I just dedicated a week to leading the U.S. delegation at a worldwide conference with global leaders on the crisis of whole populations left hungry and without hope. This high-level food security conference of the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization set immediate humanitarian aid as the first and most critical need. Leaders declared support for increased food production, more freely traded food supplies and the importance of science and technology to feed expanding populations with long-term commitments.

Agricultural trade has the mutually beneficial purpose of making lives better by providing food for hungry people. In humanitarian efforts, the United States is the leader, supplying more than half of all global food aid to feed hungry nations. In agriculture, America’s farmers and ranchers consistently supply high-quality food in demand by consumers worldwide. In the business of trade, we have a positive balance — with more U.S. crops and food sold abroad in exports — a record $108.5 billion estimated in U.S. sales this year.

Fundamental to trade is the benefit derived among participating nations. Unfortunately, Congress has not acted in the best interest of the American farmer and rancher by stalling approval of the signed trade agreement with Colombia. By approving trade with Korea and Panama, Congress could also provide three extremely important markets for American exports for years to come.

This smothering inaction on trade also has troubling similarities in governments elsewhere in the world, where national self-interests become selfish interests by blocking the free movement of food and technological advancements in food production, and by promoting the sanctioned withholding of crops from world markets with export limits. This past week in Rome, as I engaged in discussion at the conference, I saw agreement about the causes of these problems.

Agreeing on the causes, we also took head-on what are not the causes of high food prices and low food supplies. The conference declaration recognized the challenges, but also the opportunities presented from crops grown to supplement our fuel supplies. The use of sustainable biofuels can increase energy security, foster economic development, especially in rural areas, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions without weighing heavily on food prices.

At the conference, I presented the United States’ three-prong strategy: immediate and expanded humanitarian aid targeting the most critical needs, support for rapid increase of production of key staple foods in developing countries and the free flow of food and food producing advancements.

A few weeks ago, I discussed the challenge of how to best increase agricultural productivity in developing countries with Dr. Norman Borlaug, the Nobel Prize-winning agronomist whose work in advancing the Green Revolution is estimated to have saved a billion lives. Borlaug reminded me of an unwavering and fundamental truth: That we must methodically upgrade our agricultural production practices to meet the world’s ever-expanding needs.

In the United States, technological innovations in corn production have accelerated historic yields over the past 10 years, while herbicide usage has declined by 29 percent and insecticide usage by 81 percent. We regularly and freely offer this help to developing countries because they need these types of yield advancements to even hope to sustain their populations.

This research and hard work has made America the breadbasket of the world. Helping fight hunger is a tradition for the United States. With President Bush’s recent budget requests, the United States will provide $5 billion to fight global hunger in the next two years.

World grain prices have risen 55 percent and oilseeds 37 percent since 2005, and demand is outstripping commodity supplies, putting wheat at its lowest reserve levels in decades. The grain’s high costs have made it impossible for developing nations to feed desperately needed wheat to their own people.

President Bush responded to the gravity of the situation. During the past several months, he authorized the use of emergency international food aid in the Bill Emerson Humanitarian Trust. By selling wheat in the trust, the
USDA received a high price that brought in cash to buy green peas, yellow split peas, vegetable oil, hard white wheat, corn soy blend, sorghum and cornmeal to feed the hungry in Ethiopia, Kenya, Zimbabwe and Afghanistan as well as North Korea. We sold the wheat asset at a high price to gain more cash for the trust, and bought at a low cost the various foodstuffs to feed many more than the wheat alone could have.

Additionally, the sale of the wheat added more supply in the marketplace to ease demand and ended the cost of government storage of wheat that had totaled nearly $1 billion since 1980.  

There are innovative ways to begin to break the cycle of hunger, but they require bold commitment. Just consider: All crops begin as seeds. As much as ideas often are expressed as the seeds of action, the solutions to world hunger require similar attention to care and commitment so nations will open their borders to trade and their minds to acceptance of new technologies, and will foster the ideals to help feed the hungry.  

Scattered seeds on the hillside come together as wheat in a loaf of bread. The world does not lack the resources. We are not running out of food. And I am convinced we have an abundant storehouse of will and compassion to supply the solutions.

Schafer is the secretary of agriculture.