Concerning the Importance of the Distribution of Food in Schools to Hungry or Malnourished Children Around the World

CONCERNING THE IMPORTANCE OF THE DISTRIBUTION OF FOOD IN SCHOOLS TO HUNGRY OR MALNOURISHED CHILDREN AROUND THE WORLD -- (House of Representatives - July 14, 2004)

Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and concur in the Senate concurrent resolution (S. Con. Res. 114) concerning the importance of the distribution of food in schools to hungry or malnourished children around the world.

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Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the distinguished gentleman from California, the ranking member of the Committee on International Relations, for yielding me the time and for his very heartfelt words. I also want to thank the chairman of the committee, Chairman Hyde, as well as Ranking Member Lantos, for their leadership and their commitment to ending hunger and for their support of U.S. food aid programs. I also want to extend my gratitude to Chairman Smith and to my colleague from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur), who is the ranking Democrat on the agricultural appropriations committee, for all of their incredible efforts to combat hunger here in the United States and around the world. It was through their bipartisan leadership that the George McGovern-Robert Dole International Food For Education and Child Nutrition Program came to be established in the farm bill reauthorization.

Over the past few years, I have learned a great deal about global child hunger from my House colleagues, from former Senators George McGovern and Bob Dole, from our hardworking officers at USDA and USAID, from the staff of the U.N. World Food Program, and from the many organizations that carry out U.S.-funded school feeding and development projects around the world, groups like Catholic Relief Services, World Vision, Save the Children, CARE, Land O'Lakes, Counterpart International and Mercy Corps, to name but a few.

I now know there are over 800 million people around the world for whom chronic hunger is a way of life, and, too often, a way of death. Over 300 million of these people are children and over half of these children do not attend school, mainly girls.
Every year, 6 million children in our world die of hunger-related causes. As David Beckmann, president of Bread for the World, has stated so eloquently, "Even one child starving to death is a tragedy. Six million is a global catastrophe and a preventable one."

Last November, the U.N. food and agriculture organization released its 2003 report on hunger. It found that after falling steadily during the 1990s, hunger is again on the rise. In the developing world, the number of malnourished people grew by an average of 4.5 million a year for the past 3 years. The report also found that hunger exacerbates the AIDS crisis, drives rural people into the cities, and forces women and children to trade sex for food and money.

But we can help break that cycle. We have learned from projects carried out around the world that school feeding programs are one of the most effective strategies to combat hunger and poverty and convince poor families to send their children to school. When programs are offered, enrollment and attendance rates increase significantly, particularly for girls. Instead of working or searching for food to combat hunger, children have the chance to go to school. Providing food at school is a simple, but effective, means to improve literacy and help poor children break out of poverty.

With the support of President Clinton and Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman, the McGovern-Dole program began as a $300 million pilot program in 2001, providing nutritious meals in school settings to nearly 7 million children in 38 countries.

Wheat from Illinois, Minnesota, and Oregon went to feed children at schools in Bolivia and Lebanon. Corn, milk, and soybeans from farmers in Kansas and Wisconsin fed children in Nicaragua and Guatemala. Lentils from Idaho and Washington helped children return to school in Afghanistan. Beans from Colorado, rice from Texas and Louisiana, cooking oil from Florida and Tennessee, the bounty of America's farmers found its way to children attending humble schools around the world.
Mr. Speaker, global hunger, ignorance, and poverty are threats to our national security, and they are threats to our national spirit. How can our world be secure if hunger drives desperate people to ideological extremes? I firmly believe the McGovern-Dole program serves our national interests by attacking the breeding grounds of terrorism: hunger, poverty, ignorance, and despair, while at the same time ensuring that children receive meals in settings where they receive a quality education, not hate-filled indoctrination. At the end of the day, it will be programs like McGovern-Dole that ultimately triumph over poverty and terror.

S. Con. Resolution 114 commends the important role these programs play in the fight against hunger and in promoting basic education. It supports the expansion of the McGovern-Dole program and urges the President to work with the U.N. and other nations to increase international support for school feeding programs. By expanding the McGovern-Dole program, we can reach even more school-age children. We can help stabilize communities devastated by HIV/AIDS, and we can help developing nations achieve self-sufficiency and prosperity.

Mr. Speaker, international school feeding programs work. I commend this bill to my colleagues, and I urge them to support it.
I thank the gentleman from California for yielding me this time.

I want to thank the gentleman from California, the Ranking Member of the International Relations Committee Mr. LANTOS, for yielding me time. And I especially want to thank Chairman HYDE and Ranking Member LANTOS for their leadership and commitment to ending hunger and for their support of U.S. food aid programs. It was through their bipartisan leadership that the George McGovern-Robert Dole International Food for Education and Child Nutrition Program came to be established in the farm bill reauthorization.

Over the past few years, I have learned a great deal about global child hunger from my House colleagues; from former Senators George McGovern and Bob Dole; from our hard-working officers at USDA and USAID; from the staff of the UN World Food Program; and from the many organizations that carry out US-funded school feeding and development projects around the world-groups like Catholic Relief Services, World Vision, Save the Children, CARE, Land O' Lakes, Counterpart International, and Mercy Corps, to name but a few.

I now know there are more than 800 million people around the world for whom chronic hunger is a way of life, and too often, a way of death. Over 300 million of these people are children, and over half of these children do not attend school, mainly the girls.

Every year, 6 million children in our world die of hunger-related causes. As David Beckmann, president of Bread for the World, has stated so eloquently: "Even one child starving to death is a tragedy. Six million is a global catastrophe-and a preventable one."

Last November, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization released its 2003 report on hunger. It found that after falling steadily during the 1990s, hunger is again on the rise. In the developing world, the number of malnourished people grew by an average of 4.5 million a year for the past three years. The report also found that hunger exacerbates the AIDS crisis, drives rural people into the cities, and forces women and children to trade sex for food and money.

But we can help break that cycle. We have learned from projects carried out around the world that school feeding programs are one of the most effective strategies to combat hunger and poverty, and convince poor families to send their children to school. When programs are offered, enrollment and attendance rates increase significantly, particularly for girls. Instead of working or searching for food to combat hunger, children have the chance to go to school. Providing food at school is a simple but effective means to improve literacy and help poor children break out of poverty.

With the support of President Clinton and Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman, the McGovern-Dole program began as a $300 million pilot program in 2001, providing nutritious meals in school settings to nearly 7 million children in 38 countries. Wheat from Illinois,

Minnesota, and Oregon went to feed children at schools in Bolivia and Lebanon. Corn, milk and soy beans from farmers in Kansas and Wisconsin fed children in Nicaragua and Guatemala. Lentils from Idaho and Washington helped children return to school in Afghanistan. Beans from Colorado, rice from Texas and Louisiana, cooking oil from Florida and Tennessee-the bounty of America's farmers found its way to children attending humble schools around the world.

Mr. Speaker, global hunger, ignorance and poverty are threats to our national security, and they are threats to our national spirit. How can our world be secure if hunger drives desperate people to ideological extremes? I firmly believe the McGovern-Dole program serves our national security interests by attacking the breeding grounds of terrorism-hunger, poverty, ignorance and despair-while at the same time ensuring that children receive meals in settings where they receive a quality education, not hate-filled indoctrination. At the end of the day, it will be programs like McGovern-Dole that ultimately triumph over poverty and terror.

S. Con. Res. 114 commends the important role these programs play in the fight against hunger and in promoting basic education. It supports the expansion of the McGovern-Dole program, and urges the president to work with the UN and other nations to increase international support for school feeding programs.

By expanding the McGovern-Dole program we can reach even more school-age children; we can help stabilize communities devastated by HIV/AIDS; and we can help developing nations achieve self-sufficiency and prosperity.

Mr. Speaker, many individuals and organizations deserve mention for the role they played in launching the Global Food for Education Initiative (GFEI) pilot program and for establishing the George McGovern-Robert Dole International Food for Education and Child Nutrition Program. First and foremost are the two gentlemen who are the namesakes of this program, former Senators McGovern and Dole. They have dedicated their lives to ending hunger and continue to be an inspiration to me and all my congressional colleagues on these issues. Another leader in this effort is former Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman, who had seen first hand the benefits of basic school feeding programs funded through USDA under its 416(b) Commodity Credit Corporation commodity surplus program. He knew these programs needed to expand and reach even more children, schools and communities, and he embraced the vision presented to him by Senators McGovern, Dole and myself. Secretary Glickman helped to organize a meeting at the White House with the President and his foreign policy and national security staff, as well as representatives from USAID and USDA. I remember President Clinton, upon conclusion of the formal presentation of the plan for expanded school feeding programs, looking up and saying, "This is a simple concept that could have a great impact. Let's make it happen." And that is how the White House came to launch the $300 million pilot program just a few months later.

The GFEI pilot program was actually implemented under the Bush Administration and Secretary of Agriculture Ann Veneman. I would be remiss in my remarks should I fail in offering my praise to Mary Chambliss, Deputy Administrator of USDA's Foreign Agricultural Service/Export Credit Department. She and her staff took the description of an initiative formally announced by President Clinton at the July 2000 G-8 Summit in Okinawa, Japan, and turned it into a living and breathing reality, one which has benefited more than 7 million children world-wide.

Many Members of Congress in this House and in the other body have been true leaders in helping to build a genuinely broad, bipartisan coalition in support of the McGovern-Dole program. In particular, I would like to express my appreciation to Representatives Jo Ann Emerson, Marcy Kaptur, Doug Bereuter, Jim Leach, Don Manzullo, George Nethercutt, Leonard Boswell, Tim Johnson and Mark Green, who along with former Members of Congress Tony Hall, John Thune and Eva Clayton, were the original cosponsors of legislation to create the McGovern-Dole school feeding program. In the other body, leadership was provided by Senators, Dick Durbin, Richard Lugar, Patrick Leahy, Mike DeWine, Tom Harkin, Tom Daschle, Byron Dorgan, Edward Kennedy and Herbert Kohl.

Since the establishment of the McGovern-Dole program, especially in efforts to increase funding to maintain and establish these global school feeding programs, additional Members of Congress have stepped forward and taken leadership roles, including Representatives Frank Wolf and Tom Lantos and Senators Pat Roberts, Sam Brownback, Elizabeth Dole, and Hillary Clinton.

Mr. Speaker, the McGovern-Dole program and the initial pilot program would not have been successful were it not for the dedication and experience of the U.S. private voluntary organizations that implement these programs around the world-many of which I noted earlier in my remarks-and the United Nations World Food Program. My staff and I have visited several of these programs in Indonesia, Colombia and elsewhere, and we all owe them our gratitude and admiration for their work.

In addition, I would like to thank several other groups that helped me understand the needs and requirements of high-quality school feeding programs and how such programs might effectively reduce hunger among the world's children and attract them to enrolling and staying in school. These organizations include Friends of the World Food Program, Bread for the World, and Food Aid Coalition, Land O'Lakes, the American Soybean Association, the National Farmers Union, the American Farm Bureau Association, and the American School Food Service Association.

No individual program can end hunger, not here at home and certainly not around the world. But I believe that it is possible to end hunger, especially hunger among children, if we simply have the political will to make it happen. The McGovern-Dole school feeding program and other U.S.-funded school feeding and food security programs are vital components in this effort, and I am grateful to be part of the bipartisan congressional coalition in support of these programs.

Mr. Speaker, international school feeding programs work. I commend this bill to my colleagues and I urge them to vote in support of S. Con. Res. 114.

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