As you may already know, the MCC threshold program works with countries to undertake target policy reforms to improve a country’s score on a particular MCC indicator. The hope is that the country will perform better on the indicator(s) that determine compact eligibility, and that if they are selected as compact-eligible the country will be prepared to successfully implement their compact. MCC CEO Daniel Yohannes said of the threshold program, “With vital support from Congress for MCC’s budget and critical legislative fixes, we will continue to have the ability to partner with reform-minded countries committed to wisely investing American taxpayer resources in sustainable development that benefits us all in our interconnected global marketplace.”

Liberia’s threshold program will improve land registration capacity, improve land administration, and assist with land rights education. It will also support a scholarship program for girls, provide schools with grants to improve the school environment, and support mentoring programs. With regard to trade policies, the funding will assist with harmonizing tariffs and strengthening regulatory capacity.

In Timor-Leste, the threshold program will focus on strengthening local community health units, improving vaccine-preventable disease monitoring and immunization systems, and training health service providers. The program will also help build effective anti-corruption institutions.

Both threshold programs are currently in their 15-day congressional notification and consultation period. Following this, USAID will assume responsibility for implementing the threshold programs while MCC will remain the primary overseer. It is encouraging to see countries continuing to move through the MCC system and making reforms in the hope of becoming compact-eligible. If you’d like to learn more, you can read the press releases about the Timor-Leste and Liberia threshold program announcements.

Overview:

• Top line goals: increased agriculture-led growth and improved nutritional status
• Commits $3.5 billion over three years for global agriculture and food security.
• Adheres to five essential principles of quality development assistance: Country-owned, coordinated, comprehensive, leveraging multilateral institutions, and delivering sustainable and accountable commitments.
• Invests in country-owned plans or as the initiative calls them, Country Investment Plans. These plans will be constructed by the developing countries in consultation with a comprehensive set of stakeholders such as civil society organizations, farmer’s organizations, the private sector, research institutions and the US government.

The Plan:
The Initiative consists of two investment phases for supporting selected countries. Phase I will lay the policy and capacity foundation upon which to build/scale-up future investments. It will include financial, political, and technical investments to help countries construct sound Country Investment Plans (CIP). The CIP will then be evaluated based on 3 criteria:

1. A multi-stakeholder review of the technical quality and soundness;
2. Evidence of coordination and consultation with key stakeholders (e.g. NGOs, smallholder farmers, farmers unions, etc.); and
3. Focus Country commitment to partnership, governance and adequate capacity for following through on financial and policy commitments.

Phase II is where the U.S. undertakes larger-scale investment in priority areas that align with the CIP, as well as additional core investments that result in greater impacts at the country and regional level. This phase also builds the foundation for sustainable and inclusive market-led growth.

Based on conservative estimates using preliminary analysis, the global effort of which FTF is a part expects to increase the incomes of at least 40 million people and provide nutrition packages for 25 million children. These estimates do not include the millions of families that will benefit indirectly from the general income increases, better markets, and research innovations funded by this initiative.

The Analysis:
All in all, we’re very excited about this initiative. After a truly mammoth effort, the FTF team has managed a feat, constructing a plan that is comprehensive, reflects a whole-of-government approach, and is demand driven, allowing countries themselves to direct investments. The strategy also makes a clear commitment to reaching women and to addressing issues of conversation and climate change. If fully funded, this initiative will meet the financial and principle commitments made at the L’Aquila G8. It also serves as a model for how other donors can implement a plan that meets the qualitative principles outlined at L’Aquila.

There are several outstanding questions about FTF including what staffing will look like in-country and who within the U.S. government will ultimately be responsible and accountable for the successful implementation of this initiative. Also, as Country Investment Plans are submitted, USAID in consultation with other stakeholders including other government agencies and the NGO community will provide feedback. While this process is essential, the timeline must be closely monitored to ensure that countries don’t get “stuck” in Phase I.

In his speech, Administrator Shah emphasized that the initiative will engage “from research to table” and will focus on quality (not just quantity) of investments across the entire value chain, and will focus on investing in country-owned plans. The initiative will focus on investing in women, will coordinate U.S. government actions while also aligning with other donors, and will have a strong focus on monitoring and evaluation, publishing both successes and failures. Administrator Shah outlined three metrics: women’s income, malnutrition, and agricultural production that will help guide data collection. Shah concluded his speech by promising to have one single point-of-contact in-country. He also encouraged NGOs and contractor organizations to align their activities with country investment plans, and called upon the private sector to partner and provide advice. Lastly, he emphasized that Congress must fund this initiative in order for it to be a long-standing part of U.S. development assistance.

Throughout the day we heard from many distinguished speakers. In the first panel Cheryl Mills, who has been leading this effort within State Department, noted that stepping out of one’s own culture is a challenge, but that without country-owned plans, like those called for in the FTF initiative, development will not be sustainable. She also noted that foreign assistance must set up conditions that work towards eliminating the need for foreign assistance. We heard from Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack who called the FTF initiative an enormously important effort, demonstrating USDA’s support. Liberian President The Honorable Ellen Johnson Sirleaf also spoke, commending the FTF initiative and noting that she views the agriculture sector as a vehicle for employment in Liberia, and will be committing public investments from 2010-2013 in the sector to nutrition security, value chain development, institutional development, and creation of markets.

The panels of the day tackled questions of market access, policy reform, regional integration, and capacity building. Some interesting themes included the serious impact of a changing climate in developing countries—emphasized in particular by the Bangladeshi Minister of Food and Disaster Management, Muhammad Abdur Razzaque. The Malian Agriculture Minister, Aghatham Ag Alhassane and others also pushed the importance of nutrition initiatives. The Minister noted that he would not be here today if it weren’t for the food he received through school feeding programs as a child.

To cap off a day of fantastic learning, last night ONE along with several other NGOs co-hosted a reception on the Hill. A packed room got to hear from Congresswoman Betty McCollum (D-MN), Marshall M. Bouton, President, The Chicago Council on Global Affairs, Connie Veillette, Senior Professional Staff, Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Modibo Makalou, Special Advisor to Mali’s President Amadou Toure, and Muhammad Abdur Razzaque, Bangladesh’s Minister of Food and Disaster Management. The speakers made a clear connection between the success of the FTF and the passage of the Global Food Security Act, which will entrench agriculture and food security as a U.S. priority.

It is both clear and extremely encouraging that the Administration wants to work with Congress to secure funding for the FTF initiative. However, there is also a need to broaden that partnership in order to build long-term support for these issues, and to ensure that these issues remain on the agenda regardless of changes in Congress or the Administration. Yesterday demonstrated the amazing energy and manpower behind our nation’s commitment to food security. It also left us with a clear mandate for our next steps: we must pass the Global Food Security Act. We’ll be calling on all of you to pitch in, so be prepared.

Tomorrow is an exciting day for global agriculture and food security. First off, ONE is co-sponsoring an event hosted by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. The symposium on global agriculture and food security will bring together NGOs, academics, policymakers, dignitaries, and others to discuss the current status of and progress moving forward in U.S. food security and agricultural development policy.

The event will feature a morning keynote address by USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah. Administrator Shah is expected to announce and explain the much-anticipated Feed the Future initiative—the Administration’s comprehensive plan that will guide U.S. food security investments. You can watch the livestream of the morning session beginning at 9:00 AM tomorrow on the State Department’s website, including Administrator Shah’s keynote. You can also check out an agenda of the conference, if you’re curious.

To find out more about the Feed the Future initiative, you can visit the dedicated website which will house important information following Administrator Shah’s speech.

Also be sure to come back to the blog tomorrow and Friday where those of us attending the conference will provide a recap and reactions.

This hearing served to highlight not only the importance of global food security, which has been a topic of conversation and action some time, but to hear in greater detail how the Administration’s Global Food Security Initiative aligns with the principles of the Global Food Security Act.

Senator Kerry opened the event by reminding us that the International Affairs Budget is being challenged, and that short-changing programs like the Global Food Security Initiative will provide some budget relief, but at great cost to global efforts. Senator Lugar also noted the seriousness of food insecurity, and emphasized that with rising energy costs, climate change, and water scarcity, feeding a growing global population will be increasingly difficult without dramatic action.

We gained some additional insight into the Administration’s Global Food Security Initiative—which has been dubbed the Feed the Future initiative. Per Deputy Secretary Lew and Administrator Shaw’s testimonies, the Administration’s initiative will be centered on four principles: science and technology, the essential role of women in food security, the U.S. comparative advantage, and working in partnership with developing countries. Administrator Shaw emphasized that the initiative would coordinate with countries’ agricultural plans, focus on sustainable, location-specific innovation, and work to establish access to credit and markets.

Several important themes emerged from the hearing, including:

• The importance of coordination, both on the ground in-country, and within the U.S. government, to ensure that the U.S. Global Food Security Initiative can have the fullest impact possible
• The crucial role that women play in making this initiative successful. Projects within the initiative will be designed specifically to engage women, and gender disaggregated data will be collected to monitor the success of the initiative at making the most of the lynchpin role women play in producing food as well as feeding and investing in their families.
• The need to continue to increase capacity at USAID to implement this food security strategy. Lower funding rates for agriculture in the last two decades have meant less staff capacity for agricultural projects at USAID. The agency has already begun scaling up their agricultural expertise, and will continue to do so in order to implement this initiative.
• The links between food insecurity and instability. Increases in food prices in 2008 sparked riots across the globe. This is just one example of the possibility that increased food insecurity can lead to increased economic instability which, in turn, can spur political instability.

While we have yet to see an implementation plan for this initiative, this hearing gave us a taste of the actions the administration intends to take. It was also promising to hear the common themes drawn from the hearing and to see the commitment to food security demonstrated both by the Senators and members of the Administration.

Intrigued? Want to know more. Watch the hearing or check out the statements from Senator Kerry, Senator Lugar, Deputy Secretary Lew, Administrator Shah, and Dan Glickman and Catherine Bertini.

As of yesterday, donors that have made commitments to the fund are: the United States ($475 million); Canada ($230 million); Spain ($95 million), South Korea ($50 million); and The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation ($30 million), for a fund total of just under $900 million.

Funding from the U.S. and Canada is new money that was not previously in the pipeline for agriculture or food security. While it is unclear whether funding from Spain and South Korea is new, it is encouraging to see these two donors stepping up as leaders. Spain has had a long-standing commitment to food security and pledged a commitment at the G8 in 2009 as part of the L’Aquila Food Security Initiative. South Korea recently joined the OECD-DAC and has pledged to scale up their ODA. As the next leader of the G20, South Korea will co-host the June G20 meeting with Canada, and welcome the G20 to Seoul in November 2010. It is thus particularly exciting to see South Korea committing to global food security in this way, and perhaps paving the way for commitments from other emerging economies.

The mandate of the GAFSP focuses on financing medium- and long-term elements of agricultural development in three major areas: raising agricultural productivity, linking farmers to markets, and providing technical assistance and capacity building. Raising agricultural productivity could involve initiatives like investing in irrigation infrastructure, better ways to use land, and facilitating mechanisms that allow farmers to cheaply lease farm machinery. To link farmers to markets the fund could invest in upgrading rural infrastructure like roads, and improving the collection and dissemination of market information through communication technology. Technical assistance and capacity building will strengthen institutions, networks, and organizations in developing countries that play a role in the agriculture sector.

GAFSP also has a small private-sector component that will provide financing for small- and medium-sized agribusinesses that work with smallholder farmers and help bring them into the local and global value chain.

We will post additional details on the blog as the GAFSP begins to consider country proposals and fund initiatives, so keep an eye out!

Tomorrow morning, there will be a Senate hearing about a bipartisan effort to pass the Global Food Security Act. You might also know it as the Lugar-Casey bill, introduced by (you guessed it) Senators Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) and Robert Casey (D-Penn.). The hearing will discuss the existing legislation and revisions to it which are a collaborative effort between the Senators, Representative McCollum who introduced the House counterpart bill, the Administration (including those agencies focused on the U.S. Global Food Security Initiative like the State Department and USAID), and with input from a large proportion of the NGO community. Keep an eye on the blog for posts about the content of the legislation and the next steps ONE will be taking to get it passed.

The Global Agriculture and Food Security Program (GAFSP) at the World Bank will also be launched tomorrow. What you might not get from the cumbersome acronym is that this is actually a multi-donor trust fund that will serve as a mechanism to provide funding for developing countries’ vetted agriculture plans. While the GAFSP platform is housed at the World Bank, the program is actually independently governed and does not fund World Bank priorities. GAFSP was called for as part of last September’s G20 statement on food security. We’ll have a read-out from the launch event and additional fund details for you.

In Johannesburg, beginning tomorrow, there is Partnership Platform meeting for the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP). CAADP is an African-led initiative through which African governments have pledged to commit 10% of national budgets to agriculture and achieve agricultural growth rates of 6% or higher. Countries undertake a multi-step process that includes engaging a variety of stakeholders to create a country plan for achieving these goals. Partnership Platforms are held every six months to evaluate progress and country-level experiences in implementing the CAADP process. ONE’s own Emily Alpert will be on the ground in Johannesburg and will be bringing you updates from there.

If you’re looking for a good place you start your learning, you can review our Food Security in Focus series. It has policy posts and some great partner content from the field. You can also check out our Agriculture issue page.

Some folks think that agriculture and food security are difficult to get excited about—but what could be more important than helping communities become self sustaining?

One of our days in hot and green Mozambique was spent welcoming some ONE delegation members to a water and sanitation site run by a public private partnership called Water and Sanitation for the Urban Poor (WSUP) which includes ONE’s long-time partner CARE.

WSUP works in Maputo’s urban slums, called bairros, connecting families with the water network and building sanitation blocks to replace latrines. They also complement the physical infrastructure they install with health and hygiene in the bairro schools. The organization is a unique public-private partnership between private sector companies like Thames Water, Halcrow, and Unilever, NGOs like CARE, Water Aid, and WWF, and Cranfield University. A core component of WSUP’s operation is to working in close collaboration with local authorities, municipalities, and local service providers to provide sustainable solutions that will be used and maintained even once donors leave.

Our first stop was at the bairro’s standpipe—the current water provision mechanism. The standpipe is open for several hours each day and people line up with their jerry cans, sometimes for hours, to get water. When we visited, the line was comprised almost entirely of women and girls who after filling them would carry the jerry cans home on their heads. Our second stop was the home of a family who saved to pay for the installation of a water tap just outside their house. The mother explained that she was thrilled with the tap—it’s allowed her more time to purchase and market the vegetables she sells to earn her family income. Her family has also been able to sell some water to their neighbors, adding a source of income for them.

Walking through the unpaved, muddy streets of the bairro, it was clear that families live close together and there isn’t space in homes for personal sanitation facilities. We visited a latrine—shared by more than 30 families—which is typical of the sanitation situation in the bairros. A sanitation block is slated for installation soon, about which the community is very excited. We then saw a sanitation block in another part of the bairro. The block is a simple, concrete structure that takes about two months to construct. It has toilets as well as a water pipe and place for families to do laundry. The block is maintained by a committee of people in the community, and the water pipe is operated by a woman who draws an income from opening and closing the pipe each day and ensuring that the meter is paid so that residents can receive water.

The need for improved water and sanitation services in Maputo are severe and growing. The city is home to over 1 million residents and is growing at 6% annually. The water supply coverage from a conventional network is around 40%. The general coverage for sanitation is around 82%, and in the peri-urban areas there have been significant investments for the construction of improved latrines. Mozambique’s Government policy is to improve these conditions but it does not have the capacity without assistance.

The WSUP project in Maputo aims to improve the health and living standards of residents by providing sustainable access to potable water for 180,000 people and improved sanitation facilities for 100,000. Their hygiene programs also reach 11,000 children. Our bairro visit really opened our eyes to the challenges in the water and sanitation sector—and the opportunities. WSUP is making impressive progress talking this issue and it was a treat to see them in action!

We welcome this increase as a harbinger of continued interest in the MCC, which is especially exciting considering the difficult economic climate. We were concerned that given the budget environment, the MCA could have taken a hit and been unable to fund crucial compacts in the pipeline like those of Zambia and Malawi.

The MCC is a unique foreign assistance institution that support country-led development plans. The MCC focuses specifically on supporting programs that reduce poverty by encouraging sustainable economic growth through market-based investments in agriculture, infrastructure, water, education, private sector development, and capacity building. The MCC selects countries to receive assistance based on their performance on 17 policy indicators. Countries then construct a “compact” which outlines the greatest barriers to their own development and proposes initiatives to address those hurdles. The MCC currently has compacts with 11 sub-Saharan Africa countries, valued at a total of approximately $5 billion.

Several countries are in the process of compact development and are expected to complete and sign those compacts in FY2011, including Malawi, Zambia, Cape Verde, and Indonesia. While the increase in the account is very exciting, it may not be enough to fully fund the two or three compacts that could come due next year.

We’ll also be keeping an eye on the MCC as the institution settles in with their new CEO, and contemplates possible reforms—like concurrent and regional compacts. The budget request may be in, but be sure to check back here for other MCC developments.

Investment in the transportation, infrastructure, and agriculture sectors will enable Moldova to make the most of their agricultural production and use it to enhance economic growth. The high-value agriculture project is intended to increase production of and marketing opportunities for lucrative produce like fruits and vegetables. This project could help increase farmers’ incomes and generate opportunities in Moldova’s rural areas. Farmers could also benefit from improved access to credit as well as a technical assistance scheme co-financed by USAID, which will help farmers transition to higher-value agriculture, post-harvest processing, storage, and marketing.

The irrigation project is slated to repair 11 large irrigation systems which irrigate 15,500 hectares of land, while the road rehabilitation project includes repairs to a 93 kilometer stretch of highway that is a key link for passenger travel as well as trade.

Moldova previously completed an MCC Threshold program in which they focused on combating corruption in the country. As MCC CEO Daniel Yohannes mentioned, “I commend Moldova’s commitment to poverty reduction and economic development opportunities. Moldova’s MCC threshold program has already created an environment where innovative technologies, productivity, and increased access to markets can flourish. Now, with this Compact, MCC looks forward to deepening our partnership with the people of Moldova to foster long-term economic growth.”

Moldovan Prime Minister Filat commented that the Compact will greatly assist Moldova in moving from a difficult past towards a successful future.