Glickman: Tell your stories well

Dan Glickman, senior fellow at the Bipartisan Policy Center and former Secretary of Agriculture, gives closing remarks at Deepening the Dialogue at AED as Michele McNabb, director of AED's Food Security Initiative, listens.

Do well in the field. And then communicate your successes.

That’s what Dan Glickman, senior fellow at the Bipartisan Policy Center and former Secretary of Agriculture, told a packed room in an unusual forum today that brought together food security, agriculture, nutrition, and development experts.

“You are fortunate to be getting into this in an era when it’s a high priority issue,’’ he said at the AED-FAO sponsored event. “The trick is to put our money where our mouth is, do something constructive with it, form partnerships between the private sector and government to get things done.’’

But Glickman, who wrapped up today’s forum titled “Deepening the Dialogue,’’ said that groups have been poor storytellers.

“If you let people know what the successes and the needs are,’’ Congress and the US administration will be listening, he said. “Where we do have successes, you have to communicate those successes. That in the last 20, 30 years has not been done. Very few policy makers have the foggiest idea of what the successes are.’’

He rattled off a list of statistics on how, until the last year or two, donor support for agriculture had been on a long spiral downward.

In 1980, 25 percent of US foreign aid went to agriculture; last year, it totaled 1 percent. World Bank lending for agriculture fell from 30 percent in 1978 to 16 percent in 1988 to 8 percent in 2006. But now the funding, at least from the US government, will soon increase.

“That is changing dramatically right before our eyes,’’ Glickman said. “This is becoming a priority in Congress and the administration.’’

On Oct. 20, USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah told a conference in Des Moines that the US commitment to agriculture is at its highest level in a half-century, dating to the Green Revolution in Asia. He touted the Feed the Future initiative, which the administration has asked  $1.6 billion in funding next year. The initiative will include programs that bring together agriculture, nutrition, and food security.

Glickman said that the only way to reduce global hunger is attack global poverty.

“Poverty is the root of household food insecurity and hunger. Around the world, 3.1 billion people live on less than $2 a day. To solve the world’s hunger problem, the world’s poverty problem must be solved,’’ he said.

With the world’s population still on a steep trajectory – it is forecast to grow from 6.8 billion today to 9 billion by 2050, or “two more Chinas,’’ said Glickman — “world food demand is probably going to double.

“We also have water issues,’’ he said. “Farmers use over 70 percent of the fresh water in world. Water is the source of life for the production of food and fiber. We are going to have to find a way to help people find more food, at least double the food productivity in the world, and to do it an environmentally sustainable way.’’

He then trained his message on the audience before him – and others around the world working on these issues.

“Agriculture has been off the global development agenda for far too long, whether it’s because commodity prices were low, or farmer subsidies, or crowded out by environmental issues, or HIV/AIDS,’’ he said. “I was in South Africa a while ago, meeting with people in the AIDS movement and talking about agriculture issues, and I could sense a lack of interest. They had a great interest in malaria and AIDS, but not a lot in agriculture. I remember what my mother used to say, `Take your medicine with food, or else it will not have a value to you.’

“You are in the vanguard to making this a reality in the world today,’’ he said, referring the importance of linking health, food, and agriculture. “…. What I see here is an ability to link people together – NGOs, the government, private sector, the farmer sector.’’

The “trick,’’ as he put it, is now to make the case for more funding for global agriculture and nutrition programs in an era of tight public and private resources.

How?

Tell your stories well, he said.

“Let people know your successes.’’