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The devastating tsunami that struck Southeast Asia
and East Africa right after Christmas is now known
to have killed over 200,000 people, with at least
hundreds of thousands more injured or left homeless
by the worst natural disaster in modern times. A
large number of people affected by the catastrophe
have seen everything they own swept away by the sea,
and they find themselves in dire need of food,
shelter, clean water, and medical attention. Indeed,
the humanitarian crisis in the affected countries is
staggering. The people and government of the
United States, and other countries as well, have
striven to follow the deadly tsunami with an
unprecedented outpouring of assistance to the
region. I commend all Mainers who have opened their
pocketbooks to share their wealth with people who
have lost everything.
One critical element of the relief effort are
food aid programs run by the U.S. Department of
Agriculture (USDA). USDA's Foreign Agricultural
Service is working with other government agencies to
provide assistance in the aftermath of the tsunami.
Much of that assistance involves providing emergency
food supplies made possible by the great
productivity of U.S. farms. Maine, in particular, is
able to contribute substantially to the stores of
food available for that assistance due to its large
farm population. In fact, the 2002 Census of
Agriculture, the most recent year for which figures
are available, reports that Maine had 7,196 farms
with 1,369,768 acres of farmland. Maine’s cash
receipts—value received by farmers for the sales of
agricultural products—for 2002 was $214 million for
total crops and $230.4 million for the sale of
livestock and related products (milk, eggs, etc.),
or a total of $444.4 million.
Through the years, USDA’s food aid programs have
demonstrated their effectiveness in using the bounty
produced by farms in Maine and in the rest of the
country to help people in need. That is why I am
concerned that their funding for fiscal year 2005
will be inadequate due to the strain of coping with
the recent tsunami. Even before the tsunami struck,
other unanticipated natural disasters and wars had
strained USDA’s ability to provide emergency food
aid while maintaining long term commitments to
development assistance projects.
In an attempt to avoid this upcoming shortfall, I
joined earlier this month with more than forty of my
Senate colleagues in sending a letter to President
Bush urging him to address the food aid shortage in
the context of the supplemental appropriations bill
he is planning to submit within the next several
weeks to cover the cost of military operations in
Iraq and Afghanistan. It is crucial that we take
these steps and not attempt to meet emergency needs
by further cutting existing programs, and previous
cuts made to developmental food aid programs in this
fiscal year should be restored. It would not be
appropriate to help the people of South Asia and
East Africa by reducing aid to people in other
developing countries. Rather, the extraordinary
situation we find ourselves in should spur us to
increase our generosity rather than spread it more
thinly.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Foreign
Agricultural Service helps provide U.S. agricultural
commodities to feed millions of hungry people in
needy countries, but it could not do its job without
the hard work of farmers in Maine and across the
country. The value of these assistance programs has
become strikingly evident in the wake of last
month’s catastrophic tsunami, and I will do all I
can to make sure they remain adequately funded.
Their goal is consistent with the will of the
American people – that our surplus food go to help
those who are in need.
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