Water and Agriculture in U.S. Foreign Assistance

US Government Role Strengths and Weaknesses - Water and Agriculture in U.S. Foreign Assistance

Mon, Mar 30, 2009

Now we've already talked about the kind of implicit tensions between short and long-range, immediate and urgent versus more systemic policy targets. We've also talked, or at least implied, a little bit about the process by which U.S. policy is formulated and carried out and how the various agencies work together. As we look at this, as we look at the U.S. government's response to the broader water and agricultural challenges around the world, where do you see strengths and weaknesses, what kind of balance sheet in terms of our capacity to move forward in the kind of environment we heard about this morning and that we'll hear more about this afternoon? How would you assess where things are organizationally?

For us, funding is what drives everything. And funds, if they're given to us over a long period of time, and a directive to start on a program on food security, if you tell people that this is the amount of money and this is how many years, then that's what the programming and planning envision. And that's typically the hardest part of what we're doing is, if missions want to do small one-off activities, they don't have that much money that is not tied to an earmark anymore. And so we call that discretionary funds. So anybody that would like to work on something that the host country would want, is subject to discretionary funds unless it is an earmark. And for us right now, the good news is, global climate change is big, and food security is big, and water for the poor is big. And so for us, we are riding on funds that will go on, at least in the medium term. And so we're able to program that money. Now, having said that, that's where the Ag is just starting. I mean, USAID is just beginning with an Ag strategy. And I don't think the Ag strategy is finalized, I don't think it's ready to be released to the public yet. But that's kind of an example of: the food crisis last year leads to a food security program and aid, leads to years of funding, leads to us doing things that we used to do in the past.

Michael?

I would just say that I think Jim's point about long-term commitment is really important, because much of what we've done in USDA is to build capacity through research and education. And if you don't have long-term commitments, you really can't... you struggle to embed that kind of educational process, and to get the knowledge base up to a level where they can make use of the technologies that are out there. I think we heard earlier that you have to have that infrastructure to make it work, and that's a big step. And that's really how USAID and USDA can partner together better is, you know, we need to have the infrastructure in place, but then that long-term commitment to research and education does pay off.