Rectifying the scandal of Canada's diminishing foreign aid

by OWEN ROBERTS, LISA CAINES, JENNIFER DICK and KRISTY NUDDS

Yet the images of starving people are haunting and unforgettable, particularly when the developed world sits down to holiday feasts. And there's something about Christmas dinner, with all its trimmings and gift-giving, that makes it the most guilt-laden gathering of all.

There's room for optimism. Between 1981 and 1999, food aid covered 92 per cent of the world's consumption shortfalls, an admirable figure. But the eight per cent that went hungry still constitute hundreds of thousands of people, and the world's population is growing all the time.

Who's providing the help? Canadian Foodgrains Bank This Christian-based food aid and development organization serves as a centralized grain bank and distribution system. It was established a decade ago, and its membership now links more than 10,000 Canadian church congregations with program volunteers collecting donations of grain, cash and other agricultural commodities for distribution to the world's hungry. The group provides emergency food rations during national disasters and supplies seed to help families replant and work towards self-sufficiency. Last year's $6.1 million in donations of cash and grain surpassed the previous year's total by $200,000. The group works with other organizations, including the Canadian Wheat Board and the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA). Currently, most donations directed to the Canadian Foodgrains Bank are matched by CIDA at a ratio of 4:1 to a maximum of $16 million each year. www.foodgrainsbank.ca Canadian University Service Overseas (CUSO) More than 12,000 Canadians have participated in volunteer positions abroad through CUSO, an organization that began in 1961 to co-ordinate overseas volunteer programs for Canadian Universities. Now, the group works primarily with local non-government groups overseas. It provides people-to-people assistance, occasional funding, training and links to other organizations for mutual support. www.cuso.org Developing Countries Farm Radio Network This Toronto-based organization, started by former CBC broadcaster and farmer Dr. George Atkins, supports broadcasters in strengthening small-scale farmers and rural life. It helps farm families learn about simple, proven ways to increase food supplies and improve nutrition and health. This not-for-profit organization gathers and researches information about practices that farm families find helpful, produces radio scripts (in print format) based on this information, and distributes them free of charge to more than 1,100 network members. They, in turn, share the information with an audience of millions of farmers and their family members around the world. www.farmradio.org International Federation of Agricultural Producers (IFAP) With a mission to take a leading role in world agriculture and contribute to world peace and progress, IFAP pledges to develop farmers' capacity to influence decisions that affect them at the domestic and international levels -- for both developing and industrialized nations. The group has a membership of 89 national farmers' organizations in 68 countries around the world, including 36 developing nations. Policy priorities include food security, poverty eradication, promoting the use of best farming practices, and maintaining and enhancing the vitality of rural communities. www.ifap.org Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) Feed the hungry, clothe the naked and house the homeless -- that's the mandate of the MCC, an active contributor to the Canadian Foodgrains Bank. In Ontario, the MCC is represented by Ontario Mennonite Relief, which hosts two annual events -- the heifer sale and the relief sale, where homemade quilts, food, crafts and many other items are sold to raise funds for developing nations. Almost $10 million has been raised in the past 34 years, and MCC projects are ongoing in every continent. It offers food, supplies and knowledge for water projects, refugee sponsorship, food security and HIV/AIDS in Africa. Current projects include meningitis vaccine donations, teaching assistance in refugee camps and new water supplies for Chinese farmers. www.mcc.org S.H.A.R.E. Agricultural Foundation -- Sending Help And Resources Everywhere Peel County farmers started SHARE in 1976, and now more than 1,500 Canadians and Americans of all professions have joined the team. The group emphasizes the value of local farmers' skills and experiences, emphasizing inclusiveness and co-operation. Every dollar contributed by SHARE is matched by CIDA. The foundation has a unique "pass it on" policy -- any community receiving assistance must, in turn, share the project's benefits with others. For example, a farmer who receives a cow from SHARE, must pass the cow's first female offspring to another farmer in need, and so on. www.shareagfoundation.org Christian Farmers Federation of Ontario (CFFO) Family farm entrepreneurs are the specific focus of the CFFO, which proclaims an interest in a broad range of agricultural, rural and social issues affecting quality of family life and business. While the CFFO does not have a specific farm aid policy, members contribute to several aid organizations annually. Last year, the CFFO organized a central project for the Canadian Foodgrains Bank. www.christianfarmers.org Canadian Federation of Agriculture (CFA) and the Ontario Federation of Agriculture (OFA) These groups are active members of IFAP, and often make donations to specific groups (see main article, Agri-Skills Abroad and the OFA). www.cfa-fca.ca Oxfam Canada is an international development agency which works with partner organizations in more than 20 countries in Africa, Central and South America and the Caribbean. Together, they help people tackle the root causes of poverty, social injustice and inequality so as to create self-reliant and sustainable communities. Domestically, Oxfam educates Canadians on issues of global poverty. Abroad, with support from the Canadian International Development Agency, it provides disaster relief and emergency preparedness. It also helps to co-ordinate hundreds of projects around the world in underdeveloped areas. Projects currently being undertaken by Oxfam Canada include working with small-scale farmers to improve their food security through increased agricultural production and income-generating activities. www.oxfam.ca/ World Vision Canada: www.worldvision.ca Christian Children's Fund: www.ccfcanada.ca

Canada's generosity towards those less fortunate has traditionally been reflected in foreign aid. Individually, Canadians are among the most generous peoples in the world. We've consistently been one of the five largest food-aid donors, hitting a high of 11 per cent of the global total in 1978 (but more often, filling three to five per cent of the total). In 1999-2000, we donated 349,000 tonnes of grain to various food aid programs. We've funnelled $93 million to the United Nation's World Food Plan (see who's helping). And internationally, we've been known for taking leadership positions in development.

That was certainly true during the era of Hon. Eugene Whelan, Pierre Trudeau's agriculture minister for a dozen years. If you spotted the colourful minister's trademark green Stetson cowboy hat at a gathering focused on developing countries, you could be sure help was close at hand.

"We were trying to bring world hunger to the people's attention," Whelan says. "I knew agriculture, it was my life. I knew a little about the business world and the food world, and Trudeau supported me tremendously." Indeed, during the Trudeau years Canada's official development assistance (ODA) level peaked at 0.53 per cent of the gross national product, in 1975-76. Whelan, who went on to become president of the World Food Council, says there was talk of boosting the ODA as high as one per cent.

But it never happened. In fact, the opposite held true.

Canadian foreign aid changed abruptly during the Mulroney Conservative era. Federal mandarins bent on anti-liberalism and fiscal restraint hacked away at foreign aid, creating a culture of acceptance and resignation that continued through the 1990s. Foreign aid that was once the domain of the agriculture department was decoupled from it, reduced and distributed under the umbrella of international issues, affairs by a different set of bureaucrats with comparatively little understanding of agriculture. And Mulroney did not have a Eugene Whelan equivalent waiting in the wings.

Critics wondered what had happened to Canada's heart. Diplomats tried in vain to tell Ottawa the country's envied and stellar reputation was waning. But as long as voters continued applauding the shrinking national deficit, Canada's integrity appeared destined to shrivel, too. By last year, the ODA had shrunk to an embarrassing 0.25 per cent of the gross national product, putting us in a tie for 17th of the world's 22 most-developed countries.

That's a curious approach for an exporting nation such as Canada. Appearing stingy is not an admirable international trait, especially from a country that can't possibly eat everything it produces and enjoys one of the planet's highest standards of living. Whelan never adjusted to the new federal direction, nor did he accept it.

"It's been decades since I've been to Ethiopia's famine camps, and I still wake up at times seeing the faces of starving people," he says. "I can't think of anything more terrifying than dying over a period of days or weeks or months, and knowing it's because no one is doing anything to help you. There's just no excuse for what we could have done but didn't do."

Familiar names in leadership roles

But there are at least two reasons for renewed optimism, thanks to names the farm community will find familiar -- Susan Whelan, MP for Essex, and Temiskaming farmer Jack Wilkinson, outgoing president of the Ontario Federation of Agriculture. In January, Prime Minister Jean Chrétien appointed Susan Whelan to the post of Minister for International Co-operation, giving her the responsibility for administering Canadian aid. A few months later, at a meeting in Egypt, Wilkinson was elected president of the International Federation of Agricultural Producers (IFAP), representing about 500 million farmers around the world. Its priorities include international trade and fair returns for producers globally.

Whelan's chances for success go beyond her bloodlines. First, she recognizes Canada's backslide in aid since her father's glory days -- "Some progress [Canada] made was lost," she admits -- and vows to change it, with the Prime Minister's help. In September's throne speech, Gov. Gen. Adrienne Clarkson announced that, by 2010, Canada will double its current funding for international aid. Support will ring in at $40 million in Africa alone.

. However, even this doubled budget shows how badly international giving has been pounded. Even when the 2010 goal is reached, the numbers will still only bring Canada back in line with where it was a quarter century ago. Spending was 0.50 per cent of GNP in 1986-87.

In fact, Canada's 65-page Statistical Report on Official Development Assistance indicates production sectors, which include agriculture, forestry, fishing, industry, mining, construction, trade and tourism, make up only 13 per cent of Canada's current country-to-country ODA disbursements. Although production sectors is an enormous and diverse category, it represents a relatively small percentage of ODA disbursements. Minister Whelan wants to improve on this. Her main instrument for change will be the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), which supports sustainable development activities in more than 100 of the poorest countries in the world to help them develop the tools to meet their own needs.

Whelan is gearing up for a new brand of international development, one that works more closely with local governments in planning strategies and processes for sustainable living and which, among other things, returns more of the focus to agriculture and rural development. She has already overseen CIDA adding agriculture and rural development to its list of priorities, increasing it to six from four (health and nutrition, AIDS prevention, basic education and child protection are the others). As well, she has a mandate to increase private sector development in developing countries.

Whelan says adding agriculture and rural development to CIDA's mandate is logical and defensible, given that more than 75 per cent of the world's "absolute poor" -- people who live on less one dollar per day, and are unable to meet their most basic needs -- live in rural areas, and a large majority of those working in agriculture in developing countries are women.

Building farm organizations

"The 'development' I'm talking about is helping people who are starving," Whelan says. "Helping agriculture in these developing countries will not affect Canada's trade prospects. Canada can be competitive in a competitive world." Adds Wilkinson: "The first step is the biggest one. You must allow farmers to produce their own food. The second step is to get the individual farmers, and then their countries, involved in trade."

IFAP achieves that first step by campaigning to ensure resources such as tools, policies and credit are available for farmers, so they can start to help themselves. But, Wilkinson says, IFAP has a big challenge: decision makers such as the World Bank or International Monetary Fund don't make deals with farmers, they make them with aid organizations or governments. "There's a critical need to develop the infrastructure of farm organizations," he says. "We have to build that."

The need to be regarded as "big" is one reason liaising with Whelan's government is so appealing to IFAP, and Wilkinson is anxious to see where IFAP can assist in new CIDA-funded projects.

Among the tools farmers in developing countries are likely to encounter through the IFAP network -- and indeed, through other aid efforts -- is technology, including the products of biotechnology. For example, at press time, University of Guelph vice-president of research Alan Wildeman and Ontario Agricultural College dean Craig Pearson were visiting the International Livestock Research Institute in Nairobi, Kenya, to investigate partnership opportunities. "We want to learn more about their needs -- basically, food and the environment -- and use that as a starting point for finding ways Ontario and Canadian research and technology might dovetail with those needs," says Wildeman.

That kind of dialogue is vital. The agri-food community knows exporting new technologies can lead to some precarious situations, such as the rejection of food destined for drought-stricken Zambia in the summer (see biotechnology section below). Globalization has not led to universally accepted technologies, but if food production can ultimately hit its stride in Africa, needs will shift.

"Knowledge and education will be Canada's main agricultural export to developing countries," predicts Gord Surgeoner, president of Ontario Agri-Food Technologies. "Developing countries will need education and training to be able to assess the risks and benefits of biotechnology on their own soil." BF

Scare mongers versus starving people

by OWEN ROBERTS and KRISTY NUDDS

Developed nations, where genetically modified crops are commonplace, could hardly believe it. "Unbelievably reckless," wrote syndicated columnist Clare Hoy in the Sudbury Star, pointing fingers at the influence of well-fed anti-biotechnology groups such as the Council of Canadians.

In late August, council leader Maude Barlow and others applauded the Zambian decision at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, leaving Hoy shaking his head. "This is a tragic example of what happens when fear-mongering takes hold on a global scale," he wrote. "Genetically modified foods have been painted as evil by the anti-corporatists out there and they're not likely to change their tune just because they are wrong."

They certainly did a number on Zambia's High Commissioner in the United Kingdom, Silumelune Mubukwanu. Said he: "The fact that the people are starving doesn't mean that we should allow them to eat what they don't know." Countered Hoy: "Better to let them starve?"

Mubukwanu, Barlow and others who applaud that decision will have to wrestle with its implications. Others -- both exporting nations such as Canada, and developing countries being offered genetically modified food aid -- will inevitably face similar questions. Genetically modified harvests keeps increasing as food-producing nations plant more and more high-technology crop acreage. For example, in 2002, 30 per cent of Ontario's soybean acreage -- which produces 80 per cent of Canada's beans -- was planted to herbicide-tolerant seed. Every year, that number climbs.

And some believe it will continue growing, unless scientists show biotechnology is unsafe. That hasn't happened. "Members of Canadian biotech industries are pragmatic about having a science-based regulatory framework," said BIOTECanada president Janet Lambert. This type of regulation is advocated by the FAO, which supports a science-based evaluation system that objectively determines the benefits and risks of each individual biotechnology. And science says there's no reason for countries such as Zambia to turn down genetically modified food.

But regulations for the acceptance of plant and animal products derived from biotechnology lie with governing bodies of individual countries. And, unfortunately, many developing countries lack the research capability, knowledge and financial resources to create or implement such regulations. That's why Canada is offering new-technology training and education programs to developing countries, through organizations such as the Canadian International Development Agency, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency and Health Canada. They hope education and understanding will help developing countries better understand new technology.

If they're right, there's a lot to gain, despite the poverty that typically plagues these nations. In September's Harvard Business Review, authors C.K. Pahalad and Allen Hammond argue that the assumption poor people have no money is wrong. "While individual incomes may be low, the aggregate buying power of poor communities is actually quite large." Indeed, the numbers speak for themselves. Sixty-five per cent of the world's population earning less than $200 each per year equates to four billion people.

And while that's a significant market for western industry, the Zambian example shows new and inventive ways are needed to reach those countries. Likely, that means putting the technology in their hands and letting them nurture it themselves. Transplanting agricultural biotechnologies that are used in developed countries doesn't necessarily work, says Prof. Larry Erickson, department of Plant Agriculture, University of Guelph. Climate and soil conditions, production methods and species used in developing countries differ from those in Canada.

"For biotechnology to be truly beneficial for developing countries, it needs to be useful and applicable to the needs of the people and the environmental conditions that exist there," he says.

Traditionally, it's been tougher attracting research funding for developing-countries commodities. For example, Erickson couldn't find funding to continue cassava research he was doing at Guelph 10 years ago. He says that's because there was no North American equivalent and no apparent opportunities for industry to gain from his findings. (His original research was funded by the non-profit Rockefeller Foundation in the United States.) Maybe now that will change.

The FAO supports biotechnology, recognizing its potential to increase both production and productivity in agricultural industries worldwide. This is especially true for countries that have marginal agricultural lands which can't grow enough food to feed their people, or countries that produce plant foods that are nutrient deficient from inadequate soil fertility -- the same countries likely to be recipients of international food aid.

That's where crop biotechnology comes in. It's already produced maize and wheat that can withstand drought, require less herbicides and insecticides and yield more seed. As well, there's "golden rice," genetically modified to contain a gene from daffodils that produces pro-vitamin A, a nutrient lacking in the diets of many low-income people. This deficiency can cause blindness, particularly in young children. But none of it may make its way to those who need it most. Said a recent U.N. report: "Opposition in richer countries to genetically modified crops may set back the ability of the poorest nations to feed growing populations."

And at Christmas, that's a hard pill to swallow. BF

Guelph research reaches out to help the world

1. Fed up with fusarium
Unusually warm and moist temperatures last summer wreaked havoc on most of Uruguay's wheat destined for human consumption. It became infected with fusarium, which produces a toxin (deoxynivalenol) that can be harmful to humans if exposure is chronic. Plant agriculture researchers Art Schaafsma and research associate David Hooker of Ridgetown College, University of Guelph, have developed what they call a "climate-driven grading system" to anticipate and identify the toxic invader. Now, they're sharing that technology with Uruguay to help farmers there with similar struggles. The research for the model was sponsored primarily by the Ontario Wheat Producers' Marketing Board, the Agricultural Adaptation Council, Bayer Crop Science Canada, Pioneer Hi-Bred Canada Limited and Syngenta Canada Inc.

2. Rock to the rescue
Nutrient-deficient crops cause malnutrition in thousands of rural Kenyans and in the cattle crucial to their livelihood. That's because the crops grown in Kenyan soil typically lack phosphorus. But researchers have found help in a most unusual substance: rock. It turns out rock can be an effective alternative to costly chemical fertilizers and mineral supplements typically used to improve animals' growth rates and market value. Prof. Peter van Straaten, Land Resource Science, discovered that rocks mined from nearby Uganda contained phosphate, a source of phosphorus. Prof. Brian McBride and recent PhD graduate Nicholas Odongo, Animal and Poultry Science, followed up by using rock phosphate as a cost-effective means of increasing the phosphorus content of forages. This research was sponsored by the Canadian International Development Agency, International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), the Rockefeller Foundation and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council.

3. Here come the sun-dried tomatoes
Hot tropical weather on the west coast of Africa makes Equatorial Guinea an ideal location for growing tomatoes. But they're prone to spoiling, even though they are harvested twice a year. As a result, tomatoes have to be imported from neighbouring Cameroon to meet the country's needs. That's expensive, so researchers at the University of Guelph are helping tomato farmers there get the most out of their crop yields by keeping the produce marketable, after the season has come and gone. Prof. Don Mercer, Department of Food Science, Georges D'Aoust and Étienne Juneau, College d'Alfred, and Marie-Odile Lebeau, CEGEP Régionale de Lanaudière, are implementing a simple and inexpensive solar-drying technique. The end result is the Equatorial Guinea version of sun-dried. This research is sponsored by the Canadian International Development Agency. BF

For more details on these projects, check the website: www.uoguelph.ca/Research