Former Congressman and current NYC mayoral candidate, Anthony Weiner, yesterday became the latest political figure to take-on the “Food Stamp Challenge,” an effort to show what life is really like for the millions of American’s who scrape by on a meager $3(ish) per day they receive in SNAP benefits. A similar challenge exists for those, like Vice President Biden’s sons, Hunter and Beau, who want to “Live Below the Line” and experience how the poorest people in the world meet their daily needs on less than $1.50(!) per day.

Both challenges are creative and noble enterprises that help drum up publicity and support for efforts to fight poverty at home and abroad. So in that spirit, today I announce my newly-created “Food Aid Challenge” to show what it is like to live on emergency food aid.

I personally challenge anyone who opposes common sense reforms to food aid to join me in taking up this test of personal fortitude. If they feel the same way after completing the “Food Aid Challenge,” I’ll walk their dog for a week.

Here’s how the Food Aid challenge works:

Step 1:  Calculate the minimum weekly budget for food that you could live on.

Step 2: Take 50% of that amount in cash, put it in a bucket and light it on fire. (Less than half of our food aid budget is actually spent on food.)

Step 3: With your remaining cash, go to a store that sells international food items that are not part of your normal diet. (IMPORTANT: Do not go to your usual grocery store or shop around for the best possible price. Do not buy food that you like to eat. That would be against challenge rules.) Purchase these unfamiliar items in bulk with all of your remaining money.

Step 4: Go to Fedex and ask that these items be shipped to you 3-6 months from now. (IMPORTANT: Do not shop around at other places for the best possible quote for shipping these items. That too would be illegal.)

Step 5: Wait until your shipments arrive. Find a way to scrape by without spending any money to feed yourself.

Step 6: Enjoy your bulk food shipment when it arrives!

Too easy? Try the Monetization Challenge. This is exactly the same as the Food Aid challenge except after Step 5, instead of eating the food, you must sell the full shipment at your local farmers market. You’ll be undercutting other vendors’ prices, making back whatever you can get for this food. (You’ll probably only get back about 50-75% of what you bought the food for in the first place.)

Then all you have to do is use whatever proceeds you have left from the sale of the shipped food to start a project that you believe will help fight poverty or hunger in your community!

It is soooo simple! Ok, who’s with me?!

“The great problem is that we have no sure markets where we can buy and sell,” Emiliana Aligaesha explained exasperatedly.

“This makes the young people discouraged to deal with farming because they see their parents and neighbors do it. They see them die poor, so they are not interested.”

Emiliana Aligaesha (left) with Mwanahamisi Salimu, Campaigns & Advocacy Manager for the GROW Campaign in Tanzania at the Oxfam America offices.

Emiliana Aligaesha’s visit to DC last week corresponded with the Senate and House’s decisions to increase local and regional procurement by just $20 million. Much more work remains to be done to achieve the kind of real reform the Administration has asked for and that Oxfam supports. (Listen to this Humanosphere podcast on the politics of aid reform with Oxfam’s Eric Muňoz and Jon Scanlon, who both accompanied Aligaesha last week.) 

Oxfam invited her as a farmer in the developing world who would stand to benefit from food aid reform. Emiliana Aligaesha formed a successful farmer’s cooperative, Kaderes Peasant Development Ltd. (KPD), with her fellow community members in the Karagwe District of northwest Tanzania in 2007. After getting support from USAID, they gained a small contract for beans with the World Food Programme (WFP). (Read more here.)

Below are Emiliana Aligaesha’s words, pieced together from various events, but exactly as she said them to stakeholders this week. (You can watch a livestream recording here of an event at which Aligaesha appeared, Enough Food For Everyone If: The G8′s Role in the Fight Against Global Hunger.)

As we bemoan the vested, status quo interests that prevented reforms proposal from gaining much ground, hardworking and innovative farmers like Aligaesha will carry on.

Her words speak for themselves.

***

“I believe in farming because many people at our area cannot get employment. So farming is another way to create jobs to the people. So many of the people are farmers. These small farmers feed their families, feed all the urban people, and nearby countries.

“Most of them are women, working hard, feeding their families, providing all their needs, fetching water, paying school fees. At the end of the day, they are the poorest in the area because they use much energy and profit almost nothing.

Aligaesha and two of her cattle in the Karagwe District of northwest Tanzania. Photo: MaishaPlus2012 / Oxfam

“The problem here is that whatever we produce, we sell under the [production] costs. This breaks the heart of farmers. At harvest, we don’t know who is going to buy our products. You have no opportunity to bargain with these middlemen during harvest. They can simply go away to another farmer. Within the same day, prices can change, because if they see five people come with beans. Some of us have very small houses for family use, but we have nowhere to keep these products [after harvest]. So we need to sell quickly, another way to benefit middlemen. When people run out of their own food, they will have to go to these middlemen who will sell food back to them at two or three times the price.

“KPD competes with the middlemen, but it is not enough. If we can increase the WFP contract [currently only 5-10% of the beans harvested] to buy more and get more contracts, this will help make the price stable. We don’t have malnutrition issues in our area to the same extent because we produce different kinds of food. The soil is fertile. Take beans from our own home country because it supports these farmers, these women, and can help people in war or people in difficulties.

“I sometimes sit with women and do research. I ask, ‘If you want to get 20 kilos of beans, how many days can you work there? How much seedlings are you going to put? How many days have you gone there and each day? How much are you to be paid?’ When we look at production costs [and profit], it is empowering.

“If we get means of transport, we can help children survive in other regions of Tanzania and other countries. What is needed here is… Farming with hand hoes, up to now farming with hand hoes – it makes you tired. You have to bend your back. If we get improved farming tools, this could help us much, and irrigation methods. We have rivers, Lake Victoria, but just need some systems to use the water.

“I met different women’s groups in Texas and New York. I visited official offices in Fort Worth and New York and Washington, DC [Kay Granger, R-TX Nita Lowey, D-NY, Lois Frankel (D-FL)]. All American people are all smiling to me. I feel at home.

Emiliana Aligaesha. Photo: MaishaPlus2012 / Oxfam.

“I am also happy that the environment here is almost the same at home. Everywhere is green. The difference is those very, very high buildings. Whenever I meet people, they are all busy, thinking to promote their lives.

“I believe in farming because it has supported my children’s education. I have six cows. I have built a water tank for my farming [to collect rainwater], rehabilitated half of my house. I suggest that farming is good because I always have something to eat. Whenever any visitor knocks on my door, I know what to do. I am almost 70 but I never grow old because I have food.”

An initiative to increase private sector investment in agriculture, the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition was born at last year’s G8, hosted by the US. The New Alliance signals an emerging trend by donors to promote public-private partnerships to address key global challenges such as hunger.

Tomorrow the New Alliance will celebrate a one-year anniversary of sorts with a half day event in London that promises to take stock of progress and chart a path forward – including launching new country partnerships.

It seems an opportune moment to ask: How is the New Alliance performing?

The New Alliance is very much a work in progress that is still in the early stages of getting organized with few concrete outcomes to date. To get a better sense of what has been happening in the six countries that have joined the New Alliance, I have been reviewing the evidence, talking to colleagues and partners in these countries, and doing a bit of fact-finding myself.

When the New Alliance launched, Oxfam and other civil society organizations, cried foul, pointing to major gaps remaining in public finance for agriculture.* From Oxfam’s perspective, the New Alliance provided the wrong solution to addressing the needs of small food producers. With companies only offering up existing business plans, it was “neither new nor a true alliance.”

Violeta Sithole, works with her family to prepare a field to plant beans near her home in Nzeve, Mozambique. Oxfam reports that civil society participation has been lacking in New Alliance planning in Mozambique, which means that risks to smallholder farmers like Sithole are not being adequately addressed. Photo: Chris Hufstader / Oxfam America

So what did stakeholders stand to gain from joining the New Alliance?

The answer seems to be in what countries have agreed to – major policy reforms in critical areas that impact private investment in agriculture. Many of the reforms on the table have the potential to tip the balance of national policies in favor of big business over small-scale family farmers. While some reforms such as incorporating nutrition more centrally into the agriculture investment agenda are positive, changes in land policy and seed sector liberalization are more controversial and threaten to put farmers’ rights and access to land, seed and water at risk.

I have found a lack of systematic, country-level, civil society participation in the negotiation of Cooperation Framework Agreements. This means that questions of risk to farmers are not being adequately addressed. In Mozambique for example, farmers’ organizations that are intensely involved in these issues and are part of Oxfam’s GROW campaign, only learned about major changes to seed, land and fertilizer regulations at the launch event for the New Alliance in Maputo. This signaled to us that these policy reforms were made in a parallel forum and had not yet been in the spotlight of public scrutiny, using existing, transparent platforms such as NEPAD’s Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme and following the good practice guidelines (including land tenure reform) developed by the FAO’s Committee on Food Security.

Even if these transparency shortcomings are addressed, will the New Alliance deliver real results for small producers?

Cries of neo-colonialism are being heard from civil society. (See here and here.) There are good reasons to be wary of how companies engage with small producers, and plenty of examples of how this can go wrong. Though most investments are still only on paper, I don’t think the proper groundwork has been laid to ensure this won’t be the case.

With these concerns in mind and so many unanswered questions being raised, not just by Oxfam but by civil society organizations across the Africa, US, and Europe, we are calling on the New Alliance to halt further expansion. It’s time to review existing country commitments and undertake reforms to address major shortcomings. (Read more about Oxfam’s appeals to the New Alliance here.)

Without these reforms, the New Alliance might lead to increased investment in agriculture.

But it will fail to meet its goal of lifting 50 million people out of poverty.

* For the sake of full disclosure, Oxfam America’s Executive Director, Ray Offenheiser, is currently participating in the Leadership Council (LC) of the New Alliance, a body which is supposed to serve as a kind of global accountability mechanism. The LC continues to struggle to meet this responsibility.

Marc Cohen is a Senior Researcher on Humanitarian Policy at Oxfam America. 

Haiti has long received starkly negative attention in the global media, which for years have focused on such themes as extreme poverty and inequality, corruption, drug trafficking, dysfunctional governance, the dreaded Ton Tons Macoutes secret police, and billions in wasted aid. Google “Haiti basket case” and you’ll get more than a million hits back in a little over a tenth of a second.

But there’s some good news coming out of Haiti too, and it’s about increased rice production, which is notable in a country that imports 83 percent of that daily staple.

On May 29, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations forecast that Haiti’s rice crop for 2013 would be nearly 25 percent larger than last year, when Hurricanes Isaac and Sandy caused severe damage. The forecast is also up over the trend for the previous five years, although just by a little.

That is very good news for Haiti, where consumers say that they much prefer local rice to imports. About three quarters of Haiti’s imports come from the United States, so imported rice is called diri Miami (Miami rice). Haitians buy so much diri Miami because, thanks to generous US government subsidies paid to rice farmers, it is much cheaper than the local product.

That means that imports make sense, for Haiti, doesn’t it? After all, much of Haiti lies on steep, deforested slopes that aren’t very good for growing rice, and the country frequently suffers from severe tropical storms like the ones that hit last year (more are forecast for this year). If rice from the United States, Brazil, or Vietnam is cheaper than Haitian rice, why shouldn’t Haitian consumers continue to rely on imports?

Oxfam is working with rice grower cooperatives in the Artibonite River valley of Haiti to help them improve their production and processing, and earn more for their crop. In the village of Quatorzieme, Oxfam is working with a small group of women (including Kenia Lainé, pictured) to experiment with innovative practices of growing rice known as System of Rice Intensification or SRI. Photo: Brett Eloff / Oxfam America

The biggest reason why Haiti should produce more of the rice that it consumes is that dependence on virtually duty-free imports leaves Haitian citizens vulnerable to world-market rice prices, which have become a lot more volatile in recent years. Between 2003 and 2008, the world price of rice went up fivefold, more than wheat or corn.

The price jump in Haiti caused widespread hardship, because in both the cities and countryside, most Haitians buy rice. There were protests around the country in April 2008. In the capital of Port-au-Prince, these turned violent, leading the country’s parliament to vote no confidence in Prime Minister Jacques Eduard Alexis.

The discontent led the Haitian government, with support from aid donors, to pay a lot more attention to food production. The government now devotes about nine percent of its budget to agriculture, compared to just four percent in the early 2000s. The current president, Michel Martelly, speaks of food self-sufficiency by 2016 and an end to hunger by 2020.

Can Haiti really move toward meeting a significantly larger share of rice demand from local farmers’ fields? After all, even this year’s bigger crop means that Haiti will still have to import two-thirds of the rice its citizens will consume.

The answer is a resounding “yes!” according to Oxfam’s research. (See Research Report and Policy Proposal on the rice value chain in Haiti.) But it will take a lot more investment in things like irrigation, mills, storage and drying facilities, better transportation, and making sure Haitian rice farmers have access to credit and technical advice. It also means changing Haiti’s trade policy so that there is a floor price, and imports don’t come in at anything lower that that minimum.

Oxfam works with rice farmer associations and cooperatives to help them participate effectively in Haiti’s food policy debates. Both Oxfam and the US Agency for International Development (USAID) are working with Haitian farmers to boost rice production, sponsoring pilot projects on the system of rice intensification (SRI). This boosts yields with less seed, less water, and mostly organic fertilizer to boost yields.

This approach—bringing farmers’ voices into the debate, changing unfavorable policies, boosting investment, and using an agroecological approach that is appropriate to Haiti’s resource-poor conditions—can help the country build on and go well beyond this year’s very encouraging news about home-grown rice.

Riccardo Vitale is an anthropologist based in Cartagena, Colombia and Marc Cohen is a Senior Researcher on Humanitarian Policy at Oxfam America. 

“We cannot eat oil palm dates and teak wood.”

That’s what members of the Montes de María Communications Collective (CCMM), a grassroots women’s peace organization in El Carmen de Bolivar, Colombia, told Oxfam researchers. Oxfam was looking at post-conflict agricultural activities in Montes de María, as the country’s long-running civil war winds down and displaced peasants are returning to the land.

Most of the more than 4 million displaced Colombians are low-income farmers who fled their communities to avoid the fighting. Over the weekend, the Colombian government and the largest armed opposition group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) agreed to an extensive land redistribution program in their long-running peace talks. In June 2011, President Juan Manuel Santos signed the country’s Victims and Land Restitution Law, which provides land and other resources to resettling people. Donors like the US Agency for International Development (USAID) have supported the law’s implementation.

Earlier Oxfam research in Colombia’s Choco Department (province) found flaws in restitution efforts there. Land recipients had to farm in areas where armed groups continued to operate. And their rights to the land were not really guaranteed, due to lax local enforcement of the Restitution Law.

In Montes de María, a relatively peaceful zone on Colombia’s Caribbean coast that is home mainly to Afro-Colombian people, Oxfam found that even when formerly displaced people have legal land titles in hand, that isn’t enough to make their hold on the land secure. Low-income Colombian farmers typically carry a heavy debt load. A title means that they can use their land as collateral. Too often, they then lose the land when they default on their loans.

Agribusiness firms and speculators then swoop in to acquire the land to raise cattle, grow oil palm and sugar cane for biofuel, or cultivate trees like teak to export the lumber. It’s just the latest land grab, as a community leader from Montes de María told Oxfam:

“In the 1980s the guerrillas took the land from the landowners and distributed it to landless peasants; in the 1990s through the ‘land recuperation movement,’ peasants achieved titles and ownership; then came the paramilitaries, brainchild of rich cattle ranchers allied with the state, that, using terrorist tactics, forcefully evicted thousands of peasants; and at present, via the restitution programs, new businesses and landowners are acquiring legal control of the land.”

Soraya and the other CCMM members told Oxfam that this has especially hurt peasant women in Montes de María. These women traditionally grew rice for their families to eat. But cultivation of the new energy and export crops mostly benefits men, while taking land out of food production.

Women in Montes de María cook for a commemoration of the massacres of displaced people. Photo used by permission: Paula Rodríguez via Flickr http://bit.ly/ZjplWm

Land restitution hasn’t just wound up disempowering women and spreading hunger in Montes María. Around the country, it has proved to be risky business. A study by the Latin America Working Group and Lutheran World Relief found that since President Santos took office in 2010, 25 or more land activists have been killed, and many others face threats of violence.

So should we conclude that post-conflict reconstruction programs shouldn’t help formerly displaced Colombians go back to farming? Not at all. But a lot more effort needs to go into designing and implementing restitution programs. The government, with support from donors, needs to undertake thorough livelihoods and conflict assessments before it sets programs up, and it needs to make sure that resources go to and stay with rural poor people, instead of further enriching those who are already well off. And women like those we spoke to at CCMM need to have an equal chance to make a living and own land.

“The land of Montes de María is rich in minerals, water, and is extremely fertile,” CCMM President Soraya de Bayuelo and her colleagues told Oxfam.

“This is both a blessing and a curse, since it converts our region into a battlefield of economic interests.”

For further reading, see Oxfam America’s Briefing Paper, “Colombia: Contested Spaces.”

In recent months food scandals have hit the headlines across the globe with horsemeat being passed off as beef in Europe, rat dressed up as lamb in China and fish being sold as, well other kinds of fish. These may just be the tip of the iceberg.

Today’s high and volatile prices mean that concerns about food safety are on the rise too. More people are having to buy cheaper and poorer quality food to make ends meet. In Bangladesh for example people in rural and urban areas are growing their own vegetables because they’re worried that cheaper vegetables have been poisoned by pesticides.

Concerns about food safety are just one of the issues highlighted in new research published today by Oxfam and the Institute for Development Studies. The report, called ’Squeezed’, explores how five years of high and volatile food prices have affected 23 different urban and rural communities in ten countries across the globe. We’ll be updating the study by returning to these same communities over the next three years to see how they’re coping.

’Squeezed’ shows how high and volatile prices are not only changing what we eat but also how we work and relate to others. For instance, where men are struggling now to fulfill their traditional role as breadwinners for the family, we find there is often an increase in domestic violence and alcohol and drug abuse.

We also found that community life can begin to disintegrate in the face of higher food prices. People are being forced to put on hold expensive social events, such as weddings, in order to save money. Or else they’re having to leave home to find work in cities or abroad.

We see people leaving their farmlands too, to go into riskier but better paid occupations such as gold mining. And we find that more and more women are entering into the workforce and their grandparents or older daughters forced instead to step in to help with childcare.

This first report is a snapshot of a problem that reaches well beyond the dinner table. As our researchers follow the communities over the next three years we will build up a much better picture of what this new era of high and volatile prices means for people and for society. But there are answers to be had already, especially if policy makers start looking at the bigger picture.

Governments need to start tackling high and volatile food prices by better managing our food stocks and better regulating the global grain markets. Here in the US that will mean finally rethinking the corn-ethanol mandate which is failing to deliver on its promises and contributing to high and volatile prices. Over the long term it will also mean getting serious about climate change which is expected to lead to drastic spikes in food prices over the coming decades.

Ultimately, all governments and donors will need to start investing far more smartly in small holder agriculture and into social safety nets to help the poorest and most vulnerable.

Gina Castillo is the Agriculture Program Manager at Oxfam America.

Most of us think that accidents are unforeseeable and not preventable. But that is not the case when it comes to why people who are poor are hit again and again by events that make it difficult for them to escape poverty.

Today Oxfam released a new report, No Accident: Resilience and the Inequality of Risk. The report shows that disaster risk is being dumped on to millions of people living in poverty because of climate change and because of unfair practices.

Take weather-related events as an example. Due to urbanization and climate change, there are increasingly more people living in places that are susceptible to disasters. Since 1970 the number of people exposed to floods and cyclones has doubled. Those are the “big shocks”—the ones that get media attention and galvanize donors and governments into action, as was certainly the case when Haiti suffered its devastating earthquake in January 2010. Yet, there are also “small shocks” such as illness, death, or a harvest failure, that can push a family that is just hanging on to destitution.

Consider this figure below, which shows how one family in Port-au-Prince, Haiti coped in the year after the 2010 earthquake, which sadly killed two of their youngest boys. The father lost his job and the family was heavily reliant friends and neighbors who provided them with most of their meals until mid-May, as well as emergency-related grants and services. After this, they were forced to sell their livestock. An Oxfam grant allowed them to pay off their debts and to start a small business, but their household income still dropped by 88 per cent. Unfortunately, the shocks continued. The family invested in a market garden, which was later destroyed by Hurricane Tomas in October 2010. They also bought food to sell, but some of this was looted during election violence in November 2010.

Figure 1: One family’s experience after the 2010 Haiti earthquake

We highlight this family’s story because it is not atypical.  People work hard to get out of poverty, as studies have shown.

So why is it so difficult for people to get ahead? In the aid world, we talk often of vulnerability. But we cannot talk about vulnerability as a random twist of fate. It’s about politics, power, and inequality. As a result, risk is dumped on poor countries and their inhabitants, asis certainly the case for climate change. 50% of carbon emissions are generated by 11% of people, the consequences of which are left to poor countries and the most vulnerable are the hardest hit. Women often face higher risks because of gender discrimination and cultural norms, yet shoulder the burden of managing families. They have fewer opportunities economically, resulting in lower income and fewer options when it comes to managing risk.

Why does this happen? Our research showed that while measuring vulnerability is difficult, countries with more vulnerable populations also tend to be those with greater income inequality. Governments need to tackle inequality and ensure that risk is better shared across society. Thankfully there is increasing awareness that excessive inequality is corrosive to growth.

Aid cannot fix inequality and disproportionate risk. Governments can. Targeted action to support society’s most vulnerable (basic services such as education health, and access to decision-making) is needed to even out inequalities, reduce risk, and build resilience.

Because some accidents are preventable.

Minh Le is the Associate Country Director of Oxfam in Vietnam.

Rice is life. It is true for me and for millions of farmers and families living in the riparian countries of the Mekong River.

Almost a decade ago, I got to know about the System of Rice Intensification (SRI) via a local organization in Cambodia. I was intrigued by its potential to not only improve rice production, but also to offer solutions to the complex problems and constraints faced by smallholder farmers.

The strengthening SRI movement has become a popular topic recently in development circles and with politicians simply because everyone cares about finding a way of feeding more people and, at the same time, improving environmental sustainability. SRI literature saw a spike of scientific and public interest in the last 10 years. Some 250 scientific articles have been produced in comparison to a few dozen in the previous decade. The March 2013 issue of the journal, Farming Matters, (published by ILEIA, the Centre for learning on sustainable agriculture) is exclusively devoted to SRI. I agree with the editors that SRI is indeed about more than just more rice.

In 2006, Oxfam initiated a regional initiative to support smallholder farmers in the lower Mekong basin, catalysing SRI innovations in rice production. In Vietnam “Simple and Effective” is the motor to promote SRI. Five year later, it was reported that one million farmers (some 10% of the total national farming population) have adopted SRI, following a partial or full set of its principles. It was reported by the Plant Protection Department under the Vietnamese Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development that SRI adoption covered 16% of the rice land in the North and 6% of the rice land in the country overall. Though progress is being made, it is obvious that the task is not yet completed.

Vietnamese farmer Hoang Thi Lien, right, talks to Nguyen Van Do, at his SRI farm in Dong Phu commune, My Duc district, Ha Tay province. Lien is a core farmer that gives instruction for and help other farmers to cultivate SRI rice. Photo: Chau Doan/ Oxfam America

There are still millions of farmers in Vietnam and hundreds of millions elsewhere who should have the opportunity to learn about and gain confidence in agro-ecological methods such as SRI. Multi-institutional and multi-level collaborations have been the key to success of SRI scaling up in Vietnam and many attempts have been made to try similar farmer-centered approaches with other crops. I see the SRI movement as opening doors for more cooperation and genuine support for farmers, as research, extension, and practice make progress together.

So let’s move the SRI debate beyond right and wrong and focus our energy and scare resources on better addressing farmers’ risk horizons, their appetite for change, and their aspirations towards improved rice productivity. In Vietnam, finding local solutions to food production is essential to eliminating hunger and providing insurance against rising food prices.

Rice is life and it is at the nexus of urgent global challenges for meeting food needs with less land per person, diminished water availability, rising energy costs, and adverse climate changes.  It is not an over-dramatization that our planet’s future will be influenced to no small degree by how this essential grain is grown in the decades ahead.

It feels good to be productive. As a Kansas farmer and rancher, I like the fact that I help transform air, water, and minerals into wheat and meat that can help sustain people. And as an agricultural advocate for Oxfam America, being productive means supporting sisters and brothers around the world to farm as I do and help feed their neighbors.

A US wheat field in Kansas. Photo via Flickr http://bit.ly/16AoUvd

An Ethiopian wheat field in Oromia. Photo: Eva-Lotta Jansson / Oxfam America

That’s why the reforms to US food aid are so important to me. As a member of the Farm Bureau, it’s also why I am so disappointed that the Farm Bureau would distort the need for those reforms in a recent editorial.

American Farm Bureau Federation President Stallman calls in to question the accountability and efficacy of using cash, rather than shipping food, when he writes that:

“Shipping a cargo load of food, rather than the money to buy food (if it is available), is the best and most secure way to ensure that taxpayer-funded international food assistance actually makes it to hungry people overseas.”

Really?!? When the distance between the US and the country we are supporting means an average of 130 days between procurement and delivery, I find this hard to believe. When over half of those taxpayer dollars that could be helping to feed people are siphoned away into the pockets of middlemen before one hungry child is fed, I’m concerned that there are many a slip between the cup and the lip.

Yes, I like to know that what I do as a farmer can help people to be fed around the world. But I don’t think that way when I consider that my “feeling good” (Stallman uses the word “pride” here) hurts the ability of other farmers in developing countries to feed themselves and their communities.

Mr. Stallman is concerned about “good international relations.” So am I. Consider the effects on a Haitian farmer with rice to sell when the earthquake hit in 2010, as “free” commodities flooded the local market in Port au Prince. This same question arises for crisis areas in other countries and their neighboring regions, where food is available, transport is closer, and markets are functioning.

The proposed reforms don’t eliminate US-produced commodities from being used for aid. In fact the majority of emergency food aid will remain in that form. But, these reforms are something of which the Farm Bureau should be “proud”.  First, they follow the conservative principle that public money needs to be used efficiently and seeks to achieve the greatest bang for the buck. Second, the reforms hope to take of advantage of and support existing markets by purchasing food locally or regionally when feasible.

From where I sit, overlooking my land on the Great Plains, US support of international agriculture has undercut neither our farmers, nor our national security over the decades. Some of the biggest markets for US commodities are in countries that used to struggle with food security. While emergency food aid may be a band-aid for a day, our support of long-term agricultural programs and market development helps create stability, more food, and new customers for our own goods.

Now that is the pathway to friendship—something we can feel good about for years to come.

As a mother of two, I now know that all my years of schooling did not prepare me nearly as well for working life as being a mother. As all mothers know, mothers are the ultimate project managers and multi-taskers, juggling many tasks at once, carrying out strategies but always being nimble to change course on a dime in the face of a temper tantrum, dirty diaper, or sick child. But for mothers in the developing world there are even bigger and more dire challenges, like where the next meal will come from, how to get medicine for a sick child, or finding potable drinking water. And yet, mothers in the developing world learn to cope with these challenges daily. That’s why so many are now realizing that investing in women is the key to feeding the planet and to economic growth.

According to a recent Gates Foundation report, “When women don’t control resources and income, their households may suffer from malnutrition. Men are less likely than women to reinvest their income in the health of the family.”  In a report by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN, women are deemed to be the key to food security indicating that “if women had equal access to agricultural resources and services, food security would be greatly improved and societies would grow richer, and not only in economic terms.”

But it isn’t just NGO’s and UN bodies claiming a good return on investment when providing resources and opportunities to women, Goldman Sachs, the large investment firm also conducted research with the World Bank and concluded that “investments in women—particularly in education and labor force participation—lead to read GDP growth, as women take their earnings and invest them back in their families and communities.” And just last week the billionaire and investment guru, Warren Buffett also expressed his bullish take on women in an essay published in Fortune magazine where he declares his optimism for America’s future lies with American women, untapped resource!

So to all those mothers and multi-taskers, here is a list of 10 (thought there are undoubtedly more) tasks that women in the developing world take on each day:

1. Child rearing

This mother and child fled their villages and had just arrived at the El Salaam camp in North Darfur. Photo: Eva-Lotta Jansson / Oxfam America

2. Cooking

Cooking “arroz chaufa” (stir fried rice) in the communal pot, village of San Jacinto, Peru. Photo: Evan Abramson /Oxfam America

3. Growing commodity crops for sale

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

4. Selling at the market 

Since she received an Oxfam cash grant, this market vendor in Darfur is able to support her children, brothers and sisters. Photo: Elizabeth Stevens/Oxfam America

5. Fetching water

Jainaba Bojang carries a tub of water home from a bore hole and water pump in the village of Oupat, Gambia. Photo: Rebecca Blackwell:Oxfam America

6. Chopping and gathering firewood

Howa Abdullha comes back to Kebkabiye, North Darfur, carrying firewood she has gathered outside town. Photo: Eva-Lotta Jansson / Oxfam America

7. Laundry

Hencia Josena does laundry at work in a Haitian hospital. Photo: Liz Lucas/Oxfam America

8. Maintaining the house

Members of Ratnaweera family stand outside their new house in Sri Lanka.  Photo: Atul Loke/Panos for Oxfam America

9. Growing crops for food

This Cambodian farmer used system of rice intensification (SRI) practices to cultivate rice. Photo: Patrick Brown/ Oxfam America

10. Caring for elders

These three elders at the Internally Displaced Persons Magunga Camp noted that they had family looking after them. Photo: Liz Lucas/ Oxfam America