LEESBURG – Addressing food insecurity around the world can help curtail terrorism, according to U.S. Ambassador Kip Tom.

Tom was appointed as the U.S. ambassador to the Rome-based United Nation agencies for food and agriculture by former President Donald Trump, being sworn in April 2019 and serving from May 2019 to January 2021. He was approved by a U.S. Senate voice vote by himself.

“It’s pretty unusual. You don’t get those that often, but mine was a voice vote,” Tom said in an interview Tuesday at his Leesburg home. “Sometimes they come in with a group of potential appointees to be approved and they do them as a package. Mine was exclusive by myself, so it meant a lot more to me.”

The embassy where Tom served had oversight over six international agencies. “In fact, we operated, had oversight, over the – in international organizations for the United States – the second largest budget next to NATO. So we had a lot of oversight.”

He said it wasn’t like a regular ambassadorship that just deals with one country.  He dealt with 194 countries.

While Tom had extensive knowledge about food insecurity around the world, he still went to an ambassador school to learn about diplomacy to advance America’s interest around the world. “We also went through a lot of training of understanding ... of how dark the world can be sometimes and how cautious you need to be, whether it’s what you say or how you present something or where you may go,” he said.

Seventy percent of places where they delivered humanitarian aid are in the midst of manmade conflict. Those places include Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen and Somalia.

“So you’ve got to learn how to function in that environment,” Tom said.

He wasn’t scared to be in those places, but enjoyed the opportunity to impact people’s lives and livelihoods and improve people’s lives.

“I was just in Sudan a few weeks ago. That was all because of due to the Abraham Accords being signed. But still, you have to be cautious in those environments. You’ve always got a lot of security around you, making sure you’re safe,” Tom said.

He was involved in a lot of negotiations, which didn’t necessarily entail him or his team traveling to those countries involved in the negotiations. A lot of discussions took place in Rome at embassies of other countries.

COVID-19 Impact

The COVID-19 pandemic hit in early 2020 as Tom began his second year as ambassador.

“We had six U.N. agencies that we had oversight over, our embassy did. The largest one of that group is the World Food Program, who just received the Nobel Peace Prize back in October. The United States is the largest contributor to that organization, at about $3.7 billion a year. It runs at about an $8.5 billion annual budget. This year, we expect it to be close to $11 billion,” Tom said.

He said that agency goes out and provides immediate relief of food aid around the world. It deals in about 85 countries, feeding about 130 million people a day. Tom said that due to COVID-19 and other issues, that figure is expected to double to 270 million people a day.

“As an example, in Africa, since March, since the COVID lockdown started to occur around the world, we’ve seen 350 million in the continent of Africa alone, go into unemployment. That’s equal to the size of the United States,” Tom said.

When he was in Sudan a few weeks ago, a man came up to Tom and told him that he’d rather die of COVID than starve to death. The man told Tom that’s why he wanted to get back to work, but businesses aren’t opening up.

“So that’s an indirect impact of COVID on lives and livelihoods,” Tom said.

Also, in response to COVID, he said the embassy increased its aerial applications, “meaning we added 700 flights per month to move food and personal protective gear around the world. We opened up five new hubs around the world and added 700 flights a month. We were already operating the largest fleets in the world, moving food around, but we had to increase it that much.”

Tom continued, “We see this as a real issue because as economies continue to collapse because of COVID, we worry about funding to make sure we have adequate resources to provide humanitarian aid.”

Starting in March 2020, Tom and World Food Program Executive Director David Beasley worked on that to make sure they could have the funding. They called up countries to continue to contribute. In a few weeks, Tom will travel to Abu Dhabi to continue to do some of that work.

Food Systems

Another organization Tom worked with is the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). It’s tasked with creating resilience and capacity in food systems.

“But it has failed over the last three to four decades. It has not created the resilience or capacity we needed. They’ve gotten off track, mainly because it has been driven by the European Union,” he said.

The EU looks at a food system differently than the United States has.

“It’s not as though we can’t improve, but they would continue to point at our food systems in the world and would say our food system is broke. My comment to them is, ‘Our food system is not broken,’” he said.

In 1920, there were 2 billion on the earth, with nearly 80% living in poverty, which leads to food insecurity. Today, with nearly 8 billion people, less than 10% are living in extreme poverty and are food insecure.

“So to say our system is broken is wrong. To say that it doesn’t need to change is also wrong. We need to continue to evolve our food system and the United States has been a leader in that evolution of food systems, to make sure we increase productivity while protecting the environment and climate and, I say oftentimes, working within our planetary boundaries,” Tom said.

FAO deals with about 140 countries around the world. Tom said if FAO would have been doing its job the last three decades, food insecurity wouldn’t be the big issue that it is today.

“When people are food insecure, that creates the environment for conflict. Or is it the conflict that creates the food insecurity? So that’s the way we look at it,” Tom said.

He was particularly close to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Tom said Pompeo would tell him oftentimes in their phone conversations that “it was important that we focus on food security around the world because we know it leads to peace and security around the world, too, let alone the national security of the United States. So, I was really focused on creating efficiencies and effective organizations that were responsible to the U.S. taxpayer to make sure that we’re delivering on their need. Because we know that if people are food insecure and you have conflict take place, that’s when we get into war and we put our American soliders at risk and others. We invest billions in fighting wars. So it’s in the best interest of the United States and our allies to make sure we have a food secure world,” Tom said.

Right now, he said the Europeans are trying to mandate around the world a food system that they think should be the only food system.

“It’s an indulgence of the rich, the food system they’re promoting. It’s indefensible scientifically and it’s indefensible morally,” Tom later said. That food system the Europeans are promoting is “completely organic, doesn’t want to use any crop care products, any modern genetics. They want to go back to systems that quite frankly my grandfather gave up on 120 years ago.”

Tom said he embraces all food systems, whether organic or commercial, as “we need all systems, we really do. But to say it has to be one or the other, doesn’t work.”

He said the food supply chain in the world is about a $8 trillion supply chain and it relies on diversity, trade and platforms of food safety to make sure it’s functioning properly.

New President

When Joe Biden became U.S. president, he called home all the political appointees that were ambassadors around the world. That included Tom. He had to have his feet back on U.S. soil by noon Jan. 20, which was when Biden was sworn in.

The second in-charge, a “career person,” stepped into Tom’s role and runs things until Biden appoints, and the Senate approves, a new person. It could be six months to a year until Tom’s position is refilled.

“A political person, we don’t get caught up in the bureaucracies. We say, ‘We know we need to solve that problem.’ We go do it and get it done. We pick up the phone and we make a call. We don’t go through this whole ‘we need to contact so-and-so first’ and then you finally get to the person you need to talk to, or you need go through these bureaucratic channels. Typically, the guys who are politicals like me, you just go right to the problem and try to take care of it right now. And that’s what I did,” Tom said.

He doesn’t know if there’s been many farmers who served as ambassadors to Rome-based agencies. “But I had a very pragmatic view as a practioneer on how to solve these problems. That’s really, with that pragmatic view of solving these problems, that’s how we really got some big initiatives changed at the Food and Agricultural Organization and driving it to where it is creating that resiliency and capacity now in food systems around the developing world,” Tom said.

Lost Hope

If the continent of Africa’s population is going to double by 2050, and they can’t feed themselves now, and there’s the growth of the Boko Haram, Al-Qaeda and ISIS terrorist organizations, “what opportunity is there for those people not to be a part of those groups but stay in the private sector and do something to grow their economy and improve their lives and livelihood?” Tom said.

He said he met so many people in Africa who only make $1 a day.

“I’ve been in communities where we’re doing food aid, one with 980,000 people in it. An IDP (Internally Displaced People) camp with 980,000 people,” Tom said. “Think about Indianapolis and all the suburbs, people just living in shanties. No jobs. They’re just living there to get food aid. These are the ones out of Mali. As a young person, you give up. You give up hope. And this is why I say, if we can give people the hope that they can produce enough food to feed themselves and create some economic opportunity, they won’t migrate. Because we know when they migrate, they’ll migrate twice to three times within their own country, and then they’ll go across the border to somewhere else, and that’s when we have to start taking care of them.”

That’s also the point where the migrants are subject to human trafficking. “We know that number runs about 21 million people a year. Sex slaves, you name it. All that stuff goes on. 21 million. We had maps that were identifying where they were coming from, where they were going, all of that. We watched that in the Situation Room,” Tom said.

They also get involved in illicit gun movement and drugs. They join extremist organizations.

“That’s the only hope they have,” he said. “... So the best idea is just to give them a reason to stay home. They really don’t want to migrate. But we see these internally displaced people and these migrants in so many places.”

Tom saw a large Syrian population in Beirut, Lebanon. Camps in Sudan, Zimbabwe and “everywhere I’ve traveled. It’s the most sad thing I’ve ever seen to see these people who can’t even feed themselves and they’ve lost hope on life.”

As an example, in Yemen, “We’re feeding about 12.5 million people there a day. Now, in Yemen, we can feed them for about 25 cents a meal. I know that sounds astounding, but this is just basic ingredients. They have to mix it up and cook it themselves. But it’s nothing that’s ideal, but it gives them protein to live,” Tom said.

If they migrate and end up in Europe, Tom said that cost to feed them becomes 70 to 80 euros per day per person.

“So we want to do what we can to first, feed the people, but then give them the capacity to feed themselves, and that’s what I’ve spent a lot of time trying to develop that capacity,” Tom said.

He is working with private sector companies now to go into Africa and invest and create the supply chains to produce food.

“They have the resources, they have the land, they have the water, they could do it,” Tom said.

U.S.

Of the United States’ budget, it spends less than 1% into all global foreign assistance.

“So it’s pretty small in the amount that we contribute to make sure that the world is safe and secure. Like I said, it’s much less expensive than going into battle,” Tom said.

In terms of food security in the United States, he said the embassy has efforts here.

“In a developed country like ours, one that is so rich in food resources, it’s hard to imagine anyone would be hungry here, but we know there are. We have programs here. We have the SNAP program, administered by the USDA that provides that food for those who can’t provide for themselves. We know there’s food banks all over the United States. So in the United States, I don’t see any reason for anybody to be hungry. There really isn’t any reason for that to happen,” Tom said.

China

Tuesday’s interview with Tom went almost an hour, and he acknowledged he could have talked about many things for much longer. However, one of the last things he touched on was the dangers of China.

“We see their affluence and behaviors across Africa where they’ve created debt traps for nations,” Tom said. “For instance, they’ll come in, maybe they’ll be involved in a project ... and put the country in a position where they can never make the payments on that to the World Bank. And then, what they’ll do is, China will come in and negotiate: ‘OK, we’ll take that loan off your hands. We’ll give it a discount, maybe we’ll buy it for 25 cents on the dollar. Plus, we’re going to take these resources from you, too,’ ... and they’ll take control of that, too. We see that all over Africa. China is our biggest problem for the future now.”

Tom said China is doing that for control and to feed its own people.

“Plus, they look at Africa as their place for all the mining. I don’t care if it’s coal, lithium, precious minerals, anything. They’re after it all,” he said.

He said China is a problem “and we need to pay attention to them for our children and grandchildren.”

China talks about how it is the No. 2 economy and a global powerhouse, but Tom said when it comes to contributing to humanitarian aid, China almost gives zero. Meanwhile, the United States is at $3.7 billion just for the World Food Program.