The U.S. government’s humanitarian relief agency will significantly scale back emergency food aid to some of the world’s poorest countries this year because of soaring global food prices, and the U.S. Agency for International Development is drafting plans to reduce the number of recipient nations, the amount of food provided to them, or both, officials at the agency said.
USAID officials said that a 41 percent surge in prices for wheat, corn, rice and other cereals over the past six months has generated a $120 million budget shortfall that will force the agency to reduce emergency operations. That deficit is projected to rise to $200 million by year’s end. Prices have skyrocketed as more grains go to biofuel production or are consumed by such fast-emerging markets as China and India.
Officials said they were reviewing all of the agency’s emergency programs — which target almost 40 countries and zones including Ethiopia, Iraq, Somalia, Honduras and Sudan’s Darfur region — to decide how and where the cuts will be made.
“We’re in the process now of going country by country and analyzing the commodity price increase on each country,” said Jeff Borns, director of USAID’s Food for Peace, the organization’s food aid arm. “Then we’re going to have to prioritize.”
The reductions, international relief agencies say, will seriously complicate already strained efforts to combat global hunger, particularly in Africa, Central Asia and Latin America. Poor countries in those regions are struggling to cope with record food price surges, which have made it difficult for aid groups to sustain their operations in some countries.
The cuts will likely have a direct impact on major USAID partners, including aid groups and the United Nations World Food Program, the largest international provider, which counts on U.S food aid for 40 percent of its distribution.
The U.N. program is confronting similar price pressures. It announced this month that it was facing a $505 million shortfall due to soaring food and fuel costs, and would cut distribution if it did not receive new funds. Meanwhile, need is increasing. Afghanistan, for instance, recently put in an emergency request for $77 million to cope with skyrocketing prices that have put key staples out of reach for more and more Afghans.
“Look at what’s happened to wheat prices alone — they shot up 25 percent in one day last week,” said Josette Sheeran, executive director of the World Food Program. “This is really the first emergency we’ve faced without a drought, war, natural disaster. We will have to cut the amount of people being served or the amount of food being served if we do not get more funds.”
Groups that work with USAID, several of which have been informed of the shortfall over the past two weeks, are alarmed. Emergency aid is earmarked only for countries in desperate need as a result of natural disasters, civil strife or other humanitarian crises. Although the United States has proportionally provided less of the world’s food aid in recent years, it still provides about half the global total in efforts to relieve hunger among more than 800 million people. In 2007, USAID gave about 2.5 million tons of food, accounting for more than 50 percent of the emergency aid in a number of nations, including Ethiopia.
USAID officials would not speculate on which countries might be picked for cuts, though aid workers said it was unlikely that those with the greatest need — such as Sudan — would be hit hard. Most at risk appeared to be long-term emergency programs in such countries as Nepal, where unrest has quieted, as well as a number of African countries, such as Tanzania, that had relatively good harvests last year.
The Bush administration’s 2008 USAID budget request calls for $1.2 billion in food aid with a supplemental $350 million to cover assistance in Darfur and critical situations in southern Africa, Kenya and other hot spots.
USAID officials said the administration, facing a tight budget year, was not planning to request funds to cover the projected $200 million shortfall from the price increases. USAID purchases grains in the same domestic commodities market as the U.S. companies that serve up Wonder bread or Big Macs, meaning they pay the same high market rates. As a result, officials said, the program cuts are necessary. “At this point, this is the administration’s request,” Borns said yesterday.
Aid groups said they would press USAID and the Bush administration to pursue more funds from Congress to cover the shortfall. Several are concerned that the cuts come at a time when the Senate is considering a farm bill that would make it much harder for USAID to tap into non-emergency food in the event of a catastrophic event such as the 2004 Asian tsunami.
Frank Orzechowski, an adviser for Catholic Relief Services, said his organization has calculated that U.S. food aid would drop from 2.6 million tons last year to about 2.2 million this year. “That is going to be a pretty big hit for the people who can afford it the least,” he said.
“The biggest concern is that there are going to be more people being pushed into food insecurity in poor countries because they don’t have the purchasing power to cover higher costs, and we will be less rather than more prepared to cope with that. Higher commodity prices is not a situation that the U.S. is to blame for, but we are going to need to see it step up now and decide to make a greater contribution anyway.”
Although it may take several months before the cuts are felt, higher food prices already have begun to erode the non-emergency aid and development programs sponsored by USAID in partnership with CARE, Catholic Relief Services, World Vision and others. In the case of one Asian nation, CARE said USAID had provided 10 percent less non-emergency food aid than expected, citing higher prices.
In Liberia, Catholic Relief Services funds its developmental programs — including health worker training and technical assistance to farmers — by selling wheat or rice provided by USAID at market prices. But, Catholic Relief was unable to find buyers for those grains in January because market prices have jumped so high that local buyers have switched to cheaper foods. The aid group is scrambling to find alternate sources before its funding runs out in April.
Agonafer Shiferaw has enjoyed living in San Francisco the past three decades. But 33 years ago, the Ethiopian native never expected to stay in the United States.
Agonafer Shiferaw
Shiferaw was here temporarily to earn an economics degree at San Francisco State University before returning home to work in public service.
Political unrest in his native country, however, drastically changed Shiferaw’s plans while he was still a Bay Area student. A Marxist junta overthrew the Ethiopian government in 1974, which made it unsafe for Shiferaw to return to his birthplace.
“I didn’t plan to stay in the states,” Shiferaw, 56, explained this week, before quickly adding, “But this is my home.”
Over the past 22 years, Shiferaw has made quite a name for himself in San Francisco as the owner of Rasselas Jazz Club, which offers live music and Ethiopian cuisine seven nights a week.
So much so, in fact, that Shiferaw will receive the San Francisco Housing Development Corporation’s Geraldine Johnson award that recognizes a business leader in re-establishing the Fillmorejazz district.
“Geraldine Johnson was our founder and one of the people who was part of the task force and had a vision for re-establishing the Fillmore back in the 70s,” said Regina Davis, the housing development agency’s executive directory. “Agonafer is a business leader on a historic street and his work goes beyond the everyday responsibility of running a business. He’s building community.”
Sheferaw will receive his award at the private-nonprofit agency’s Thursday gala that celebrates the Fillmore District’s re-emergence, Davis said, and honors the agency’s 20-year effort to help minorities and low-income families achieve financial stability through owning a home.
Founding the first Rasselas on California and Divisadero streets in 1986, Shiferaw opened another Rasselas at 1534 Fillmore Street in 1999 when, he explained, the city’s redevelopment agency invited him to participate in revitalizing the lower Fillmore area. The first club remained in business until four years ago.
Shiferaw’s priority now is to restore the lower Fillmore as the place in San Francisco to hear jazz on a nightly basis, through a collaborative effort with other clubs on or near Fillmore Street, such as Sheba Piano Lounge, Yoshi’s and 1300 on Fillmore.
“We still have a long way to go,” Shiferaw said. “We need to identify, brand this area, increase the level of restaurants and nightclubs, and change the perception people have of the lower Fillmore that anything lower than Geary is not safe,”
Shiferaw is confident his Western Addition neighborhood will once again become a musical destination point, not just regionally, but internationally.
“Fillmore Street is quite safe. All kinds of people come to Rasselas, young and old, black, while, Asian, Spanish. It’s very diverse, very electric, very comfortable,” he adds.
While Shiferaw and his peers have, by his own admission, plenty of work to do before his priority is realized, they are making great progress.
And for February, Shiferaw has his own special recognition for his neighborhood.
“For Black History Month in 2008, I’m declaring the lower Fillmore as the Republic of Jazz,” he said.
(AFP) – The United Nations said Friday it was alarmed by a prolonged drought that has worsened food and water availability in Ethiopia’s southern Borena region.
Assessment teams have been sent to the area where insufficient October and December rainfall has spurred a surge in disease outbreaks and lifestock death, according to the UN office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
“Death and poor health conditions of livestock, dwindling water supplies and ongoing human disease outbreaks are having a negative impact upon health, nutrition and wellbeing in the region,” it said.
Around 4,660 livestock have died since mid-February, OCHA added in a statement.
“According to woreda (zonal) officials in Arero, limited availability of water for animal consumption is contributing to poor health of livestock and reported cases of diseases including: Anthrax, black leg, bloody diarrhoea and foot and mouth disease.”
Despite not reaching full drought proportions, poor rainfall in an upcoming season would have serious impacts on health and livelihoods in the entire region, OCHA said, calling for intervention from government and aid groups.
MOGADISHU (Garowe Online) – Ethiopian Woyanne-backed Somali government troops engaged in fierce fighting with insurgents in the capital Mogadishu Saturday, leading to at least 17 deaths, sources said.
Two police officers manning a checkpoint at Howlwadaag intersection near Bakara market were shot and killed in a sneak insurgent attack this morning. The killers armed with pistols escaped before police reinforcements rushed to the scene.
Witnesses saw police units take away the dead bodies towards the district headquarters.
Later in the day, heavy fighting erupted in parts of Hodan district and quickly spread into Bakara market, where insurgents backed into as a joint Somali-Woyanne Ethiopian force pushed forward with armored vehicles including tanks.
Artillery and tank shells hit Bakara business fronts and homes in the surrounding area, killing and wounding civilians shopping at the market or inside their homes, witnesses reported.
A Garowe Online correspondent saw two bodies, including a young child dressed in school uniform, lying on the ground lifelessly near Howlwadaag intersection that leads into Bakara.
It is not clear how many soldiers and insurgents died in today’s battle, but witnesses reported seeing dead bodies belonging to both groups of fighters.
Most civilians fled the area for personal safety, including our own correspondent.
Medical sources at Mogadishu’s Medina Hospital said 20 wounded people were admitted before 6pm local time, when the fighting slowed down to a halt as nighttime approached.
Today’s battle was one of the worst fighting Mogadishu has seen in months, according to our correspondent and residents.
Somali government officials have repeatedly accused Bakara market of being the headquarters of the insurgency, which includes Islamist guerrillas and clan fighters opposed to the presence of Ethiopian Woyanne army troops.
Mogadishu has seen relentless violence since January 2007 when the Ethiopian Woyanne army helped government troops overthrow the Islamic Courts movement that governed the capital since June 2006.
COLUMBUS, Ohio — Taking advantage of his financial edge, Senator Barack Obama is buying large amounts of advertising and building extensive get-out-the-vote operations in an effort to end Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s candidacy with twin defeats Tuesday in Ohio and Texas.
The intensity of Mr. Obama’s drive is especially apparent on television, where he has outspent Mrs. Clinton by nearly two to one in the two states. That is helping him eat deeply into double-digit leads she held in polls just weeks ago.
But after a month in which she raised $32 million — a remarkable amount, but still less than the $50 million or more brought in by Mr. Obama — Mrs. Clinton is fighting back.
The expenditures of the two Democratic presidential candidates, combined with a travel schedule that sent them and their surrogates from border to border in Texas and Ohio, reflect the expectation that the voting this week may be climactic. Mrs. Clinton’s advisers have suggested that she will bow out of the race if she falters in either state, after 11 straight losses.
Their face-offs are not just on television. Mr. Obama, of Illinois, has a town-hall-style meeting Sunday afternoon in Westerville, Ohio. Mrs. Clinton, of New York, just announced one there, too. Mr. Obama will be at Westerville Central High School, Mrs. Clinton at Westerville North High School.
Polls show that the race is deadlocked in Texas. Mrs. Clinton’s lead in Ohio has been whittled away, though she does still lead.
“Senator Obama is spending a lot of money on TV; if this can be purchased, he can win it,” Gov. Ted Strickland of Ohio, a Democrat who has campaigned across the state with Mrs. Clinton, said in an interview. “I think we’ve survived the initial blast of the Obama phenomenon, and we’re now holding steady.”
In a sign of Mr. Obama’s confidence and his strategy of amassing delegates wherever he can, he spent part of Saturday in Rhode Island, which with Vermont also votes on Tuesday.
Aides to Mrs. Clinton said she remained confident of winning the Ohio and Texas contests and would press on with her campaign, as signaled by her increasingly tough attacks on Mr. Obama.
But Clinton advisers have recently pointed to Mr. Obama’s financial advantage, in what appears to be an attempt to lay the groundwork to stay in the race should she lose by a small margin or squeak to victory in either or both states. “They are dumping a lot of money there,” said Mrs. Clinton’s chief strategist, Mark Penn, referring to the Obama campaign.
That said, Mrs. Clinton once enjoyed double-digit leads in both states, and her campaign had told supporters concerned about her string of losses that her effort to win the Democratic nomination would get back on track after solid wins in Ohio and Texas. Democrats said narrow victories there might not be enough to stanch a flow of uncommitted superdelegates — elected officials and party leaders — to Mr. Obama, who have until now deferred to the request by Mrs. Clinton’s advisers to wait for the vote in the two states.
Mr. Obama, campaign officials said, has spent about $10 million on television advertising in Texas since early February; Mrs. Clinton has spent just less than $5 million. Mr. Obama has spent about $5.3 million for television advertising in Ohio, compared with just under $3 million for Mrs. Clinton, the officials said.
Those figures do not take into account substantial advertising being presented for Mr. Obama by the Service Employees International Union. It also does not include money that Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton spent in Texas on Spanish-language television and radio stations in a competition for Latino voters, whom Mrs. Clinton had once considered an unassailable part of her base.
“I have many friends in Texas; I know your tradition and culture,” Mrs. Clinton said in one commercial broadcasting in Houston this weekend, speaking into the camera as subtitles translate her remarks into Spanish.
Mr. Obama’s financial advantage is helping him beyond the airwaves. His campaign flew 200 paid organizers from across the country to 10 campaign offices in Texas right after the Feb. 5 primaries, aides said, when some of Mrs. Clinton’s staff members were volunteering to work without pay. Another 150 were sent to build get-out-the-vote networks in Ohio, working for Paul Tewes, who was the Obama campaign’s director in Iowa. Mr. Obama’s eight-point victory in that state’s caucuses gave his campaign a huge boost.
Mrs. Clinton’s on-the-ground effort is no less aggressive and extensive; in particular, she has tapped into the network of support provided to her by Mr. Strickland. But in both states, her corps of workers are made up largely of volunteers. Many are from the two states, but others came here and to Texas on their own dime — typically from Washington and New York, some responding to an e-mail plea from Chelsea Clinton.
“We need as many people on the ground in Texas, Ohio, Rhode Island and Vermont as we can get,” Ms. Clinton wrote.
Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama were relying on surrogates to help carry their message ahead of the contests this week. Their identities offered a hint at the kind of voters both candidates were going after.
For Mrs. Clinton, it was Richard A. Gephardt, the former House Democratic leader from Missouri. Mr. Gephardt, a longtime opponent of trade deals like the North American Free Trade Agreement, was campaigning in the blue-collar Mahoning Valley in Ohio.
Mr. Obama has Arcade Fire, the popular indie-rock group who announced that the leading members would perform for him on Sunday at Stuart’s Opera House in Nelsonville. The city is not far from Ohio University and many of the younger voters that Mr. Obama seeks. (Aides to Mrs. Clinton, distressed that a band with many fans at the Clinton headquarters would join the line of supporters heading into the Obama camp, pointed out that the band was Canadian; in fact, while its members live there now, they grew up in Texas.)
If the Clinton and Obama campaigns succeed at their goals, every Democrat in the state will get a knock on the door from a supporter of one candidate or the other. Thousands of Mr. Obama’s supporters gathered Saturday morning at 75 staging stations.
In Texas, Mr. Obama’s campaign began the final part of its Caucus Education Program to make certain its supporters understood the state’s complicated voting procedure: a primary, in which two-thirds of the delegates are chosen, is followed by a caucus, which determines the remaining delegates. Volunteers went door-to-door leaving pamphlets that explained what the campaign had come to call the Texas Two Step, to remind Obama supporters that they had to vote twice.
Mr. Obama has repeatedly defeated Mrs. Clinton in caucuses. Because of that, his aides said, he could win more Texas delegates even if he lost the popular vote. Aides to Mrs. Clinton said Saturday that in part because of defeats she had suffered to Mr. Obama in caucuses, they had made an all-out effort to identify voters who would get out for both the primary during the day and the caucuses at night.
Here in Ohio, both candidates have focused on urban and suburban areas. Mrs. Clinton is also campaigning in rural areas and southeast Ohio, which she views as one of her strongest parts of the state. (Mr. Strickland did particularly well there in his election as governor.)
In Texas, both candidates staged last-minute efforts in Dallas, Houston and San Antonio, where both Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama had rallies Friday evening. Mrs. Clinton’s campaign brought in Mayor Antonio R. Villaraigosa of Los Angeles as part of an extensive roster of Latino surrogates sent across South Texas, reflecting the intensity of the struggle for those voters.
Mr. Obama focused on parts of the state with large concentrations of African-American residents, from Beaumont in East Texas to Houston, both with significant populations of evacuees from Hurricane Katrina.
Heading into the final days before the nominating contests this week, Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama used heavy television advertising to reinforce what had been the central closing themes of their campaigns.
Across Texas, Mrs. Clinton presented an advertisement that starkly suggested Mr. Obama was not ready to lead the world in dangerous times, echoing a similar charge she made against him Saturday in speeches in the state.
The Obama campaign began running a series of new advertisements in Texas over the weekend. Among them was a pointed response to Mrs. Clinton’s attack on his national security credentials, in which he criticized her judgment in voting for the resolution authorizing President Bush to proceed with the Iraq war.
Advertisements in Ohio reflected the prominent role that trade has taken here. Mr. Obama filled the airwaves with a spot saying he opposed Nafta, a pact put in place while Bill Clinton was president. Meanwhile, advertising in the state from Mrs. Clinton appealed to blue-collar workers by attacking trade and tax policies that she said unfairly protected corporations.
The extent of Mr. Obama’s financial advantage was increasingly clear this weekend and stirred concern among Mrs. Clinton’s supporters.
Mr. Obama has already begun spending money on staffing and television advertisements in some states coming up after Tuesday. Mrs. Clinton’s expenditures there have been minimal.
Clinton advisers said the television advertisement about Mr. Obama’s readiness for the White House — it features children sleeping while a narrator asks who would be better able to deal as president with a middle-of-the-night telephone call or a crisis — would be shown only in Texas. Part of that strategy was based on the calculation that the security message would resonate better in Texas than Ohio, where the economy is the overwhelming issue. But another aspect, an aide said, was that the advertisements would gain free coverage in the Ohio news media, saving money.
Financial concerns have also played into a decision by Mrs. Clinton’s campaign to buy time on the Fox sports channel to broadcast across Texas a town-hall-style forum that she will hold Monday near Austin.
Her aides said the venue was chosen in part to reach white male voters who had moved steadily to Mr. Obama. But the bigger factor, they said, was that the channel was a relatively inexpensive outlet.
Jeff Zeleny contributed reporting from San Antonio.
