10 Questions for Ertharin Cousin

The U.N. World Food Programme (WFP) will spend about $4 billion this year. How many people can you feed for that?
More than 95 million. Some of them are refugees, but they are all what we describe as the hungry poor, the most vulnerable.

And what does the U.S. get for the $1.4 billion it provides?
The U.S. gets food security around the world. As the President of Niger said, Food security is security. You can’t talk about creating a secure world when mothers can’t feed their children, when fathers have no access to the financial resources that are necessary to feed their families.

Is there going to come a time when the planet can’t produce enough food for everyone?
No. There are some who disagree with me because of population growth. But humans are very innovative, and we have the ability to increase the yield of small farmers in places where food didn’t grow 50 years ago. We can feed the entire population, but it’s going to require sustained investments.

So why are people still going hungry? It can’t be that there’s not the public will.
The global community tends to invest during times of crisis and emergency. We saw it in Haiti. What we need is a recognition that in order to change things, we need to give people the ability to feed themselves. But the media don’t cover these kinds of stories. They don’t cover the opportunity — they cover the crisis.

How much of the problem is a lack of trust? Three years ago, a U.N. report said that the food aid from the WFP wasn’t getting to the hungry.
I am not so naive as to suggest that you don’t have crime and diversion of food. But it’s such a small percentage — it’s less than 1% of what we deliver.

Are there any new advances you’re excited about?
Drip irrigation, which ensures that farmers who don’t have access to water or mechanized irrigation systems can use very simple tools to grow fields in places where there’s no food. And RUSF [ready-to-use supplementary food], a paste we give to children in addition to breast milk. Studies show that a lack of micronutrients from conception until the age of 2 means a child will likely be stunted both physically and mentally in irreparable ways.

What keeps you awake at night?
The growing cost of Syria and the potential detrimental impact that has on everything else we do in the world. Right now we’re projecting that we’ll feed 4 million people inside Syria by December and 2.8 million people outside Syria in five neighboring countries by year-end.

As a kid, you were bused from the west side of Chicago to a white school. Are you a busing success story?
I am a success story, but I laugh because I have a sister who is younger and didn’t get bused, and she’s a managing director for IBM in Paris.

You were in the Clinton Administration, and Hillary was an early champion. How did you vote in the 2008 primaries?
I supported Barack Obama. Barack was my neighbor before he was my state senator. [Obama senior adviser] Valerie Jarrett lived in 9A. I lived in 9B. These are relationships that are very long. The Clintons understood that.

I have a colleague who lived on WFP cookies for five days in Haiti. He said they taste nasty. Can you get on that?
We try to provide food that the community is accustomed to eating. But when you go in an emergency, Day One you’re providing what’s available. Taste is secondary. So apologize to him, and let him know it’s something we’re working on.