 Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome. Welcome to CSIS. It's good to have you all here. When your boss tells you you better get in the room because we're about to get shut down by the fire marshal, you know it's time to get going. So I'm Johanna Nesseth. I'm senior vice president for strategic planning here at CSIS and I direct our global food security program. We're really delighted to be able to have this conversation today about food assistance with administrator Shaw and a panel of enormously sophisticated and knowledgeable discussants to talk about what what the US does and can do with food assistance. This is a special time for us. It's been five years since we actually started up our work on food security and ag development at CSIS. I want to acknowledge a few people who are here today who have been with us from the very beginning. My colleague Steve Morrison may or may not be here, but he was the one who had the great idea five years ago to say you know what? CSIS has a role to play in this space and we should try to do something about it. We put together a great very fast task force. Senator Luger was a co-chair along with Senator Casey from Pennsylvania and we had Helene Gale from CARE who is on our board. As one of our members we had Henrietta Four who is the aid administrator at the time who is currently on our board. She was very involved and engaged in the world food program was also very involved and engaged. We have many of you here today Henrietta couldn't make it, but I know she really admires the work and sense her regards Dr. Shaw to you and to Helene and fellow discussants. I do think that it's important to thank the people who have been with us but also acknowledge that we've built up a whole community of discussion and engagement around ag development, around food security, around the science and research agenda for agriculture and it's an exciting agenda to have at a place like CSIS. Senator Luger, you've been with us all along and Connie was with you before and is back with you again. We want to congratulate you on the launch of the Luger Center. We're proud to have you affiliated with CSIS as a counselor. I think we may be two of the only organizations that care equally deeply about food security and non-proliferation. We're going to have a conversation about animal protein in one room and small modular reactions in the other reactors in the other room. So we're so proud to have you and thank you for your leadership and congratulate you on your new center and welcome you to introduce Dr. Shaw. I want to thank Johanna for her very kind words and her memories about the co-chair situation that Bob Casey and I had with CSIS back in 2008. Even then it was becoming apparent that food price volatility was pushing millions of people into poverty. And I'm also pleased to be here especially representing the new Luger Center. Our new organization seeks to advance the policy debate issues facing the 21st century on food security in a way that promotes civil dialogue and actionable ideas. As many of you have heard me state in the past, overcoming global hunger should be one of the starting points of the United States foreign policy. This sometimes surprises people given all the risks and dangers faced by our country in many regions throughout the world. But I've not advanced the concept casually. Nothing is more elemental to human experience and development than having access to adequate and reliable sources of nutritious food. We live in a world in which nearly a billion people suffer from chronic food insecurity. Tens of thousands of people die each day from causes related to malnutrition. The humanitarian consequences of hunger are sufficient cause for us to strengthen our efforts on global food security. But we also know that few humanitarian problems of any have a greater capacity to generate political instability and conflict. Hungry people are desperate people and desperation can sow the seeds of radicalism. Our diplomatic efforts to maintain peace will be far more difficult wherever food shortages contribute to extremism, conflict or mass migration. Our hopes for economic development in poor countries will continually be frustrated if populations are unable to feed themselves. There are two distinct but complementary approaches to eliminating hunger. The first comprises long term investments that raise farm yield, that boost incomes for small holders, develop functioning markets, strengthen scientific research collaborations and increase trade opportunities, named just a few. This is the approach of the Feed the Future initiative. The second approach is to alleviate hunger through the humanitarian provision of food assistance. United States is the most generous food donor in the world, providing approximately two billion dollars in food aid each year. This keeps people alive as they face famine, natural disasters or war. But the largest program PL480 or Food for Peace was created in an earlier era in which addressing United States surpluses was as much a motivating factor as feeding hungry people around the world. We are in a different period now, yet the program's design is still mired in the past. And despite efforts to reform the program dating back to the George W. Bush administration, progress has been stymied. Today, another factor must be considered. We're in a period of budget austerity in which old ways of doing business must be reexamined. We must look for efficiencies in order to stretch every precious dollar of spending, even if that means overhauling programs. At the same time, the United States must maintain the global leadership in humanitarian activities and agriculture, both of which represent areas of long term United States experience and expertise. Numerous studies have shown the inherent cost and inefficiencies now in the PL480 program as it's managed, including limitations on purchasing food closer to the emergency. Cargo preference requirements, the practice of monetization. In some cases it may make sense to purchase food in the United States and then to ship it on US flag vessels, but the requirement to do so for all situations. That's greatly increased the cost of the program and results in fewer people being reached in a timely manner. The federal budget released today includes important revisions to United States food aid programs and these proposals have already generated passionate responses from supporters and critics alike. As we go forward, I'm hopeful that all interested groups will come together with respect and civility that should be hallmarks of a productive policy dialogue on feeding the world. I'm very pleased that Administrator Shah is here today, specifically on this day in which the budget has been released and new ideas have been released. I would just say as all of you know that he has a remarkable background. We were just discussing for a moment, his disappointment with the Wolverines last evening, University of Michigan having been a part of that background. But likewise, as many of you know, an MD from University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, an MSC from the Health Economic School of Borton, and then a graduate, and in fact, a tenor of the London School of Economics on top of all of that, he is a person who has been involved in politics, advising a presidential candidate, advising various people in our government. He came into the United States Department of Agriculture, where I first saw him at work doing a remarkable job in the science and nutrition areas. He was, of course, with the Gates Foundation, with remarkable efforts worldwide during that tenure, came then to USAID, just before the terrible tragedy in Haiti, almost overwhelming. He was confirmed literally the day before Christmas, and in January that tragedy occurred, and then the Pakistan floods, and on and on. I would just say simply that throughout all of this, he has retained a good humor, a good spirit, a likewise determination to make improvements. And therefore, we are especially privileged to have him on this very special day, in which important recommendations have been made by our president and by others with regard to food security. It's my great privilege to present my friend Raj Shah. Good afternoon, and thank you Senator Luger. I've said in the past Senator Luger's distinguished leadership and commitment to leading on tough issues in a bipartisan manner in tough environments and getting it done has served as an inspiration to many generations of people that have considered public service. Thank you Senator, and it was in fact Senator Luger's legislation to which he referred with Senator Casey and others that served as the intellectual basis for President Obama's Feed the Future program, which has become a hallmark of this administration's commitment to build strong agricultural systems around the world in an effort to end hunger. And I too offer my congratulations on the Luger Center, which we are eager to work with on these and a range of other issues as was noted earlier. I want to thank John Hamry and Joanna Nusseth for having us here. We are eager to work closely with CSIS and respect the leadership you've provided on this particular issue. And I want to recognize and honor some of the panel members that will speak after I'm done. Dan Glickman, a former Michigan alum, Secretary of Agriculture and wrote a must read op-ed with our mutual friend Catherine Bertini and Politico on this issue. Sean Callahan at Catholic Relief Services, Helene Gale, whose leadership on parts of what we will talk about today have helped inspire this announcement today and the President's budget policy proposals, and of course representative in Weber. Thank you very much for your partnership in this effort. You know, about a year and a half ago, I saw and personally experienced a famine for the very first time. I was at the world's largest refugee camp, 50 miles from the Somali border, and I met mothers who had carried their children for weeks across famine-stricken and terrorist-held lands. One young Somali mother named Habiba was forced to make the heartbreaking decision that she recounted, knowing that she could not physically carry both her children to safety, food and medicine, to leave behind one of her children as she embarked on a life-saving trek to save the other child. Across the region, the worst drought in 60 years had thrown 3.3 million people into crisis and brought more than 750,000 people, nearly all women and children, to the brink of starvation. As the suffering mounted, we and others mobilized a large-scale humanitarian response to save lives as quickly as possible, putting America's best values into practice. But too often we couldn't reach those in greatest needs, even as the crisis worsened before our eyes. Armed groups openly affiliated with al-Qaeda blocked our access, attacked World Food Program food convoys, and targeted food distribution centers and brave, well-meaning humanitarian workers. In the hardest-hit areas of south and central Somalia, where these militants ruled, food aid couldn't save lives. But cash transfers could. Through electronic cash transfers and vouchers, we could extend a lifeline to families and communities in desperate need of help. Thanks to this flexibility, we were able to help more than 90,000 families in inaccessible and insecure areas buy readily available food at their local markets. By tracking carefully food prices in about 50 markets country-wide, we were able to see sky-high prices correlated with famine-afflicted areas fall to reasonable levels as market forces moved food from those areas where it existed into those areas where it was critically necessary. And we knew that children were eating their first meal in days, maybe weeks. By looking at the data, you can almost see the precise moment when this humanitarian ingenuity, enabled by flexibility, innovation, and science, helped turn the corner on the crisis and saved tens of thousands of child lives. Without this lifeline of cash, our ability to alleviate suffering from the deadly conditions of famine would have been severely crippled. In an increasingly complex world, where extreme ideology, extreme climate, and extreme poverty routinely pushes millions to the edge of survival and threatens our own homeland, we have to be both agile and creative in our response. Today, there are nearly twice as many crises that require humanitarian response as there were just one decade ago. There are 18 million hungry people in the Sahel, where tackling vast vulnerability across eight different countries demands flexibility and innovation. And every day, we see the need for life-saving aid grow more pressing in Syria, where the Assad regime's brutality makes importing large quantities of food aid dangerous and near impossible in certain parts of the country. From Guatemala to the Democratic Republic of Congo, from South Sudan to Yemen, a groundswell of humanitarian vulnerability not only presents a moral crisis, it presents real economic and security challenges. Yet, at a time when global needs are growing, our six-decade-long, unquestioned role as the world's humanitarian leader is in danger of slipping away. Since 1954, we have helped feed more than one billion people in more than 150 countries. Initially, it was an act with no apparent downside. Our farmers had an outlet for their surplus food. Our ocean carriers filled their vessels with food aid, and vulnerable people nearly halfway around the world received their next meal. But over the last 60 years, the world has changed. Today, agriculture is the second most productive aspect of the American economy, and we just experienced the strongest four years in the history of our agricultural trade. Between now and 2050, demand for food will be so strong that agricultural production will have to grow 60 percent worldwide just to keep up. Rather than surpluses, we talk of shortages and higher prices. And as a result, the cost of doing business in our humanitarian programs has grown by more than 200 percent, eroding our humanitarian reach and our capacity to deliver results. As more efficient tools surfaced and best practices evolved, we've learned that the current approach to food aid can become, at times, an impediment to its very own mission. Today, we face a choice. A choice between allowing our leadership to recede quietly into history or renewing it with bold and meaningful action. It's a choice that requires innovation, but it is precisely the same spirit of innovation that has defined American agriculture and agricultural communities for generations, giving us improved seed genetics, tractors with GPS systems, and 200 percent increases in wheat yields. Released earlier today, the President's 2014 budget includes reforms to food aid that will enable us to feed an estimated 4 million more hungry children every year with the same level of resources. Let me be clear. We are not ending food aid. In fact, we're doing the opposite. The President's proposal commits to a more rapid, cost-effective, and life-saving food assistance program that pairs the continued purchase of American food items with a diverse set of tools, including local procurement and food vouchers. As we ask for this increased flexibility, we commit to maintaining our purchase of American food and increasing our focus on the higher value, more nutritious products that are so critically important to improving child nutrition and saving lives. We commit to supporting our NGO partners, especially faith-based organizations, through the development of a community development and resilience fund. We know that shipping volumes for American food aid have decreased 64 percent during the past decade, and we have included specific support in the proposal for the American flag shipping industry to ease this transition, which is already well underway. And through these reforms, we will establish a new fund for contingencies so that we are prepared to respond to unforeseen emergency needs around the world. The President's proposal reflects the growing bipartisan consensus that the traditional approach to development must be modernized to help us efficiently meet the economic and moral challenges of our time. The truth is that for years our practice in food assistance has lagged behind our knowledge of how to provide it efficiently and effectively. In the last decade, more than 30 different studies from Cornell University to the Lancet Medical Journal to the Government Accountability Office have revealed the core inefficiencies of the current system. They've showed that buying food locally, instead of in the United States, can cost much less, as much as 50 percent less for cereals and as much as 31 percent less for pulses. That's because the average prices of buying and delivering American food across an ocean has increased from $390 per metric ton in 2001 to $1,180 today. These costs eat into precious resources designed to feed hungry people, causing more than 16 percent of the Title II funds to be spent on ocean shipping. Buying food locally can also speed the arrival of life-saving aid by as many as 14 weeks on average. Those 98 days take an entirely new meaning when you consider that waiting every additional day, in some cases every additional hour, can mean the difference between life and death. Buying food locally is not only faster, it can also be a more effective approach to achieving our ultimate goal of replacing aid with self-sufficiency. In Bangladesh, we worked with Land of Lakes to buy cereal bars locally, helping create a commercially viable and nutritious product for the local market while supporting U.S. jobs at home at Land of Lakes. But even rapid food aid means little if it does not address the nutritional needs of vulnerable children. Over the last several decades, the science of saving lives during a crisis has evolved tremendously. We know that chronic malnutrition accounts for 35 percent of all preventable child death, nearly 6.9 million lives every year. We know that high-quality, high-nutrition, micronutrient-enriched foods, provided during the first 1,000 days during pregnancy and until the child is 2, can make all the difference in a lifelong shift in their survival and their capacity to thrive, learn, and contribute. And we know that ready-to-use foods can lower the risk of disease compared to foods that must be mixed with water, which in disaster environments can sometimes be unsafe. In 2011, we completed a two-year food aid quality review in partnership with experts from Tufts University that resulted in the most far-reaching improvements to U.S. food aid since 1966. As a result, we're developing the next generation of American food commodities to meet the diverse needs of needy populations from nursing mothers to malnourished children to those affected by disasters. Some of these food products are peanut-based and enriched, and will in fact be the future of the type of American foods that we would like to provide to those communities in greatest need. The process to get there was groundbreaking and intensive, involving years of research and development. I'd like to recognize Dina Esposito, our Food for Peace leader who's here who has shepherded this program with real persistence and conviction. Today, more than 10 new products are coming online demonstrating the central role America's world-class agricultural and food system can serve in a modern, nutrition-oriented food assistance program. As the science of saving lives has evolved, we've developed a new set of tools as well, including cash transfers and electronic vouchers to enhance the generosity of American food aid with greater flexibility, speed, and reach. In the Killis refugee camp on the Turkey-Syria border, we're giving debit cards to families so they can shop for their own meals at local stores. These cards have cut administrative costs of the program by 50%, and helped local businesses thrive, and offered families a meaningful measure of dignity during a difficult moment. But although we have these tools, we do not have the flexibility under the current system to use them where we need them. This year, 155,000 children in Somalia, fewer children in Somalia will receive food and nutritional support because we do not currently have enough flexibility in the program to use cash to address the ongoing emergency in areas where our food cannot go. Each one of these children, even if only moderately malnourished, is three to four times more likely to die than a well-nourished child. That's what today's reforms are all about, giving us the flexibility of a modern approach so we can save more lives. But we cannot do it alone. Under the President's proposal, we remain absolutely committed to our partners who have advanced food for peace's life-saving mission for generations. We remain committed to our agricultural partners in the United States. Moving to a flexible, cash-based approach will not end the contribution of American agriculture to our critical mission. The President's proposal includes a 55 percent floor for 2014, so the majority of our funds will be used for the purchase and transport of American commodities. We're going to keep working with companies like MANA in Fitzgerald, Georgia, to Batchnick in Somerset, New Jersey, and Adigia in Providence, Rhode Island to make a fortified peanut butter that can help revive severely malnourished children in a matter of weeks. We're going to keep working with soy, wheat, pulse, and rice farmers across America, whose crops feed hungry children from Pakistan to the Sahel, perhaps in newer, more nutritious food formulations. And we're going to keep working with groups like Breedlove in Lubbock, Texas, which last year supported more than a dozen small, faith-based groups across the world to alleviate hunger among marginalized communities focusing on the disabled and the elderly. Because the truth is that there is a deep and abiding sense of community and compassion that connects a small rural town in America to a refugee camp on the border of Syria or in Somalia. I've met farmers from Fort Benton, Montana to agricultural students at Mississippi State who are proud to be part of this strong legacy that has endured for generations. In fact, in Iowa, I joined Bishop Richard Pates on his local radio show, and we discussed at great length ways that local communities could get involved in the mission of ending hunger. I described a program called Farmer to Farmer that last year has helped more than 780 American farmers share their knowledge and skills with farmers in developing countries. Through Feed the Future, we will continue to expand these programs and other new partnerships with land-grant universities, agricultural companies, and faith-based organizations, all of which need to continue to be part of America's mission to address hunger around the world. We are also committed to our maritime shipping partners. We know that the U.S. merchant fleet has traditionally benefited from the carriage of American food aid and other government commodities. In spite of this support, however, the fleet has continued to dwindle, its food transport now being reduced to a handful of ocean-going vessels. In order to lessen the impact of reform on the merchant fleet, $25 million of resources saved by reforming food aid will be shifted to the Department of Transportation's Maritime Administration. The American merchant marine has delivered food to dangerous regions for decades, ably and safely, but let's do it only when it makes appropriate sense. Finally, the President's proposal maintains our commitments to our community development partners, whose local networks and long-standing community roots serve a vital role in helping to advance the journey from dependence to dignity. In just the last few months alone, we've dispersed $31 million in community development funds for five-year awards to 10 organizations working to strengthen the resilience of 1.8 million vulnerable people from Haiti to Mali. Administered by Food for Peace, these programs are essential to our new emphasis on helping people avoid the need for emergency aid during a crisis. In Uganda, our partners are embarking on programs to help 645,000 people in the dry lands of the Karamoja District cope with drought. In Niger, Catholic Relief Services save the children in Mercy Corps, beginning new programs to combat malnutrition and improve agricultural yields, helping 840,000 people stay in their homes and in their communities during a regional food crisis. We are committed to these partnerships because we know they work. I visited communities during the drought in the Horn last year, where we saw entire villages of people able to stay where they were, not walking to the refugee camps because of these types of programs. A recently completed evaluation showed clear evidence of improved household incomes, diets, and resilience as a result of these investments. In fact, by including a special peanut paste designed to prevent malnutrition in the standard package of nutrition for kids in these programs, the projects actually reduced stunting by nearly 2 percent a year over the lifespan of the program, three times the rate reported in nationwide health surveys. Now, we've largely been talking about reforms to the emergency side of food for peace, but 30 percent of the current program is focused on these types of longer term community development activities, helping people transition from dependence on food aid to self-reliance. But too often, the way we support these programs through a process called monetization is inefficient and sometimes even counterproductive. It basically works like this. We provide these groups with food commodities in the countries where they are working. They take and sell these products in local markets. With the funds raised, they invest in agricultural production, health, and nutrition in low income and rural communities. In 2011, the Government Accountability Office called this process inherently inefficient and found that it resulted in a loss of $219 million over three years. That's an average of 25 cents on every taxpayer dollar spent on this type of aid. Right now, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, we face a return on monetized commodities so low, 51 cents on the dollar, that partners will be faced with cutting back programs if they do not receive supplemental cash resources to make up the difference. In some cases, evidence has indicated that this practice actually hurts the communities we seek to help. At times, selling American food in local markets can deprive local farmers of the incentives and opportunities to develop their own livelihood. Several years ago, Helene Gale and the team at CARE made the groundbreaking decision not to monetize commodities on the commercial market anymore. Choosing to forego about $45 million from CARE's budget rather than continue an inexcusably costly and sometimes detrimental practice. In Haiti, we ended monetization after the earthquake destroyed the nation's only flour mill. Today, we're seeing Haitian rice yields increase by 130% and corn yields up more than 300%, starting to create the basis of a stronger and more vibrant rural agricultural sector. Increasingly, we focus our work in places where local agriculture is underdeveloped. And as we do that, the practice of monetization runs the risk of becoming even less effective over time. The goal must be moving from dependence to self-sufficiency, not the other way around. But let's be honest, we've been here before. Over the last decade, colleagues from both sides of the aisle have fought hard for responsible food aid reform. Under the leadership of President Bush and my predecessor Andrew Nazios, they proposed a series of pilots to demonstrate the effectiveness of local and regional procurement. Today, we have that data and we know it works. In 2008, Senators Luger and Casey introduced the Global Food Security Act, which I referenced before, which included a dedicated fund for cash-based emergency assistance and local purchases. And Representatives McGovern, McCullum, and Emerson, and many, many others have put forward legislation supporting modern advances in food assistance. But what's often stood in the way of comprehensive reform is not our depth of commitment or the reservoir data effects, but rather persistent myths and misinformation and sometimes fear. I've heard the myth that we're providing less food for the hungry when, in fact, the opposite is true. I've heard the myth that we're deserting American agriculture when, in fact, American agricultural institutions will continue to be an ever larger part of ending hunger around the world. I've heard the myth that we're making U.S. Department of Agriculture programs, including McGovern, Dole, and Food for Progress, less sustainable. When, in fact, we will continue to coordinate our purchases and shipments to achieve economies of scale across our two departments that partner very closely in this effort and with this proposal. I've even heard that our food aid won't be branded and will lose one of the most powerful and visible images of American generosity. To dispel that myth, I brought some proof. This is a bag of USAID-branded, locally purchased food in the Democratic Republic of Kandago that, as you can see very clearly says from the American people. I've heard that cash is harder to track than commodities and that it will be used to purchase TVs instead of food. Yet time and again, and today with very robust data and evidence, we know that that is not true. Vulnerable households spend the greatest portion of their cash on the food they desperately need for themselves and their children, and in many cases head straight from a voucher distribution point to the local market. And we've heard the myth that without agricultural earmarks, we won't be able to protect funding for food aid in the years ahead. Now it's true there's no guarantee for the future in today's budget environment in any part of the United States government. But in my last three years as administrator, I've seen the support that Americans have for our work grow, not diminish. From a church in inner city Detroit that looks after an orphanage in Ghana to the nationwide response to the Haiti earthquake, I've seen passionate engagement from Americans of all backgrounds. And in a time of seemingly uncompromising politics, I've seen leaders from both sides of the aisle, from Senator Leahy to Jim Inhofe, come together to support our foreign aid and development efforts around the world. At its foundation, the President's proposal shares the bedrock principles of effectiveness and efficiency that serve as our North Star for development today. It echoes the goal of development to perpetuate, not to perpetuate dependency, but to advance human dignity. And it speaks to the challenges of our time. Today we know that more than 100,000 children died over the course of 18 months in Somalia, probably a far higher number. That's more than 100,000 boys and girls who had lives full of potential but didn't make it. Meeting their mothers at the refugee camp in Dodab, I felt both the excruciating pain of an unfolding tragedy and the hope that American leadership could make a real and persistent difference. If we can bring efficiency and effectiveness and flexibility to this work, if we can save more lives without asking for more money, if we can be free to use science and innovation and new approaches to apply the knowledge we've gained, then we can do just that. Thank you. Thank you so much, Administrator Shaw. I think we have time for a couple of questions. I'd like to ask if we can just bundle two or three questions. We'll start with Alan Bierga and then we're going to go in the back, the gentleman holding his hands up and then the far back, the woman holding her hand up. We'll take that bundle of questions all at once. Just say who you are and there's a microphone coming your way. A lot of things have been said about traditional food aid, as you've noted, more than 30 reports. The General Government Accountability Office certainly had a lot of things to say as well, but for all you can say about it, it has been popular with U.S. farmers. It has been popular with shippers and their reaction today shows a little bit of a nervousness about this transition and this shift in emphasis. This emphasis also shows moving from the USDA budget where it's had domestic constituencies to foreign aid budgets, which public opinion surveys will show a lot of Americans say that's the area that's most willing to be cut. So understanding all of the points that are being made today about the sustainability of agriculture, of the need to feed the world and develop the world, understanding your points on agricultural sustainability, what does this move do in terms of budgetary sustainability? Does it make it more or less sustainable? And if so, why? Thank you. It's Bob Zackerts with World Vision. First I wanted to highlight, thank you for the efforts to try to look how do we make these efforts more cost-effective and efficient. I think from World Vision's perspective, the bottom line might be how do you help more people? A couple of questions would be on the gentleman mentioned before. How do these 302Bs and appropriations, you're going from the Ag Appropes Committee to the state foreign ops on how you see that's political sustainable. The other question was, these numbers can get confusing. So I just went on the USAID website this morning to look at cost of metric tons. And I was just at an average of the cost of metric tons under PL3D Title II. Looking at what USAID listed as metric tons versus cost was about 1,123.15 cents. And then I looked at, I took the IDA account, it was 44% for your website for local regional purchase, divided that by, and the cost was about 11% more for the IDA for metric tons. So address some of those numbers of what I see that you might be losing an efficient tool to procure commodities in bulk. Okay, we're going to then hand the microphone to the very back. I wish we had smarter people in our group, but you know, we've got a bunch of dummies who don't do their homework as you can see. I'm Melanie Stanis from Gallup, and I might be a little more elemental in my question. But basically, you addressed education as one of the key barriers to understanding the programs. And I was wondering if you could talk about a couple of more key barriers to reforms that you addressed throughout your talk today. Thanks. I'll start with on budget sustainability. Look, America has had commitments that we've sustained over long periods of times across the federal government. We live in a period of time right now living under sequestration where, you know, active duty troops, some of whom lost their lives this past weekend in an explosion in Afghanistan, are taking pay cuts. And where people are making excruciating and extraordinary sacrifices because of our aggregate commitment to fiscal discipline. In that context, it's our responsibility, and we as a team, and President Obama certainly believes this, have a responsibility to be as efficient and effective as we can in applying America's resources towards delivering these types of core humanitarian and national security results. As Senator Luger said, this is a national security priority. Increasingly where we provide food aid and assistance is going to overlap with the challenges of extreme climate and extreme ideology. And we've got to think about it as a serious investment. We've got to operationalize it with an eye towards efficiency and effectiveness. And we have to understand that there probably are no sacred cows going forward, that we have to, everything has to constantly improve and justify itself. And this proposal is designed to do that in a responsible way. In terms of the costs, I'll let others address that with specificity if you'd like. Your first identification of the metric on shipping costs sounded very similar to what I had discussed in the speech, so I presume that that's accurate. In terms of comparing it to IDA, I would say the goal here is to maintain the existing infrastructure so that when we do need, and we do believe there's a role for American commodities, American high value food products, when those things need to be deployed to, as an effective part of a response, we will have the infrastructure to do it in the lowest cost manner. IDA will be used to promote a broader range of tools, and that account obviously has a broader range of flexibilities as I discussed in the speech. And then with respect to the question on key barriers, look, I think the data is quite clear. There have been an infinite number of analyses that show why this type of reform makes sense. And it's been advocated for by real statesmen on both sides of the aisle, and NGO leaders like Colleen and others who have had the courage to do some pretty bold things in order to do the right thing. I personally believe that we have to lead with that conviction. And in my three years of talking to a large number of members of Congress, the one consistent thing everyone has asked for is absolute business-like efficiency and effectiveness in how we deliver results. And the one thing that I think is inexcusable is promoting inefficiency in trying to accomplish something that's so profound as saving these lives. The idea that we right now have to cut 155,000 kids off the rolls in Somalia after they've just been through a famine and a disaster because of the way we're structured only intensifies my motivation to seek greater flexibility in a responsible way to deploy these tools. So in my view, the barriers here are not operational or a lack of data or information. They're an ability for us to come together and say can we forge a new consensus on how American agriculture and American humanitarian commitments can come together for the next 50 years, a time period in which we can actually end widespread hunger as we know it. Thank you. Well thank you so much, Administrator Shaw. I'm going to ask we have a really excellent panel of folks who are going to sort of discuss some of the issues proposed and discuss some of the areas around food assistance. I'm going to invite them up along with our chairs where they'll sit. How are you doing, Callie? Nice to see you. How are you doing? You're going to sit right by holding it. We're trying. We're trying. Oh, sorry. Okay everyone, we are on a tight schedule. Want to make sure that we are able to cover a lot of ground here. Very briefly to introduce our folks in the discussion here. It's like a Lutheran church basement in here. There's no hot dish. We have a really distinguished group of folks to talk about food assistance today. I'll just note that most of us have not been formally briefed or looked at the numbers specifically, so we're not going to be able to react to the specific details of the proposal, but I think we all have a good enough sense that we want to talk really about what does U.S. leadership around food assistance look like? What does the domestic support look like? And a little bit about operationally, how have some of these programs worked and how could they improve? I wanted to just take a minute to introduce our folks and talk about how we know them. Dan Glickman needs no introduction to anyone here, I'm sure, but he's a long time advocate for hunger and ag development issues. He served as Secretary of Agriculture, but I think very importantly that to this discussion he was a congressman and elected official for many, many years from the farm state, so very important. Dan and I serve on the agree advisory group together. I just want to mention that group that looks at transforming U.S. ag and food policy, which is an important sort of domestic effort and international effort. Vin Weber was a congressman from Minnesota, a rural part of Minnesota farm state. He is with us to talk about some of the politics, about some of the issues around farm state issues around food aid. He also has recently co-chaired a major project and commission that CSIS had underway on the role of the private sector in development. Sean Callahan is the Chief Operating Officer with Catholic Relief Services. He is here on behalf of Caroline Wu, who had a family emergency. Dr. Wu is also on our council. As was Helene Gale, who as I mentioned was with us at the very beginning of our work at CSIS on food security, is also a member of our board, so I think she outranks everybody from our perspective. I want to start with you, Secretary Glickman, because you have worked on this issue for so long and you kind of bridged the domestic and international sides, and you also recently published an op-ed in Politico with Catherine Bertini, where you talk about the need to modernize food aid, and I want you to just talk about what do you think needs reforming, what do you think needs modernizing, what does that look like from your perspective? Well thanks for having us here, and I do wear many hats. Co-chair of Agree on the Oxfam board, on the World Food Program USA. So I'm speaking, and of course on the Chicago Council effort, which you've been involved with, so I'm speaking on my behalf here, not necessarily representing any organizations, and I want to clarify, I'm an advocate against hunger, not for hunger, I think. That's a point. Anyway, I'd say a couple of things. Number one is I think the administration proposal is on target, reform is needed. I think President Bush was right when he did it in the last decade, and I'm glad to see it's here. I think that we lose too much money in the commodities-only world that we're in, and monetization is very inefficient. I think Raj gave the intellectual case for this. And so I support this. I wrote the piece with Catherine Bertini. She's kind of the intellectual heart of this issue. She's been doing this for years and years and years, and she's a very strong advocate. I do think that this is not going to be a snap process. I think there are a lot of things we're going to have to work through, and so I have what I call my five basic questions, and I'm not going to answer them here, but I think they need to be asked. One is how did we develop congressional leadership and support for this reform? I mean, the role of Congress is critical. Not every part of this plan needs to be done by Congress. I think some can be done administratively, but without congressional support and leadership for this, it's really hard to implement, and there are a lot of disincentives for a lot of members of Congress at a time of a lot of change. The second is what other constituencies do we need to engage to ensure that this reform proposal is successful in the long-term? The business community is extremely important, as is the faith-based community, and also the farm community, the production agriculture community. They can't see this as a threat. They've got to see this as an opportunity, and we remember that a lot of these programs grew out of the huge surpluses that we had in this country in the 1950s and 60s and 70s and 80s. The last three, four years, we haven't had those surpluses, and so the push for commodities has not necessarily been as great, even though the needs for the hunger needs have been greater. But, you know, it's unclear. Are we entering into a period of much greater surpluses again? We don't know, and that's another issue that we'll have to deal with. I would ask, what are the benefits and potential drawbacks of continuing to require a minimum level of U.S. commodities? I think that the flexibility proposal, the 55% minimum proposal myself, is a good idea. I want to see the administration and the folks within the government have as much flexibility as they can, because you just got to be fleet-footed and moved, depending upon the nature of the particular problem that you're dealing with. We know that procurement is going to be a subject of interest for many vested parties in this debate, so I would hope that USAID can convene a panel of procurement experts across the private industry, the U.S. government, world food program, private voluntary organizations, and colleges and universities to work together to develop sophisticated tools and analysis that can help maximize the proposed USAID reforms, because they're complicated. It's not just a simple snap of the finger to get them done. I just have two more questions that I hope will be answered by all the brilliant minds in this room and elsewhere. What is the relationship between the proposed food aid reforms and the ongoing development and the implementation of the Feed the Future Initiative? Feed the Future is at the heart of this administration's institutionalization of helping countries become more self-sufficient in food. How does this relate to Feed the Future? Raj Shah talked about this a bit, but I think that's got to be part of the debate. And then the final question, which is implicit in Alan Burgess' question, which I think my friend, Ben, will deal with, is how do we ensure adequate appropriations in the period that we're in? Mildly stated. Yeah, in years to come. And there's no magic answer to that. The U.S. will always respond to humanitarian crises. I'm convinced of that, you know, notwithstanding, let's say current budget deficit and everything else, but we don't want to be lurching from crisis to crisis and not having the funding to plan better, to pre-position assets better to get food all over the world better than we are. So this is an addition to being the right thing to do. It also requires an exquisite amount of good management. And it is my hope that working together, we can do our best to get this implemented in the way that I've just talked about. That's a very good starting point, and it leads me, Ben, to you to talk a little bit about the politics around a proposal like this and how you might navigate them and kind of how are people going to feel about it? Well, yeah. First of all, thank you for inviting me. It's a pleasure to be here. It's always a pleasure to be with my friend Dan Glickman. And I really think that the administrator did a great job in his speech. And like Dan Glickman, I think this is particularly after what we've been through and our other task forces here at CSIS, I think this is really intellectually the way to go. But I have to be kind of a cold drag on this discussion a little bit politically. And it goes directly to Alan Birg's question, which I thought summarized it very, very quickly. More writers than could fill this room have written about, quote, the iron triangle of government agencies, committees of Congress that oversee and appropriate for them, and the interest groups that interact with them. And we are talking about a change in policy that just directly assaults that entirely. We're talking about taking authority, as the administrator mentioned, away from the Department of Agriculture giving it to another agency of government. If we do that, we're of course going to take authority from authorizing committees in the Congress, Agriculture Committee, and appropriating subcommittees and give it to the Foreign Affairs Committee, I assume, and the Foreign Ops Committee on Appropriations. None of this is a reason not to do it. I want to underscore that. But it is a deeply challenging political environment. And of course, we're not only talking about the Washington part, the big piece which Alan referenced in his question is we have built over the lifetime of these programs, dating back to, I guess, 1954, all sorts of constituencies out there, some of whom have been doing very well recently, like agriculture, but others who have not, all of whom are invested in the program as it is structured. And the administrator made a good point of saying that there are arguments to say that this is not threatening to them that there's that old saying, you know, I'm from the government, I'm here to help you. Well, you know, excuse me if I, most of the folks out there, the farmers, the shippers, the elevator operators, the processors, railroad people, the maritime ministry, all the people that are invested in this program are going to have, and we've already seen, have had that first reaction of which is to say, you know, I know this program the way it exists. I've learned to work with it. You're threatening me in some reason, in some regards. Now, the contrary argument to that, I would say, is certainly the restructuring of, to put it one way, of the agriculture economy over the lifetime of this program has been, to say it's profound, really understates what's happened. Agriculture today is dramatically different than it was when you and I were growing up to say nothing of even before that. It was in the middle of the 18th century. Last period of Republican dominance. And it's been downhill since. Anyway, so there are good economic arguments for this as well as the humanitarian arguments that Raj made and Dan made too. But I think that, you know, you can't understate the fact that you are taking on a very classically difficult political challenge in trying to make this change. I hate to say, as I told Dan, I was going to say, it's the cringe, the words you hate most here in Washington. And I hate them as much as anybody are. It's a great idea, but this is just not the right time. All right, I'm going to, we're going to come back to the political question in a minute, but I want to shift to some operational questions about food aid. I'm going to start, first I'm going to start with Sean and then go to you, Helene. Catholic Relief Services does a lot of work in this area. I would like for you to sort of describe what you do, what it looks like on the ground, how you think things might shift. Just sort of take us through how you actually run these programs. Sure. First, I'd like to thank CSIS for hosting this event, the senator, administrator, and our panelists, and really everyone who's here because the issue of human dignity I know is key to every one of us here. And as the early questioner asked early on regarding education, the food security programs that we have are programs that are multi-sectoral. They deal with education. They deal with health. They deal with agriculture. So that's a key component. The other key component that we have is that their multi-year, you cannot do development on a one-year budget. And I think that's something the politicians can talk about, but we all know it has to be a multi-year appropriation or authorization so that people can have that ability to develop. When we look at our both development and emergency assistance, and sometimes people think there's a competition, they actually are mutually reinforcing. We cannot do quick and rapid emergency response if we don't have a development initiative. As the administrator talked about in the Horn of Africa, in Somalia, and those of us who went up to Dadaab and saw that famine situation, the one thing that many people don't talk about is there was not a famine situation in Ethiopia. There was not a famine situation in Kenya. There was not a famine situation in Uganda. Why was that? It's because the programs worked effectively where the investments were. We did not have the investments in Somalia, and that's why we had a problem there, but we had arid agriculture. I think another key element is, and we need to bring it together, is it is not one group or another. It's USAID. It's USDA. It's the development community in general. It's Congress and it's the American people. We have to work together on this. This isn't one group versus another as we move forward. I'd also like to just highlight a little bit that when we talk about reform now, this isn't a new reform. In certain ways it is new, but those of us who have been working on this issue, this has been reform that has gone on since I've been in this business. It's been 25 years now. When I started in Nicaragua, we were doing subsistence agriculture. Now we're linking people to markets and doing value chains. When we do economic development work with our Food for Peace colleagues, it's energizing that local community, building their local capacity, ensuring that they now don't just receive food or monetary assistance for food, but they're able to now do cropping much better. That we're linking them to local businesses and things of that nature. So these type of reforms, we have to just make sure that they continue to focus on the poor, that they continue to have that flexibility that we want, that they continue to be multi-year. And I think, as the administrators said, that they expand our reach out into four million more people, which we all applaud. Thank you, Sean. Elaine, first of all, thank you for traveling to be with us today. You win the door prize for coming for this. I want to give you sort of a two-part question, because you've been a proponent of these reforms for a long time. You've taken some pretty bold steps, but you also have thought a lot about the big question of how do you link our emergency and immediate aid investments and activities with long-term development impact? So I would like to ask you to just sort of comment on why you think these reforms are important, and then move into that question of how do you ultimately link these efforts? Yeah, great. Thanks. And I would also just like to add my thanks to you for pulling this together. I think this is an incredible opportunity to talk about something who, as I think everybody has basically said, whose time has come, politics aside, the actual politics, I guess, can never be totally aside, but this issue really is a very timely one. And as was mentioned, we took a decision, and while I, as the head of the organization, get a lot of credit for that, obviously this is something that was, as a result of our experience over many, many years, recognizing that particularly the monetization policies were not only inefficient, but were really at cross purposes with our overall long-term development goals, and that we just felt very strongly after doing the research and looking at the reports that had come out around the inefficiency, the lack of flexibility, and what it did, in some cases, to depress local agricultural productivity, that it was just the wrong thing to do. And so we were hoping others would have followed us, but we took the choice and made a decision to actually forego those resources, and, you know, difficult decision had practical implications, but we felt that it was important, not only because we felt it was the right thing to do, but because it was part of opening the dialogue, and that by doing something that put, kind of put this maybe even more unnoticed, it did help to catalyze some of the discussions around the reforms. And so, again, I think we're very pleased to see this come this far. You know, our reasons for doing it, same as others have mentioned, you know, our policies didn't have the flexibility. I think we now have a lot of evidence to know that it is no one-size-fits-all approach that sometimes local purchase is the best, sometimes shipping American commodities is the best, sometimes direct cash and cash vouchers are the best. So really looking at that, and we've worked with USAID to look at developing the ability to do that kind of analysis. So you can actually look at when is the right place to use, what is the right way, circumstance to use which tool. So first and foremost, the flexibility, huge. Secondly, the increased efficiency, and I think, you know, Raj Shah has spoken about it, others have spoken about it, the ability to use our resources at such an important point in time. And that's why I think, you know, this can be compelling, because I think the issue of efficiency is a huge one. So to be able to feed more, to not have the inefficiencies that go along with, again, particularly in the case of monetization, big, big issue. And I think, again, lastly, the ability to look at the long-term, so to go into your second part, of how do we help to increase agricultural productivity. And, you know, several have mentioned the supply and the demand. There are many parts of the world where agricultural productivity probably has been depressed, partly as a result of some of our policies of flooding markets with U.S. commodities. The only way to increase that demand is by increasing the supply is actually increasing the demand. So I think as we look at not flooding with U.S. commodities, it will help to increase the demand. We can also then work on the supply side. How do we increase agricultural productivity? How do we use the long-term feed the future and other programs that help smallholder farmers be able to be more productive then it really becomes a win-win situation. So I think that's where you wrap it all together. First of all, looking at what's the right tool and the right situation. Now we hopefully will have the flexibility to do that. How do you make sure that you're looking at the continuum between emergency to long-term and recognizing that they are mutually reinforcing because you're working on both supply as well as demand in both the emergency as well as in the non-emergency situations of chronic hunger and malnutrition. So I think it's looking at this much more holistically. And while I totally appreciate the comments that you made then, this is a difficult political issue. We know that these constituencies are out there. But I do believe that we can build the kind of support for this because one makes sense. We are more concerned about efficiency of resources. And I think you can talk to a farmer about what it means for another farmer to have a good income to increase their productivity. So I think we can win this. I think we can make the arguments. And I think the American people will listen to this. And so I think we're all in there to make this a goal this time. Thank you so much. You wanted to jump in. I do think that there is a change. The markets have changed in the world. These programs grew out of the efforts of the beneficence of America through Senator McGovern, Senator Dole, Senator Humphrey. America is a great humanitarian challenge. But a lot of it was motivated by the surpluses of raw commodities. It was a convenient place to dispose of excess. And two things have happened. The global markets have changed. Those massive surpluses are likely gone. So the second thing is we no longer need to feed people just raw commodities. They need to be felt that nutritious food. And so that food is not just bags of raw commodities, but in many cases it's processed and semi-processed foods that can be purchased locally or can be purchased here in the United States. And so here I am, a former Secretary of Agriculture. And I'm sure there's some consternation in the Agriculture Department right now, thinking maybe, I'd never heard of this, the dirtiest four-letter word in the English language is T-U-R-F. And I'm sure there's some of that in our government as we're looking at this issue right now. But the truth of the matter is that I think that intellectually for farmers and for people in agriculture, the markets have changed so dramatically that this is no longer a key part of keeping and propping up farm prices in the United States. And it is so if you could make the argument that this has a higher purpose to it and at the same time building the economy so they can buy more U.S. products and develop their markets through trade and other kinds of things, it can be helpful. But I do agree with Vin to this part. You've got to have champions in the U.S. Congress. Food aid does not exist in the abstract. Food aid has largely been a congressional issue. It was Congress that developed the infrastructure, the foundation of food aid. It wasn't the executive branch over the last 40 or 50 or 60 years. They used the tools very aggressively, but it was very key, important, and courageous humanitarians in the Congress have got this thing to work. You've got to get those people on our side. It won't work without that. And you want to keep the constituencies. We talked about somehow in line, too. I mean, most of the discussions that I've had, most of us have had over the last few years in this building and others, when it comes to anything connected to development assistance or aid, has been how do we preserve the budget into these extraordinarily difficult times? And I really don't want to be the nace here, but to fracture an existing constituency for any form of aid is risky right now. And so as we proceed on this, you've got to figure out how to keep those constituencies together behind this, because it's a lot easier to vote against funding for a program these days than it ever used to be. And it was never easy to vote for anything that could be called foreign aid. Just to add to that, the U.S. is the last country to have these kind of tide aid, food aid policy. The E.U. went through it, Canada went through it. I think we could learn some lessons. Let's talk to some of the European politicians. Let's talk to some of the Canadian politicians. Let's see what it took for them to opt out of these programs. And maybe we could actually learn something, but we are the last donor nation that continues to have these kinds of food policy. Sean, do you want to jump in here as well? I think this is great. I want to allow us to have some opportunity for Q&A from the audience. Again, we'll bundle a couple of questions at a time. If you could get some microphones, just raise your hand and we'll send you a woman in the front and then in the third row. Go ahead, stand up and we'll get a microphone to you in a second, right here. Thank you very much. It's a very, very interesting discussion. My name is Heather Jeffen. I'm a consultant to the World Bank. And my question is, the world is evolving. And Dr. Gordon Connelly said that if we're going to feed 1 billion hungry people, then we have to go to Africa and do production there on a small farm using the technology we have right now. So to feed the hungry people is not standing. It's not standing face. It's evolving. And there is concern. We probably need to get to your question here. Yeah, there is a lot of concern that they call it land for grabs. Do you know what you're asking about land grabs? I haven't got land for grabs. What's the impact? The impact of land grabs? Land grabs on American agriculture production on food aid, foreign food aid. Powing up the forests in the jungles. All right, that's a great question. I'm going to have you hand the microphone behind you and we'll take that one as well. Thank you. Hi, my name is Denise Mainville. I'm with APT Associates. And I have two quick questions. One is about the procurement and the, as Mr. Shaw spoke, shifting from an American procurement towards local. And I'm curious as to whether there's been consideration of the risk of that going towards more of a globalization of procurement rather than a localization. And the political risks, for example, if it were found that development aid were then being used to purchase Brazilian soy rather than American soy, that sort of thing. My second question gets at the complexity that Mr. Glickman spoke of. And I'm curious whether there are operational rules in place or guidelines, whether they're being developed. And given now that we're expanding the range of tools that we can use to address situations of food insecurity, do we have operational guidelines on which tools to use and what circumstances and are there risks inherent in that in that we lose some of the benefits of specialization on what we can do. Okay, good. So we have two questions, one in land grabs, one on sort of what are the rules of procurement that might go forward. And also if you have a more flexible toolbox, then how do you know when to use what? What's the guidance? I might actually add to that set of questions, one about local and regional purchase. In speaking with the World Food Program and others, I know it's hard sometimes to do local and regional purchase. It's hard to find the quantity or the quality and it takes some time and effort to do that. So could maybe especially CRS and CARE, if you could comment on that question and the others can comment on the others. On the local and regional purchase, I think it's a good question. We've been having greater and greater success and we were fortunate enough to do some pilots with USDA and others to analyze that ability. And it's kind of interesting when you look at it, obviously the further you go away from the United States, the more effective it is cash-wise. So frankly it's cheaper for us to send food to Latin America we found in our cases because of the cheaper cost of transport than it is to do it in the other ways. The other issue that we really have to look at is quality of food, safety of food, because those are key issues. Even though you're using cash resources, you want to make sure that those are fine. What we've been doing is building up the capacity of local food labs and local organizations to be able to test the food in those qualities. A similar issue is local markets because what we're trying to do is energize the local markets because as the woman said for the first question in the front, the issue really isn't us feeding the world. The issue is us feeding the world and helping people to feed themselves. And so the issue there is local production that are local commodities that people are used to. They know how to cook, they know how to make them, they know the nutritious value. So the issue is really how do we ensure that we assist them in that process and then assist them in making sure that their production is linked to local markets. And I think we do have to sometimes foster that, but in many of the cases we've found that like with the burgeoning economies in Africa and Asia and other places, they just need a little bit of assistance on this. This isn't something that we have to teach people to do. It's kind of reducing some of the unfair competition that's happened in the past. I might just say one other thing and we've talked a little bit about the negativity of food aid. It might have been bad and distorting markets. If it was done right according to the regulations and the rules that were in place, it didn't do those things. So there is something called the Bellman analysis. There are, you know, preparations that you do in the field to make sure that if you're doing, you're using local food aid, if you're purchasing things and you're doing, you do it in the right way. So certainly it can have the negative effect, but that's not what the U.S. government was supporting. Yeah, just to add, you know, I think we all recognize that there are some places where local purchase is going to work better because they have systems in place and there are other places where it won't work. But that's again why I think it's the integration of what we're doing on the agriculture side to improve agricultural productivity so that we will be able to meet demands increasingly. It won't happen overnight and there will be, you know, as Sean said, there are still places where it may be for the foreseeable future, still more economical and more efficient to ship food. But I think if we're not going to move in the direction of how do we support the long-term interest, which is to have people feeding themselves to be growing agricultural productivity, to be growing economies, particularly in the countries where we work and where agriculture is the economic mainstay, then we're locked in this position forever. So yes, it will take time. It will take building the infrastructure, but there are places that already let's use them while we're using the other tools for other places. I do think it reminds us though. The good news here is we're talking about this happening in nations that are no longer stagnant but are developing. That's good news. We're talking about ways to help accelerate that process, but we have to keep in mind the people in those countries are going to want to continue developing. And they may have their own idea of what development means and it may not be exactly what we romanticize for them going forward. In the look around the world, people change their diets, not in ways that we necessarily think are environmentally helpful or helpful from a health standpoint. So all of our intentions are right, but we have to prepare ourselves also to be ready to deal with a different kind of world than the one that we've been dealing with for the last 50 or 60 years or however long you want to call it. I just want a couple of things. I think we need to make it clear that nothing in the proposal should restrict the United States from providing humanitarian assistance for people who are starving or in deep trouble, period. These are reforms on how best to do it and I think we heard from the Administrator today that they're going to preserve the flexibility to use a variety of tools to do that kind of thing. But to answer your question, and I think the second row, right now, we've got slippage and murage and we're about 30, 40, 50% the way things are now. So I think that what we're saying is this proposal is actually going to give us more bang for the buck than what we're currently doing right, if it's managed right. And so that goes to the third thing and that is that Administrator Shaw has done a very good job at beginning to rehabilitate this great agency, AID, which was largely based on having people on the ground face to face, interfacing with people. It was frankly not an agency historically set up to have third parties doing all this work. The agency has kind of gone into that direction more than certainly what I would like to see. Some of that needs to be done, by the way. The USAID can't do it all, but it's important for the Congress and the American people to recognize that this agency and related agencies need to have high quality people on the ground, whether it's Peace Corps, AID, World Food Program, and others that know what's happening, that are intelligent and the US has its embassy officers and US government personnel on the ground managing this on a country-wide basis. And then the final thing is we've set up this program called Feed the Future, which is to do the long-term things we're talking about, which is to sustain agriculture and food security worldwide. So nothing we can do here can be inconsistent with the longer-term needs of building a world where people are self-sufficient in food. And that's what the Feed the Future Initiative is supposed to do. Well, and I think, and I know we have more questions, but I think we're, I promise people they have other appointments that we need to leave by four. And I think what you're all saying is what we all want is to find a way to make our food assistance more efficient and more flexible while having it feed into our development and long-term foreign policy goals while at the same time preserving all of our domestic constituencies. So that sounds like an easy question. Tall order. But last piece of good news. We could take advantage of exactly the problem we face, which is this crisis of budget that's upon us that has many, many, many downsides, but one upside is people are willing to think anew about the way we're running programs. Exactly. I want to thank you for joining us, all of you, and please join me in thanking everyone. See you. Are you flying right now? Where are you? What time is it? You'll lie.