This article appeared in the Des Moines Register

June 13, 2008

McGovern, Dole honored by World Food Prize
By Philip Brasher

George McGovern and Robert Dole were named winners of this year’s World Food Prize today for crossing party lines to create a program to alleviate hunger and promote education among some of the world’s poorest children.

Now known as the McGovern-Dole International Food for Education and Child Nutrition Program, it has provided food to 22 million children in 41 countries, boosting school attendance by an estimated 14 percent.

McGovern and Dole, both former presidential nominees and rivals in the Senate, have been working together since the 1970s when they set aside their deep political differences to expand domestic feeding programs, including school lunches, food stamps and aid to poor mothers.

McGovern, now 85 and a former Democratic senator from South Dakota, came up with the idea of the international feeding program while later serving as the U.S. representative to United Nations food programs. He sold it to then-President Clinton in 2000, the final year of his presidency.

McGovern tapped Dole, a former Republican majority leader in the Senate from Kansas, to win GOP support for the program. Republicans controlled both houses of Congress at the time.

Kenneth Quinn, president of the World Food Prize Foundation, said the program has led to “dramatically increased international support” for school feeding operations globally.

“You could not find two better advocates and important historical figures for winning this prize,” Dan Glickman, who was agriculture secretary in 2000, said in an e-mail.

“No doubt that George McGovern’s tenacity got us at USDA, and especially President Clinton, to endorse the project and commit funds. And Dole’s personal credibility to persuade Congress was also critical.”

It’s the first time since the award was created in 1986 that the $250,000 prize has been given to political leaders. Most of the laureates are scientists recognized for achievements in improving crop production and expanding food supplies.

McGovern, who has been working on food assistance since he worked in the Kennedy White House, set a lofty goal with the international school program.

“I discovered there were 300 million school-age kids around the world who were not getting anything to eat during the school day,” he said in an interview. “About half that many were located in the poorest countries, so why not set up a target of reaching everyone of those 300 million kids?”

Clinton agreed to a White House meeting and authorized by executive order the use of $300 million to get the program started.

It hasn’t come close to reaching McGovern’s goal. After the initial funding, which covered the program’s first two years, the program has never received more than $100 million.

There was an unsuccessful effort in Congress to use the 2008 farm bill to establish an annual funding stream that wouldn’t be subject to the whims of appropriators in the House and Senate.

However, the program’s funding could still increase significantly. The farm bill authorized $84 million in additional spending that’s likely to be added to the program in 2009, bringing the total to $184 million for the year, said Rick Leach, a senior adviser to an anti-hunger advocacy group, Friends of the World Food Program.

If that happens, it will set a new standard for funding the program that will be politically difficult for Congress to reduce, he said.

He called the program “the closest thing we have to a silver bullet” for fighting hunger among children and promoting their education.

Dole, 84, calls himself a “junior partner” to McGovern on hunger issues. Dole said he readily assented to help McGovern get Republican support for the international school program.

“I know Senator McGovern’s commitment. I know it’s genuine. Somebody ought to give him the Nobel prize one of these days.”