By Donnelle Eller, Des Moines Register
Speaking in Des Moines, celebrity chef José Andrés, whose nonprofit World Central Kitchen is providing millions of meals in war-ravaged areas like Ukraine and Gaza, urged President Donald Trump to reconsider killing USAID and billions of dollars in foreign food assistance.
Restoring those programs would decrease the political turmoil that drives global hunger and famine, he said.
Andrés, during a World Food Prize news conference Wednesday, Oct. 22, said he wanted to personally appeal to Trump to restore the U.S. Agency for International Development. The 64-year-old agency was one of the first targets of billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency as the Trump administration took office, laying off all but a handful of its 10,000 employees and shuttering its programs around the world.
“It would be amazing if (Trump) would realize it was ill-advised and reverse” the decision, said Andrés. He joined 28 World Food Prize Laureates in a Wednesday letter that calls for the U.S. and other countries to double their investment in both emergency food aid and sustainable agriculture.
Andrés and the prize winners said more than 700 million people go hungry each day, more than 2 billion lack reliable access to food, nearly 1 in 4 children is stunted by malnutrition and “man-made famine afflicts two continents.”
Boosting international food aid “is the best diplomatic tool America has” to be a true world leader, the Spanish-born Andrés, whose restaurant empire stretches from Washington, D.C., to Los Angeles, said in the news conference. He added that it’s also “a good investment” in American farmers, whose livestock and crops USAID purchased and exported to feed people globally.
DOGE rapidly dismantled USAID, which had a $60 billion budget, claiming it was a waste of taxpayer money. The U.S. Department of Agriculture has since announced it would provide $480 million in international food assistance through the existing McGovern-Dole Food for Education and Food for Progress programs.
The World Food Prize, which includes the weeklong Borlaug Dialogue symposium, will culminate Thursday evening in Des Moines as Brazilian microbiologist Mariangela Hungria receives the $500,000 prize for her work to boost crop yields while slashing greenhouse gas emissions and limiting water pollution.
Here’s what to know about Andrés’ message at the Borlaug Dialogue, where he spoke with Tom Vilsack, the World Food Prize Foundation CEO and former U.S. secretary of agriculture and Iowa governor.
Andrés: Want to end the flood of immigration? Address hunger
Andrés told Vilsack in their public conversation before the news conference Wednesday that rich countries like the United States can end the flood of immigrants by feeding people in poor countries.
“Investing in poor countries is the way to stop mass immigration,” said Andrés, who in 2010 formed World Central Kitchen. The group mobilizes to feed hungry people in war and disaster zones around the globe ― most recently in Alaska, where remnants of Typhoon Halong devastated coastal communities earlier in October.
“We can build all the walls we want. But if people are hungry, try to stop an army of mothers… trying to feed their children,” Andrés told Vilsack.
Andrés said feeding starving people isn’t about pity, but about serving the U.S. and other countries’ self-interest.
“We’re about to see the most massive (amount of) immigration in history … more and more people leaving their countries because they’re hungry,” Andrés said. “Let’s start being smart. Let’s start creating an economy of goodness, an economy that we invest in nobody being hungry” so “we can look at a future with hope.”
‘There’s no reason anyone should go hungry in America… in Haiti or Ukraine’
“We have to agree on this very simple principle that hunger anywhere is a moral failure everywhere,” Andrés said. “There’s no reason anyone should go hungry in America, the richest country in the history of humanity. There’s no reason anyone should go hungry in Haiti or Ukraine.
“In America, it’s a failure of bad policies,” he said. “We produce far more than we consume and there’s no reason why anyone should go through moments of hunger. And in Haiti, it has nothing to do with policies. The government is not technically functioning, and there is true hunger because there is true poverty.”
Haiti is a country where a mother “works 12 hours a day, trying to sell something that nobody buys,” a farmer has no equipment, no seed or fertilizer, “even if you had the money to buy them, even if they were available,” he said.
That’s the hunger “that makes you almost cry, because you know these people, they cannot work harder … they’re barely making enough money to buy food” to feed themselves, he said.
And Ukraine, a major exporter of grain, produces enough food to feed 400 million to 500 million people, Andrés said. But the Russia invaders have targeted farmers as they work their land, he said.
Watching Iowa farmers harvest corn and soybeans, Andrés said he remembered “the same machinery, American machinery, in the fields of Ukraine, destroyed.”
“Everybody is calling for increases in military spending,” Andrés said, but instead, countries should make a “true investment in the future of humanity by investing in food and food production.”
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