Jerry Moran: “today I want to speak about a program that has shaped our Nation's humanitarian efforts and made a significant impact on…”

“today I want to speak about a program that has shaped our Nation's humanitarian efforts and made a significant impact on my home State of Kansas, a program called Food for Peace. In 1953, agricultural surpluses had reached an alltime high, but the price of storing excess commodities was too expensive to rationalize, and it was at risk of going to waste. Kansas farmers, like Cheyenne County's Peter O'Brien, worked hard to cultivate and grow these commodities. Looking for a solution, Peter suggested at a local Farm Bureau meeting that maybe the excess food could be sent to countries in need. Peter understood that, out of our abundance, we have a moral duty and opportunity to feed the hungry. His idea sparked the origin of a program we now know as Food for Peace. Another Kansan, one of my predecessors, Andy Schoeppel, led the Food for Peace Act in the Senate, which was signed into law by President Eisenhower, another Kansan, in 1954, and Senator Bob Dole from Russell, KS, later championed the reauthorization of Food for Peace. The program's premise was simple but impactful: By leveraging the food surpluses we produce in Kansas and across the Nation, we could address famine around the world, while creating new markets for our commodities and bolstering our agricultural economy. The first shipments of American wheat and corn were sent to Korea and Greece in 1954, and by the end of Food for Peace's initial year of operation, it had fed 1.2 million people.…”