidelines and requirements for suppliers of Unilever to meet. As most of the Big 10 don’t deal with small-scale farmers directly, it’s the standards they require of their suppliers that matters most. Unilever’s code asks suppliers to work with producer organisations and provide training to small-scale farmers, as well as having specific clauses dealing with profit margins and local market opportunities for small-scale farmers. However, most supplier codes of the Big 10 do little nothing to single out any support or protection for small-scale farmers.

Oxfam hopes to see the Big 10 improve their policies and commitments to small-scale farmers in their supply chains. It starts with understanding the needs of these farmers and knowing where they are. Small-scale producers too often bear disproportionate risks and costs, but profits fail to trickle down. The Big 10 need to use their power and influence to stop this injustice. Most critically, the Big 10 need to make absolutely clear that they expect small-scale farmers to be treated fairly by all suppliers. Taking a strong stand on this in their supplier codes is an important step we hope more of the Big 10 take.

Who among the Big 10 will challenge Unilever for the top-score on farmers? Bragging rights is up for grabs.

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This post by Erinch Sahan is part of a Behind the Brands blog series on Politics of Poverty that examines the seven issues relating to poverty and big food companies’ supply chains. Read more on land, women, transparency, water, workers, and climate change!

Yesterday Oxfam received a response to its call to action from Nestlé, one of the three chocolate companies we’ve engaged on behalf of women cocoa farmers. We welcome Nestlé‘s letter as an indication of Nestlé‘s intent to do more for women cocoa farmers and workers. Nestlé‘s Executive Vice President for Operations, José Lopez, indicates an earnest seriousness on behalf of Nestlé to take these issues and Oxfam’s call to action. However, it does not go far enough in making a strong commitment for women’s empowerment.

N'Dri Chantal Konan, age 70, separates the pulp from cocoa in Allahteresekro, Ivory Coast in January 2013. Photo: Peter DiCampo / Oxfam America

Firstly, if Nestlé were truly ready to do something for women, why not start with committing to the UN’s Women Empowerment Principles? This would go a long way toward showing Oxfam, consumers, and most importantly the women in Nestlé‘s supply chain that they are committed to tackling gender issues. In 2012, Nestlé did conduct an assessment of Nestlé’s cocoa supply chain with the Fair Labor Association in Cote d’Ivoire, as well as recent consultations on child labor. Their letter to Oxfam indicates a willingness to consider the recommendations on women in that report, but does not yet commit to knowing and showing what is happening to women more broadly in their cocoa supply chain by conducting a separate assessment.

Furthermore, we are not surprised to hear that members of the cooperatives involved in Nestlé‘s Cocoa Plan are almost all men. That is precisely the problem. Nestlé and other chocolate companies shouldn’t just accept this, but rather incentivize its suppliers to more actively include women in co-ops, and particularly in decision-making processes. Nestlé must be more active in targeting training for women farmers, recognizing the critical role they play in pre and post-harvest.

Nestlé indicated in the letter that they will come with a detailed plan in some weeks. We are looking forward to the reviewing the plan and the necessary actions.

My colleagues and I were surrounded by women dressed in their best. Their colorful, patterned pagnes, or cloth wraps, were everywhere I turned in the village of Kouadioyaokro, Cote d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast). I was in West Africa in January to listen to women cocoa farmers about their roles in the supply chains that result in my favorite chocolate treats.

Etchi Avla on her cocoa farm in Botende, Ivory Coast in January. Photo: Peter DiCampo / Oxfam America

Cote d’Ivoire is the world’s top cocoa exporter, producing about 40 percent of the world’s crop, and used to make the mass-produced foods like candy bars and chocolate milk you find at your neighborhood grocery story. The United States imports more than half of its cocoa beans from the West African country—three times more than from the runner up, Ecuador. The vast majority of cocoa production comes from small farms of less than 5 hectares in size. These farms are, for the most part, owned and operatedby men.

It seemed every woman that lived in the village showed up to our meeting in Kouadioyaokro. These women were ready to be heard and to be recognized! While women play essential roles in farming cocoa, their work traditionally has been undervalued, ignored, and often underpaid.

Through our discussions, we found little evidence on the ground that the international food and beverage industry are doing its part to uplift the livelihoods of female smallholder farmers in the cocoa industry. Extraordinary profits from cocoa are built on the labor of millions of women (and men) living in poverty like those whom I encountered in Cote d’Ivoire.

Oxfam last week released its Behind the Brands report. The report contains a Scorecard that ranks the top 10 food companies on seven themes: workers, farmers, women, land, water, climate and transparency. one key area where companies were failing—women.

Women represent at least half of the workforce in agriculture and women’s work in agriculture is often not visible, or simply not valued, despite the immense physical and inner strength required by the women with whom I met in Cote d’Ivoire. Complex and long-standing gender divisions result in women being excluded from more profitable aspects of agricultural enterprises. Women have limited access to resources such as land, credit, technical agricultural support, social security, and other services. They do unpaid work at home, face high levels of illiteracy, and lack bargaining power. They often face discrimination and unequal treatment on commercial farms, limiting their access to resources, equal wages, training, and leadership positions.

The greatest paradox is that women are often the key to food security for their own families. For this reason, Oxfam would like companies to begin the race by improving their policies and practices that affect female smallholder farmers.

Companies can begin by engaging with people like Olga Rosine Adou, the founder and president of the cooperative, COOPASA, in southeastern Cote d’Ivoire. When we met, Olga told us that cocoa companies could help her and other women cocoa farmers in her community.

“We want these conditions to get better. We want men to understand that women can do what men do. With international pressure, things will start to change.”

Oxfam is calling specifically on the three largest cocoa sourcing companies in the world—Mars, Mondelez and Nestle—to do more for women cocoa farmers. These companies must:

#1 Look: ‘Know and show’ that women are treated fairly by assessing and reporting on the economic and social status of women in cocoa supply chains.

#2 Listen: Respond to the demands of women in cocoa supply chains and make public commitments to protecting women’s rights and ensuring opportunities for female smallholder farmers.

#3 Act: Take concrete steps to redress gender inequities in the company’s cocoa supply chains and influence others to do so as well.

This International Women’s Day—March 8, 2013, let’s take a stand for women who work on cocoa farms, and those facing inequalities around the world.

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This post by Irit Tamir is part of a Behind the Brands blog series on Politics of Poverty that examines the seven issues relating to poverty and big food companies’ supply chains. Read more on land, farmers, transparency, water, workers, and climate change!

Jonathan Jacoby is Policy and Campaigns Manager in the Private Sector Department at Oxfam America.

The ingredients of a memorable event can be hard to come by.  I may be (am) biased, but Oxfam’s gathering last Friday morning in New York City to highlight our new Behind the Brands scorecard had them all:

#1 A stunning and symbolic setting

In the 29th floor auditorium of Bloomberg‘s headquarters, we had found a venue with a sense of power.  Thanks to Curtis Ravenel and his Sustainability team at Bloomberg LP, the view of midtown Manhattan, Central Park, and the East River was exquisite.

#2 A sumptuous spread

Breakfast is the most important meal of the day and this one started us off right.

#3 A skillful scene-setter

In his intro, Oxfam America president Ray Offenheiser demonstrated our long-standing focus on food and agriculture—Oxfam’s proverbial “bread and butter”. He then laid out our approach to evaluating the role of the world’s 10 largest food and beverage companies on 7 key themes through the Behind the Brands project.

With the scorecard displayed behind him, Ray saluted how far the “Big Ten” – the most influential brands in the global food system – have come, but he made clear how far they still have to go to develop comprehensive policies on the social aspects of sustainable agriculture. He made both a humanitarian case and a long-term business case for companies to compete in a “race to the top”. Such a race will help secure the long-term bottom line while ensuring that the planet’s 7 billion food consumers have enough to eat and that the developing world’s 1.5 billion food producers (small-scale farmers and farm workers, especially women) enjoy the rights and opportunities to thrive. 

Panel at Behind the Brands March 1st event: (L to R) Jane Nelson, Erika Karp, Bennett Freeman, Puvan Selvanathan, Stephanie Strom, Ray Offenheiser. Photo: Ipek Gencsu / Oxfam America

#4 A classy cast of characters

On the panel were:

• Erika Karp: head of global sector research at global investment bank UBS; board member of the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board and other initiatives bringing environmental and social factors into clearer focus for the business and investor communities
• Puvan Selvanathan: head of sustainable agriculture at the United Nations Global Compact; former Chief Sustainability Officer at major Malaysian conglomerate and palm oil producer Sime Darby
• Jane Nelson: lecturer at the Harvard Kennedy School; director of its Corporate Social Responsibility Initiative; and a Brookings Institution senior fellow and all-around public intellectual on the subject.
• Bennett Freeman: senior executive at leading social investment firm Calvert; former State Department official and chief speechwriter; and yes, former board member of Oxfam America.

#5 An inquisitive and insightful moderator

Stephanie Strom, veteran New York Times business and financial journalist, brought to the fore the panelists’ diverse perspectives and enabled them to achieve a certain organic chemistry.

#6 Not just blah, blah, blah

Here are some of the highlights of the substantive dialogue:

• Transparency as Transformational: The panelists applauded the scorecard’s accessibility on complex sustainability issues, as well as its focus on transparent supply chains as a means to spark transformational action. Transparency is a powerful catalyst to get “competitive juices flowing” among these industry leaders, as Bennett Freeman of Calvert put it. He and other panelists spoke passionately about the need both to praise these food and beverage companies for the good they are doing while holding them accountable for a lack of clear policies and for any harmful practices. There was some discussion among panelists about the importance of bolstering and empowering internal champions within such companies to enable bold action in the executive suite.

• Consumer Power: Unsurprisingly, the discussion also turned to consumer values and trends. Various panelists underscored the power of the consumer, especially against the now-familiar backdrop of social media campaigning.  Erika Karp of UBS eloquently observed the potential for a “tiny pause” in consumers’ decision-making in the grocery aisle—replicated many millions of times—to have a massive impact on a brand’s bottom line.

• Investing in the Future: Beyond the covenant between brand and buyer, a few panelists highlighted the utility of the scorecard in influencing the next generation of global institutional investors.  Erika Karp pointed to the $34 trillion global wealth transfer underway and to the fact that the young global elite are increasingly concerned with sustainability issues. It turns out that the new jet-set seem increasingly likely to take a high-speed train instead of a private plane to get from London to Paris or from Beijing to Shanghai.

• Small-Scale Farmers: Jane Nelson of Harvard set off a good discussion about corporate responsibility and the role of smallholder farmers.  Their challenge, she argued, is not exploitation but rather exclusion, in that the vast majority of such farmers are not part of a global value chain. Panelists pointed to the role of NGOs in building smallholder farmer capacity, and also to that of companies in deploying technologies and techniques to empower small-scale farmers to compete.

#7 Constructive Criticism

Of course, Oxfam fielded a few questions about the scorecard methodology and a few critiques of the overall approach.

Jane Nelson was most vocal about limitations, speaking to: 1) the limits of what companies can do to address capacity issues of smallholder farmers; 2) the challenge of transparency and the unfairness of suggesting a “veil of secrecy”; and 3) the need to look beyond competitive scorecards to collective responses.

Erika Karp spoke of the importance of moving beyond the “blunt instrument” of a scorecard to shared, objective measures for assessing company performance and to a “common language” between stakeholders.

Puvan Selvanathan of the UN Global Compact urged Oxfam to distinguish clearly between a company commitment and a company policy, akin to the difference in politics between a campaign promise and a statute. He also hopes to see “some green” on the scorecard over time.

Along with Oxfam colleagues Chris Jochnick and Erinch Sahan, Ray Offenheiser stated that Oxfam will continue to modify and potentially expand the scorecard, suggesting that the effort would not be a “one-off.”

#8 Responses from the Food Companies

Oxfam was pleased to have an impressive showing at the event by more than half of the “Big Ten” in the Behind the Brands scorecard: Associated British Foods, Coca-Cola, Danone, Nestle, PepsiCo, and Unilever. A number of their representatives offered comments welcoming the scorecard and its close examination of newer frontiers such as gender and land rights. Some companies pointed out that there is collective action underway to address key sustainability issues, while others acknowledged the need for future action on emerging issues.

#9 A Way Forward

Picking up on Jane Nelson’s call for collective action to address systemic issues, Ray challenged companies to advocate jointly for government investments in foreign aid to restore once-robust national agriculture programs and extension services. He identified “an opportunity for alliance,” with collective action by the companies, and perhaps also by NGOs, toward the policies of governments and of agricultural traders. By way of historical example, Ray cited the “corporate statesmanship” of a group of American CEOs in jointly promoting the Marshall Plan to rebuild European markets after World War II.

#10 Merging “Long-term-ism” and “the Fierce Urgency of Now”

Erika Karp pointed to the need for companies to shed the yoke of quarterly earnings reports and consider the long term.  Apparently, the CEO of mining giant BHP Billiton declared it “the happiest day of my life” when his company no longer required such frequent reporting.

But to many nodding heads on the panel and in the audience, Karp also echoed MLK Jr. by speaking of the “fierce urgency of now” and of the “unprecedented consciousness” enabled by today’s technology, knowledge, institutions, and activism.

Indeed, there’s no time like the present for the Big Ten companies to lead.

Monique van Zijl is the Policy Advisor for Economic Justice at Oxfam Novib.

Huh? It can’t be! I’m astounded. According to the Oxfam Behind the Brands Scorecard, none, not one of the Big 10 food companies has adequate policies to prevent or protect local communities from land grabs along their supply chains. As a land policy advisor for Oxfam, the scorecard gave me a chance to see just what ten of the world’s biggest food and beverage companies are doing to prevent land grabs along their supply chains.

All ten companies are driving in the dark.

Once upon a time, the food and beverage industry gained unrestricted access to cheap land, i.e. other people’s land, which allowed them to make huge profits at the expense of others. But that was before the problem of land grabs was all over the news. That was before companies and consumers knew better.

In the past decade, an area of land eight times the size of the United Kingdom has been sold off globally. This is enough land to feed nearly a billion people—the same number of people who go to bed hungry each night. The vast majority of large-scale land deals are taking place in countries with ‘alarming’ or ‘serious’ levels of hunger, and yet a majority of foreign land investors plan to export what they produce. Land sold as ‘unused’ or ‘undeveloped’ is often that of poor families. These families are forcibly kicked off the land, often violently, and if there are promises of jobs or compensation, these are often broken.

Companies can no longer claim to be unaware of these risks.  Yet no single company assessed in the scorecard has sufficient policies to prevent land grabs.

Oxfam’s Behind the Brands Scorecard measures whether companies have sufficient policies in place to ensure that their supply chains are free from ‘land grabs’. This includes policies that promote free, prior and informed consent throughout the entire supply chain and zero tolerance for those suppliers who obtain land through land rights violations. We are asking companies to turn their lights on: to adopt preventative policies; to seek the consent of local communities; to undertake transparent and comprehensive social and environmental impact assessments; and, if things do go wrong, to provide appropriate grievance mechanisms. In short, we are asking companies to be responsible investors, producers and, buyers.

Driving in the dark with no lights is reckless. Food companies, it’s time to switch the lights on.

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This post by Monique van Zijl is part of a Behind the Brands blog series on Politics of Poverty that examines the seven issues relating to poverty and big food companies’ supply chains. Read more on women, farmers, transparency, water, workers, and climate change!

Politico yesterday reported a rumor that US food aid programs could see major changes in the next budget. The article frames this move as putting aid “on the chopping block,” but it is not at all clear what is really going on.  Enacting major cuts to food aid programs would be a terrible idea that would cost lives without making a dent in our debt.

But there is another, more hopeful possibility that the administration is about to push for long overdue reforms that would make US aid programs more effective and cost efficient. This could be a very, very good thing.

Let me explain. The US reaches millions of people each year with life-saving aid. From the Horn of Africa to the Sahel to the most recent humanitarian crisis in Syria, US assistance to address hunger and food insecurity is crucial. The US is the most generous donor of food assistance in the world and gets a lot of credit for this.  Cutting aid doesn’t make sense, but why might the Administration seek to fundamentally change this program?

A child in Dire Dawa, Ethiopia stands near a wall made of USAID food aid containers in the flood-destroyed area of Bahere Tsege in 2006. Photo: Liz Lucas/Oxfam America

The reason is that current US food aid programs are excruciatingly inefficient and in some instances counter-productive to helping people build sustainable agricultural livelihoods. Oxfam has been outspoken in its criticism of the way in which the US runs its food aid program. And we’ve offered common sense reforms to make the programs more efficient—reforms that would allow US assistance to reach millions of more people without costing a single extra penny. We applauded Chairwoman Stabenow and Ranking Member Roberts of the Senate Agriculture Committee for their leadership and steps to reform the food aid program as they wrote a new Farm Bill last year.  The bill passed the Senate on a broad bipartisan basis, but floundered in the House.

If the Obama Administration puts forward a proposal to pursue these kinds of reforms, it would mark an effort to break the stranglehold of special interests in the US who profit from the current rules, regulations, and red-tape governing food aid programs. It would be a bold and important step.

Real reforms would give aid humanitarian agencies greater flexibility, including the ability to purchase food from the cheapest, most efficient source. This would in turn reduce costs and speed delivery. It would bring our programs into the 21^st century, in line with most other countries. This is precisely what a recent USDA study of local and regional procurement projects demonstrated. For almost every commodity examined, buying from local or regional sources was cheaper and uniformly faster than shipping it from the US. Many aid groups already do this with their own money and through other emergency aid accounts such as the Emergency Food Security Program out of the International Development Account.  But the primary food assistance program remains essentially outdated, lumbering, and wasteful.

Such a change would also clean up the jurisdictional mess created by current configuration of food aid programs, which are authorized in the Farm Bill, funded through the Agriculture Appropriations bill, but implemented by USAID. Not only would reform rationalize the system, but it would help create a more cohesive approach to the current patchwork of programs to deal with global hunger.

Oxfam America campaigned last year saying that Washington should “stop playing with food aid.” Thousands of people supported us in sending a message to their lawmakers to enact this reform.  If the rumor pans out and the Obama Administration is serious about food aid reform, it would seem the message got through.  Good on President Obama!

I doubt members of the Agriculture Committee thought the eleventh-hour Farm Bill extension would be the conclusion of their year-plus efforts to negotiate a new and improved five-year Farm Bill.

The last-minute inclusion of a one-year extension of the commodity groups’ favorite farm subsidies and rural programs were tucked into the final fiscal cliff bill this week. This means that the debate about the future of US food and farm policy and efforts for real reform will have to continue in 2013.

The fiscal cliff bill does the bare minimum of providing continuing authority for life-saving food aid programs, avoiding most of what could be termed the “food aid cliff”.  The US provides roughly half of all food aid globally. If food aid programs had not been re-authorized, a true cliff would have emerged for tens of millions of people displaced by conflict or whose crops are decimated by floods or rain, and who depend on food aid from the US.

Although the extension of the food aid programs is obviously a relief, it’s a program in desperate need of improvement. Unfortunately the extension was not applied to reauthorization of one of the most promising and successful programs of the 2008 Farm Bill, the USDA Local and Regional Procurement Pilot Program (LRP). LRP ensures the most bang for the food aid buck, because it allows the US Government to purchase food aid from the most affordable and efficient sellers. The LRP pilot has proven to be a highly-effective and efficient way to spend scarce aid dollars to help save lives and build self-sufficiency for vulnerable communities.  As has been well documented, LPR can save time and money, allowing crucial aid to reach more people in need of food assistance. It also invests in communities so they can feed themselves, instead of becoming dependent on food aid in the future.

It is the epitome of irony that a deal designed to tackle some of the looming challenges of government spending allows LRP to lapse, thereby doubling down on the more expensive, inefficient, and outdated models of food aid.  It is a wasted opportunity for Congress, not to mention a waste of money for taxpayers. LPR is the kind of program you would prioritize if your aim was really to make federal spending more efficient and effective.

But that’s not what Congress chose to do, a depressing start to the new year. The National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition issued a press release referring to the Farm Bill extension as “anti-reform” and “a disaster for farmers and the America people.”

Congress must extend authority for LRP, and adopt a host of other reforms to US food aid programs when it reauthorizes the Farm Bill in 2013. The Senate version of the Farm Bill, after much work and compromise, included good provisions on food aid reform that must be the starting point for continued discussions.

We may not have totally fallen off the food aid cliff, but we still have a mountain to climb.

A little over three months ago, I sat attentively listening to the give and take between Nigerian Female Food Hero, Susan Godwin, and Chicago Council on World Affairs Senior Fellow, Roger Thurow. Thurow was moderating a panel at the World Food Prize Symposium called A Billion Hungry: Can We Feed the World Sustainably? Also part of the discussion were Sir Gordon Conway, scholar and author; plant breeding and genetics pioneer, Gebisa Ejeta, and Jane Karuku, President of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa.

Roger Thurow and Susan Godwin at the World Food Prize Dialogue. Photo: Jacob Silberman.

Now, an online dialogue, The Future of Agriculture, is considering much the same question about addressing hunger in the face of many challenges ahead. This discussion also includes my acquaintances, Susan Godwin and Roger Thurow. Mrs. Godwin writes eloquently on the challenge of passing the legacy of farming on to the next generation in  My Daughter Wants to Be a Farmer. Thurow again plays the role of summarizing and connecting the dots at the end of week one of the conversation.

In the first week, writers like Bill McKibben, writer and founder of 350.org, and Jose Graziano del Silva, Director General of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), argued that moving away from an agriculture dependent on fossil fuels could not only benefit the planet but set the stage for a more resilient and productive agriculture.

Joining McKibben and del Silva were thought leaders with very diverse points of view and from different parts of the world. All considered what future farming might look like if we better considered the role of women, risk, farmer-based knowledge, and less reliance on fossil fuel.

The discussion continues through this week with a new set of essays posted each day. So far the discussion has been lively. But to help build our understanding we need broad participation and dialogue. So please take some minutes each day to visit http://blogs.oxfam.org/en/future-of-agriculture. The essays are short; the implications for our future tasks are great.

After reading both Roger Thurow’s and Susan Godwin’s online contributions, I thought back to that hall in Iowa with over 800 people attending. Mrs. Godwin told how her community and other had asked her what she might offer to all the highly educated and important people that she might address in the US. She said that most important she would tell them how her work had improved the lives of her family and the other women in her community. And after a pause, during which the audience grew even more quiet, she declared, “I will tell them that I am a farmer!”

That day, that large crowd filled with educators, scientists, political leaders, and activists rose to their feet. They acknowledged that the hope for a well-fed future depends on the efforts of all stakeholders, and ideas from all sectors.

The Future of Agriculture discussion is no different. Join the conversation today.