Administrator Samantha Power At the Wall Street Journal’s Global Food Forum

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KATHRYN DILL: It was said that as U.S. Ambassador to the UN, you managed to link the marginal, vulnerable, and oppressed to the core national security interests of the U.S. And you're the first USAID Administrator to have a seat on the National Security Council, and under your leadership, the Agency is tackling everything from global food security, to toxic lead in consumer goods. I've heard that you call it Progress Beyond Programs - tell us about this expanded vision for USAID.

ADMINISTRATOR SAMANTHA POWER: Well, first, maybe - thank you for the question. To step back, just for those who may not be familiar with USAID in the way that you might be if you lived in a small, remote village in Kenya. USAID is an organization of around 13,000 employees, about three quarters of our overseas workforce are nationals of the countries in which we work. So in Ukraine, Ukrainians, in Nigeria, Nigerians, in Guatemala, Guatemalans. And that's our superpower, in part, because they work for USAID for 10, 20, 30 years. Some of them are former ministers, they're engineers, they're agronomists, they come from the private sector, they're teachers helping us with education policy.

But, what we try to do as USAID, and have for generations since President [John F.] Kennedy created the Agency, is - and I put this humbly - is solve the world's hardest problems, or at least mitigate the world's biggest challenges. And these days, that's more conflict than we've seen at any point since the Cold War. It's, of course, more extreme weather events and climate-related natural disasters - and so pure emergency humanitarian assistance. But the core of what we do is try to work ourselves out of jobs and invest in key economic sectors like the agricultural sector.

When something like COVID hits, which, of course, luckily only happened once the last century, but nonetheless, was of a gravity that is still hard to find words for, it was USAID that went out and took the vaccines that were produced in rapid order, and made them available to poor countries that otherwise not only wouldn't be able to afford them, but wouldn't have even been anywhere really in the queue, given how in demand those were.

And climate change now, as we think about just changing weather patterns, you know, too much water, too little water, and agriculture being a source and driver of economic growth in so many countries, we now have to think about this changing weather as a design feature of our support for SMEs, of our support for small-scale farmers. And so that's about looking at innovation that's being done here, probably by some of you, by many of you - I know Corteva is here. I visited Corteva and saw some of their work to try to get ahead of changing weather patterns. And how do we cut down the time it takes between those innovations coming online and some proof of concept, and that small-scale farmer in that very remote area who doesn't just want to make ends meet, but wants to actually be part of a value chain and wants USAID's help in maybe getting some access to capital, maybe, you know, understanding what the consumer wants in some market that they've never dreamed of. And that's really the core of what we do.

I think if you ask what I brought, to the degree I've brought anything, certainly it's policy, geopolitical awareness of where we fit in. Obviously, the PRC has a very different model of development. Many of the countries in which we work are now dealing with crippling debt, which was something the last time I was in government, under President [Barack] Obama, which wasn't very long ago - it really wasn't as big a game changer as it has become. It really inhibits what they can invest in the agricultural sector, in the health sector, in education.

So we're very different. We want countries to become independent, not dependent, and not stuck, again, spending more on servicing debt than on health and agriculture combined, which is true now in a number of the countries in which we are working.

So, the PRC is in the back, and so I think making sure that we are telling our story properly, making sure that we are bringing technology into our programming as quickly as we can. I confess, we are still figuring out, as you are, because you were right about the workforce here. You know, what will the effect be on the economic trajectories of poor countries, of developing countries of, AI, for example. You know, just at the time you have this youth bulge, what will job dislocation look like? And then, again, how do we get ahead of the changing climate and invest in countries' resilience and their ability to withstand the growing number of shocks, invest in their ability to continue to produce despite these seemingly inhospitable elements. But so, too, how do we help countries and communities that have never been electrified, get pop-up electricity through solar or wind that otherwise would take a generation to bring online.

So this, what I'm describing, I hope you'll agree, is really cool stuff because it's problem solving. It's trying to take the best of innovation and, again, move it online as quickly as possible. And our signature is - probably for this administration - is more private sector partnership. Because our budget, USAID's budget, is bigger than it has ever been. It's gone down a little bit this year with some of the changing politics, but people recognize that America's security and fate is tied, you know, to whether or not a new variant of COVID, you know, pops up somewhere in a developing country. So lab surveillance here is important, but so is lab surveillance in other places. And people get that core concept - they get climate change, that other people are very large emitters, and that that's affecting the livelihoods of people here.

So we don't have to defend assistance or an investment, but even with significant resources being deployed, we're not keeping up because the challenges are so immense. And so, you mentioned Progress Beyond Programs. What we've done at USAID is really try to shift the mindset where we don't run a program and then after we've rolled it out, call a company, a local company or multinational and say, "hey, any corporate social responsibility you want to dedicate to this problem we're trying to solve through public sector resources?" Instead, what we try to do as a design feature is figure out what is it about your business model that would cause you to view it as in your interest in the long-term, to be active in a manner that creates jobs, or brings an innovation to bear, et cetera. It's easier said than done, but we've in the last two years increased private sector contributions to USAID-related activities by around 60 percent. And I think that amount is just going to continue to grow, not because we're some genius in how to make it happen, but because it just has to in order to even begin to blunt, again, some of the worrying trends that we're confronting up close across these days.

MS. DILL: And we're going to get into more of that in a minute when we talk about the H-2 program, but you mentioned conflict. And so, you know, I want to start there. You know, global experts sounded the alarm again today that Gaza is approaching famine conditions. Is aid getting into the region, and what's the status of the humanitarian maritime pier?

ADMINISTRATOR POWER: Gaza is - there are a lot of really hard problems out there right now, including Putin's aggression in Ukraine, looming famine probably in Sudan, which is not getting near the attention it should be. But Gaza is some of the most extreme deprivation I've ever seen in my entire career. And I started my career as - like you, as a stringer, as a war correspondent in the former Yugoslavia. And I've been up close in conflict my whole career. But to have a population of around 2.2 million, where virtually everyone has been displaced and more than 2 million of those 2.2 million people are entirely dependent on humanitarian assistance, on food assistance, it's just a degree of deprivation that is very, very challenging, and of course, because Hamas is still at large, having carried out the monstrous attacks of October 7th, still insinuating itself in the civilian population, far too many civilians as well, are being killed in IDF military operations.

So you ask about, you know, is humanitarian assistance getting in? It is, absolutely. But, you know, when the normal economy, which was never that normal in Gaza, because it's always, you know, had major challenges, particularly since Hamas began to govern the place - but when normal commercial market activity shuts down, when there is so little liquidity even if people were able to figure out, even as displaced people, you know, kind of how to grow something or how to sell something, and humanitarian assistance becomes the sum total of the economy in most parts of Gaza, it's just, you can't humanitarian aid your way out of basic living conditions. And about 95 percent of the population hasn't had access to clean water in months. A tent, now with everybody displaced, you know tents are really important. A tent costs now around $800, which is basically an annual salary in Gaza, prior to the start of the war. So it's really a very, very bleak situation, as I think the reporting out today reflects, or this week reflects.

With regard to the maritime pier, I think that, too, is a reflection of how great the needs are, President [Joe] Biden enlisted the U.S. military in MacGyver-like, you know, building this floating pier, not because that could be a panacea to the kinds of needs that I've just described, but because we have a responsibility to get aid in, in as many ways as we can. And, given that military operations may be occurring in one part of Gaza one day, and that causes, let's say, the government of Israel to close down a checkpoint, we need to make sure that there are a bunch of other points of entry. And that's what the maritime pier is. It's been super challenging, which is why it would never be anybody's first choice. Land access, you can imagine - those of you who know more than I do about getting commodities from point A to point B - land access is incredibly important. It's how you do things at scale.

I mean, what the pier does is it allows, you know, convoys of trucks to move by ship, to a pier, and then onto land, but the land access is what we really need at scale. And so the pier has been off limits because of extreme weather and high seas. And, you know, obviously, we have to look out for the safety of the people who are delivering these resources, but already about 13 million pounds of commodities have made their way onshore via the pier, to be picked up, then, by humanitarian organizations and then distributed more broadly.

But the environment for humanitarian workers has to be improved because, again, the danger facing workers like those from World Central Kitchen - I was just talking to Alice [Waters] about José Andrés, the incredible work his organization has done. Those aid workers were killed doing nothing more than bringing food to hungry people. And incidents like that have happened too often. And this is the subject of continued dialogue with the government of Israel, because even though Hamas is there insinuating itself in, you know, just the worst possible way - in a way that puts civilians in harm's way, nonetheless, that doesn't mean that that responsibility to protect aid workers, to protect civilians in any way, recedes.

MS. DILL: I want to change gears a little bit and talk about, you know, you mentioned USAID's work on worker visas. You're partnering with the governments of Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, to recruit workers to come to the U.S. on these temporary labor visas. This is something that's, you know, typically the purview of Homeland Security and the Department of Labor. So what is USAID's role here?

ADMINISTRATOR POWER: Okay, well thank you for giving me an occasion because this is one of the reasons that I've come to Chicago and braved the thunderstorms to be here with all of you, which is to alert you to this amazing pool of agricultural workers who are standing by to come and help address labor needs that might exist in certain sectors in this country.

So, basically in Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador, USAID has had agricultural programs investing in increasing productivity locally for decades. Again, probably dating back to President Kennedy. Of course, under the H-2A program, an uncapped program where as many agricultural seasonal farm workers who, you know, can be employed here, can come if they have the right visas. That program has typically sourced agricultural workers from Mexico. Nearly 95 percent of the H-2A visas have come from Mexico.

The average age of the H-2A worker is increasing - it's about seven years older now than 15 years ago. And that stems in part from demographic changes in Mexico. Obviously, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras are areas of high illegal outmigration. That's something we want to deter, of course, because it's incredibly dangerous, and coming illegally is not okay.

So, what we have sought to do in Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras, drawing on our agricultural contacts, is work with the labor ministries to build out the recruitment of seasonal farm workers who would like to come to the U.S. We are very aware, even though it is not our bailiwick, but we are aware that there are significant shortages of labor here, in this country. I mean there's surveys that show that, you know, 35 percent of growers are not able actually to harvest about 10 percent of their crops each year because of worker shortages.

MS. DILL: We have a lot of employers here. Has anyone experienced a worker shortage?

ADMINISTRATOR POWER: Any work shortages out there? Heard of them?

MS. DILL: We have just a few hands.

ADMINISTRATOR POWER: Yeah. So, I don't want to call it a white glove service, because that would probably overstate it, but we have the capacity to do pretty sophisticated matchmaking between labor needs here - working with the Department of Labor, which, of course, has to certify that no American can do a job before an H-2 visa will be issued, but on the H-2B side, which is hospitality, construction, you know, low skilled labor, and then the H-2A program for agricultural workers, we have built those lists, vetted them, and the work is done through the ministries rather than through private recruiters. So I think there are good ethical safeguards in place as well. The number one impediment, I think, to growers making use of this program is that most have never heard of it and aren't aware that there are other pipelines of workers who could be recruited and employed.

But I can tell you, we've tripled the number of H-2 visas through this program, that we've just built over the last couple years - H-2B and H-2A together tripled, and that number, particularly in H-2A again which is uncapped, can go up and up, I mean we have tens of thousands of workers. And we can identify what experience they have, with which vegetables, which fruits. We can work with you to set up training programs in-country. So they come off the plane or the bus, you know, ready to roll.

But I think this is a wonderful example of trying to think through economic development in all of its forms. One of the things that we know about the H-2A program is that workers who come north, and have the privilege of working and getting the training or the exposure on American farms, when they come back to their home countries, they're much more likely maybe - to take out a loan, start their own business, bring those techniques to the farms that they've been working on. They're in high demand when they come back. Some of them just do this seasonally, invest in the education of their kids, and then wait for their next visa to come back because returning workers are also in very high demand once that trust has been built.

But this is just a win-win-win enterprise, and working really closely with USDA and Department of Labor to get the word out because trust is such a foundational part of the worker-grower relationship. And we know that's going to take time to build trust in these new pipelines. But, if you'd like to engage on this, we're going to have a roundtable on this tomorrow that Kamal [Essaheb], a senior advisor in the front office, has worked at the Department of Homeland Security, in fact, before coming to USAID and knows everything about the visa process, as well as the workers themselves, you can engage with him tomorrow. Or, you can just email me directly because we really want - even if you're in the processing side of things, or a buyer, you know, maybe there are people that you can make aware of these pool of workers who could address some of these labor shortages that I think [are] here in the United States.

MS. DILL: You may get a lot of emails later tonight.

ADMINISTRATOR POWER: I hope so - I have my phone.

MS. DILL: So you also prevailed, you know, USAID has also really worked closely with the private sector in Ukraine. Agricultural exports, I believe, reached nearly pre-invasion levels for several months earlier this year. What's the status of those efforts?

ADMINISTRATOR POWER: Well first of all, I'm in awe of the Ukrainian farmers that we work with. And I'm of all probably, I mean, the H-2A program is a passion project of mine personally. The work we're doing in Ukraine, just, it blows me away as well. And because what it did was it just said, okay, you still have all these farmers, Putin's launched this full-scale invasion - yes, he's taken over some pretty fertile, arable, and productive land, but not all of it.

And many of these farmers would like nothing more than to get back on their feet. But, they certainly can't afford buying new farm machinery after Putin and his forces destroyed it. So here's where USAID can come in and offer low interest loans, offer access to capital, provide support to agribusinesses, to SMEs. Here's where the public-private partnership that I mentioned that we're trying to do more of, comes in.

We launched an initiative called AGRI-Ukraine, where over the last couple of years since the full scale invasion, we've invested - thanks to bipartisan support from the Congress - $350 million, which is a lot in the agricultural sector to help those exports get back to their pre-invasion levels, which, frankly, if you had asked me, I would not have thought possible, just given the blockade of the Black Sea, given the amount of farmland that was taken. But again, all credit to the Ukrainian people who have pulled this off somehow.

But they did need support in doing so. They needed support getting land routes and rail routes and the Danube, which had never been a major export route, you know, some dredging and some support, again, in the logistics. And it needed private sector partners. We invested that $350 million, we've raised, mobilized, an additional $250 million from private sector partners, multilateral institutions. I think Bayer is here - they're one of our first moving partners in Ukraine. And again, they did it - yes, they gave out some seeds to farmers, which I'm sure are very much appreciated, but what Bayer has done is invested, made a $60 million investment in the seed processing facility, which is not only producing seeds that farmers are using, but also is creating jobs for Ukrainians at a time when revitalizing the economy is mission critical. It's actually a matter of life and death, as to whether that can happen.

So, we are witnessing something that really has disappointed Putin in profound ways, which is Ukrainian farmers are back on their feet, not everywhere, but such that corn exports, wheat exports, sunflower oil, all these exports are back, again, not quite at their pre-war levels, all of them. Sunflower oil is actually higher, has increased production. Some of you would understand why that is, and why the market for that is what it is. But what's great for USAID and for the American taxpayer who's making these investments, is that this is also bringing down global food prices. You recall what those prices did just after Putin's invasion. It was partly fertilizer prices went way up because of, you know, Russia's own ban on fertilizer exports - not because of sanctions but because they actually held fertilizer back, and because Ukrainian wheat and corn and other commodities were taken off the market.

So by investing in Ukraine at the source, in low-interest loans, in seeds, in storage capacity, in transportation, we now have seen, you know, significant drops in cereal prices globally, and what's happening in Ukraine is a major factor behind that.

MS. DILL: I want to make sure we take a question from our audience. Do we have a question from folks? We have mic runners. That's fine, I have plenty of other question s of my own. We have somebody right here, I believe. And so if you can just be sure to identify yourself and quickly ask a question .

QUESTION: Hi, hello. My name is Riana Lynn, I'm from Journey Foods. Thank you so much for your conversation and explaining to us the many innovative products and projects that are happening around the country and around the world.

Thinking about some of your examples from Ukraine and, you know, I don't know if everyone here knows, but I'm sure it's a stat that's becoming more and more popular - 90 percent of black farmers - or 90 percent of farmland owned by black farmers in this country have been lost over the past a hundred years. I'm certain that if we were able to do the same amount of investment in innovation here, in this country, we could lower prices regionally, and across the world if we were to do that same investment with black farmers here. Can you give us some explanation into how possibly USAID could fund and be a part of restoring some of the justice for black farmers here in this country, and part of the competitiveness in, I guess also in consideration of the local and regional economies of the U.S. when it comes to commodities that can be development here with that investment.

ADMINISTRATOR POWER: Thank you so much. So, first a caveat, and then a little bit of a pivot. The caveat is that USAID doesn't work in the United States. Indeed, one of the reasons I think we've had trouble, but maybe would like to accelerate the pace at which growers, and retailers, and processors become aware of the program I mentioned in Northern Central America, is that we don't work north of the southern border. And there are legal restrictions and so forth. So, we don't know a lot of the kinds of players here in this room, and we have a very strong partnership with USDA, which of course, has these relationships and has built them over time.

As a result, unfortunately, in terms of your question which is so important, Secretary [Tom] Vilsack would be the person best positioned to talk about the kinds of investments that the United States, the Biden Administration, the executive, with congressional support, is making.

That said, embracing the premise question, what we try to do as USAID, is we recognize that agricultural productivity in the countries in which we work, which is more than 100 countries - we have missions in more than 80 countries - but parallel to what you're describing, we know that we will not optimize agriculture productivity or organic growth, since agricultural productivity is at the heart of the economic growth in so many of the countries in which we work, if we don't place inclusion at the center of our approach. And here in the U.S., we have created a whole set of partnerships during my tenure with historically black colleges and universities and minority serving institutions, also like Florida International University, land-grant universities, not because we're working here in the U.S., but because we're seeking to tap the expertise of HBCUs, land grant universities, as we reach out to farmers, in the first instance, specifically women farmers and farmers from underrepresented communities that tend not to get the attention from their governments. In terms of, again, access to capital, or extension services, and so forth.

So I can't speak specifically to what we're doing here because I wouldn't be knowledgeable - it's not my area. But, certainly I know that the Biden Administration as a whole is very much of the view that we will only reach our full potential if we are going out of our way to reach those who have traditionally been neglected in core programming.

MS. DILL: I think that's a nice segue to where, sort of, we have just a minute left here where I want us to wrap up on a little bit of a different note. You know, your best-selling memoir is called, "The Education of an Idealist." When you look at the United States today, when you look at polarization, the incredible strife on college campuses this spring, you know, we talk about lack of resources, what's your read on the state of American idealism? Can you still be an idealist in the United States right now?

ADMINISTRATOR POWER: I mean, you know, these are - I think polarization is what so many of us struggle for, but, struggle with, I should say. And, you know, one of the reasons that I think you see the least polarization in the U.S. among mayors, is because mayors have to fix the potholes, deal with the flooding, or the drought or heat - I should say the extreme heat. And I think that it's that problem solving and the sense of, you know, shared challenge, that at our best still brings us together and unites us.

And, you know, I think people here, everywhere, can feel amazing about, you know, about, internationally, as it happens, what the Ukrainians have done in the face of just, you know, unbridled aggression and brutality. I mention it in the context of polarization here because those support packages for Ukraine, for all of the understandable view that the first priority of American leadership be, of course, to the American people, it stands to reason that it's true. But even this very controversial supplemental package that passed only a few months ago, later than we would have liked, later than the Ukrainians would have wished, passed with something like 73 percent of support in the House of Representatives, and more than 80 percent support in the U.S. Senate.

The Bipartisan Infrastructure bill, you know, passed in a bipartisan fashion, in a manner that is going to make a major difference with time, you know, as that infrastructure gets built out. A lot of our industrial policy, in terms of building more resilience to the kinds of shocks that USAID tries to work on internationally, but that, as we saw with COVID and as we see with extreme weather events, can really hurt communities and families here in this country.

And so I do think, if we can come back to problem solving - there's no one who doesn't want to solve the problem. I think people, to the degree that idealism sags and ebbs and flows, it's people lose sight of the fact that they can be agents in bringing about, you know, the kinds of changes that are needed. Or that problems can be solved. And so, this is one of the things I love most about being at USAID with these private sector partnerships that we are drumming up - some of the most idealistic people I meet, they'd never self-identify. Like I wrote a memoir, "The Education of an Idealist," most of my CEO friends wouldn't put Idealist necessarily in the title of their memoir in the way that I do. But, because business is so often about problem solving and a kind of constructive mindset, and how do we figure it out, it breeds that kind of belief that you can make the change you need. And that, when scaled, is how we change the world.

MS. DILL: Administrator Power, thank you so much for being here.

ADMINISTRATOR POWER: Thank you.

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