Farmers in Kyrgyzstan benefit from USAID expertise as they learn to dry tomatoes for export to the United States and Europe.
In the mid-1980s USAID directly employed 221 agricultural development officers. By 2010 the number had dropped by roughly 90 percent, paralleling the steep decline of the agency’s budgets for agriculture and food security. Retirements vastly exceeded the number of new hires, and those who entered USAID as agricultural officers soon realized where the opportunities for advancement and programmatic impact did not lie and moved into other fields within the agency.
Then, in 2008, the world’s attention was grabbed by the dramatic rise in agricultural commodity prices. Riots led to the fall of at least one government, trade restrictions were imposed, and the number of hungry people in the world increased dramatically, after years of slow but steady decline. This chain of events led the United States and other donors to significantly and rapidly increase their funding for food security and agricultural development, resulting in an overall $22 billion, three-year commitment. The U.S. government’s portion of this effort is known as Feed the Future.
Funding, however, does not translate directly into effective programs and it is here that the loss of agricultural development expertise comes into play. The U.S. government cannot simply open a tap and achieve the desired food security outcomes. The absence of a whole generation of experienced agricultural development professionals is seriously constraining USAID’s response capacity. The rest of this brief essay will discuss how we got here and what has to happen to restore USAID’s capacity.
What happened to erode USAID’s technical competence in agriculture?
Beginning in the 1980s and continuing up to the recent past, donors (with the United States in the lead) were content to address global food shortages through the provision of food aid rather than take on the harder task of building up poor countries’ capacity to provide for their own food security needs. Low and stable food prices over a period of decades meant that food security was not a pressing political issue for most countries. The low prices also made it easy to argue that the world’s food needs could be met more efficiently through a combination of trade and food aid.
The 1980s and 90s were also the period of the Reagan/Thatcher “revolutions” with their heightened emphasis on the private sector and markets as the engines of development. Donors cut funding to programs aimed at upgrading the capacity of public sector institutions—this despite the fact that smallholder agriculture in particular is dependent on such public goods as research, education and extension services. USAID retreated to the realm of high-value crops, or cash crops; these are important, but not broadly enough based to have a transformative effect on the rural sector in poor countries, leaving the proliferating number of nongovernmental organizations to address community-focused rural development with food aid resources.
Another factor that contributed to the hollowing out of technical competence was USAID’s increased reliance on contractors, not just to implement activities, which had always been the case, but also to design programs and deal with host governments on strategic and operational matters. All of this left the agency ill-prepared to respond to the new challenge.
The consequences of inadequate field staff have to do with more than just the capacity to “move the money.” If a renewed effort in agriculture and food security is to be “country-led,” it is going to require significant and substantive consultations and negotiations. The lack of experienced, knowledgeable USAID field staff to conduct this work is not sending the right message to our partner governments. Credibility with host governments is at stake. Similarly, the new push is supposed to be more collaborative, working with the panoply of other bilateral and multilateral donors, civil society and the private sector. Competent field staff will be critical.
How can USAID meet the capacity challenge?
USAID is now well into an effort to double the number of agricultural officers by 2012, adding 100 new staff over a three-year period. There is no shortage of applications, and the new hires are well qualified, many with significant technical knowledge under their belts. However, along with technical qualifications officers require operational skills, and these can only be acquired by experience. New officers can’t be expected to be experienced operationally for several years at minimum, and that is the period during which the course will be set for the agency’s food security programs. Former agricultural officers currently serving in non-agriculture positions may be able to meet part of the need. Bringing on new mid-level officers with prior field experience—as contractors or with NGOs—will also help. But for the next few years USAID will continue to require contract personnel to perform a lot of the necessary program design and management.
An associated problem is also beginning to manifest. When agricultural programs were cut, the agricultural officer positions went with them. Re-establishing those positions is complicated by security and logistical considerations. For reasons of security, USAID missions must now be co-located with embassies, and space is limited and in high demand. Global food security is one of several major initiatives, all of which require office space, logistical support and operating budgets. Unless a strong push is made to establish the positions, we will see a repeat of the earlier experience, when newly hired agricultural officers either left the agency or moved into non-agriculture positions. This push has to come from the administration—from the State Department and USAID’s leadership. Missions can be directed to create and fund positions; ambassadors can be directed to approve increases in staff. They (the Secretary of State, USAID Administrator) just have to do it.
Coda
Feed the Future has recommitted the United States to achieving the Millennium Development Goal of halving hunger and poverty by 2015. Achieving this goal will take a major, sustained effort. This can’t be a flash in the pan. Experience confirms that development requires a long-term commitment. If, after a few years, the funding dries up our credibility as a reliable development partner will be shredded. A lot of taxpayer money will have been wasted re-building a superfluous agricultural staff.
Charles Uphaus spent 30 years at USAID as a Senior Foreign Service Officer specializing in agriculture and economic growth. He served in a number of countries, primarily in Asia and Africa. From 2006 through 2009, he worked at Bread for the World Institute as the Senior Analyst on Aid Effectiveness. He then returned to USAID to work in the Office of Agriculture on staffing issues related to Feed the Future.
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