In Pawnee County, Kan., some farmers are rethinking their spring planting plans. With the sudden dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), sorghum farmers are worried there won’t be a market for their product. They’re not alone. At least 400 producers around the country rely on contracts with USAID, and many more rely on the agency without even knowing it.
“USAID often buys from grain elevators, so that impacts smaller farmers,” says Jordan Schermerhorn, a recently furloughed USAID contractor who worked with two countries in Asia. “Tons of small farmers provide USAID assistance without even knowing it.”
USAID spends about $2 billion annually on food for its international humanitarian relief work with about 7% of that provided by U.S. farmers.
According to a former deputy assistant administrator at USAID’s Feed the Future program, the agency purchased 1.1 million metric tons of food from U.S. farmers and ranchers last fiscal year, including sorghum, corn, beans, rice and vegetable oil, for distribution to 45 million people in need of emergency food and acute nutrition assistance in 35 countries.
Sorghum Sits In Storage
Kim Barnes, chief financial officer with the Pawnee County Cooperative Association (PCCA) in Larned, Kan., says the 2,200-member cooperative currently has 1.5 million bushels of sorghum in storage and no one to buy it given the Chinese market is dissipating right along with the Food for Peace program, the longest standing permanent program for international in-kind food aid, which is administered by USAID.
The 120-year-old PCCA’s members grow not only sorghum but wheat, corn and soybeans. “If we kept all those commodities at home, we couldn’t afford to eat,” says Barnes, who indicates the local economy is dependent on Pawnee County producers’ access to global markets.
“[Our association] is the largest property taxpayer with a corporate office in Pawnee County,” Barnes adds, contributing $3.2 million in property taxes the last 10 years, and the organization generates some $300 million in revenue. “When the farm economy is hurting, it hurts all of us.
“My concern is with another crop coming, will the economy be affected that much more?” Barnes adds. “These farmers may not have any place to go with their product.”
He’s heard local producers talk about planting dryland corn instead of sorghum, but “you’ve got to have moisture to do that,” he notes.
Sorghum is a critical cash crop in western Kansas, where the Ogallala Aquifer is shrinking because it requires less water to grow than corn, soybeans or wheat.
While a federal judge has extended a restraining order preventing the Trump administration from fully dismantling USAID until Feb. 21, $489 million of food assistance and more than 500,000 metric tons of food sourced from American producers is currently sitting in ports or in transit, much of it at risk of spoiling, according to a Feb. 10 report from USAID’s Office of Inspector General.
Schermerhorn says even if that food gets moving, with all the furloughed USAID staff and contractors, there is no one to get it where it needs to go.
“It’s really hard to drive a car with two wheels,” she says. “You need all the other parts. You can’t just put it on a ship. Someone has to be there to receive it and work with local non-government agencies in that country to distribute it.”
Bill Introduced to Transfer Program to USDA
Last week Republican Representative Tracey Mann of Kansas introduced H.R.1207, which, if passed, would transfer the functions of USAID’s Food for Peace program to USDA. The bill is currently in committee. While Mann’s office declined to comment on the bill, PCCA’s Barnes says he’s hopeful that, if passed, the legislation would relieve some of the economic concerns of farmers who rely on the Food for Peace program as a market for their products: “I very much believe that it will make a difference to get it out of the hands of USAID and to USDA, which has the money to run this program.”
It doesn’t matter who runs the program, Barnes says, as long as it’s an agency that can make things happen.
“If you can stabilize the economy in these [developing] countries, then you’ll create consumers,” he adds.
Research Programs — and Market Access — Take a Hit
However, with the dismantling of USAID, the likelihood of developing consumers in places like Africa or Southeast Asia diminishes greatly. Among the other impacts of USAID’s dismantling are cuts to agricultural research programs across the U.S. USAID provides significant funding to 19 land-grant university-based innovation labs across 17 states conducting thousands of ag research projects, many of them directed at helping develop agricultural markets abroad.
Kerry Clark, Ph.D., associate research professor at the University of Missouri and director of International Programs for the College Agriculture, says, “helping countries thrive enough to become consumers” is a critical part of the innovation labs’ missions. Until USAID funding was cut off Jan. 25, Clark oversaw research, in partnership with the Soybean Innovation Lab (SIL) based at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, focused on building the mechanization of farms in sub-Saharan Africa. Another SIL-affiliated research project at the University of Missouri was working on developing soybean lines with natural resistance to rust.
The innovation labs essentially “de-risk the market” by conducting research, developing new seed varieties, mechanizing agriculture and opening markets in emergent nations the private sector cannot afford to do, explains Peter Goldsmith, Ph.D., SIL director. Among other projects that halted with USAID’s dismantling was funding for developing a pull-behind combine that a U.S. agribusiness was looking to license in Africa.
“But now that’s done; nobody is going to see those plans,” Goldsmith says, “and the American company has no market.”
Goldsmith indicates Africa is the new frontier for soybeans, as an export market for U.S. growers.
“One of the most important things the innovation labs were doing was providing market access to U.S. farmers,” Clark says, “not just in trade negotiations but also in indirect ways by creating a populace that is not starving so they have extra income to buy poultry, for example, which in turn expands the global market for soybean-based feeds.”
Clark also fears impacts could be far-reaching and long-term even if universities can ultimately gain other funding for ag research.
“With USAID pulling out of these countries, those programs are all going to be left to China,” she says. “If a country is looking at importing grain, they’re going to look at what benefits come with grain. USAID was providing more benefits than just food.”
Article Courtesy of Ag Web/Farm Journal
