Since the President's fiscal year 1977 budget request is $175.7 million below the authorized level, a large portion (approximately 85 percent) of the fiscal year 1976 shortfall in program requirements could be funded in fiscal year 1977 without exceeding the authorized levels.

H.R. 9005 represents congressional affirmation of the minimum amounts required for investment in development assistance to bring the economies of the developing countries to the point where they can provide on their own essential goods and services for their citizens.

The levels contained in H.R. 9005 also represent the minimum amounts necessary for investment in developing countries so they can bring their economies up to the level where they can trade and work with us. In an interdependent world our future prosperity is hinged in no small measure to the prosperity and purchasing power of over half of the world's population residing in developing countries.

For all these reasons we must continue the congressionally initiated "New Directions" in development aid-and must provide adequate funds for that purpose.

The funds provided for this account are used for agricultural development, rural development, and nutrition programs in the developing countries. They are not used to ship U.S. agricultural commodities, which are furnished under the Food for Peace Program (Public Law 480), but to provide assistance so that developing countries can improve their own agricultural production, increase economic activity in rural areas to support agricultural production and benefit the rural poor, and attack the malnutrition which afflicts so many millions in the poor countries.

The amount recommended by the committee is the level which the Congress approved in authorizing legislation passed in December 1975. Despite the subsequent reduction of that level in the President's budget for fiscal year 1977, the full amount is needed and can be well used. The President requested $628.8 million for food and nutrition for fiscal year 1976, and identified additional program requirements amounting to $136 million for that fiscal year. Yet the appropriation bill passed by the House on March 4 contained only $487.5 million for this purpose. The shortfall caused by such appropriation cuts in fiscal year 1976, as well as the additional program requirements of nearly $100 million identified by the administration for fiscal year 1977, can be funded only in part, even if the full $745 million authorized is provided for fiscal year 1977.

Moreover, the higher the appropriation for section 103 of the Foreign Assistance Act, "Food and Nutrition", the more funds there will be available to increase agricultural research and training programs carried out by U.S. land grant and other universities under the new "Title XII" of the recent development aid authorization bill.

The committee is of the opinion that this U.S. assistance to developing countries to help them grow more of their own food, to improve their agricultural policies and practices, to increase the productive capacity of their rural areas, and to raise their nutrition levels, constitutes a modest response to the great needs which were so widely acknowledged at the World Food Conference.

It is not enough for the United States and other wealthy countries to provide food aid for developing countries that may need it. Nearly as urgent-and much more important in the long run-is helping countries to boost their own food production and create opportunities for the poor to earn at least enough to buy the food they need to stay

The funds requested by the President for this account are needed. to support programs in three basic areas: (1) Low-cost-integrated health and population planning delivery systems; (2) Preventive health programs; and (3) Population planning programs which include education in responsible parenthood and motivational programs as well as delivery of family planning services.

Development efforts over the past 20 years have helped improve the health and reduce the fertility of the millions of poor people in the developing countries. Death and disease rates have declined rapidly but they are still considerably above those found in the United States and other industrialized nations. While birth rates have begun to fall in some areas, death rates have dropped more rapidly. As a result, the population of many countries has increased rapidly and is likely to double before the end of this century.

Given current, modest economic growth rates, the quality of life in most developing countries shows little improvement and may even deteriorate if their populations continue to grow. Most of the 2.5 billion people who live in the developing countries continue to face. hunger, malnutrition and disease with little or no access to productive services needed to ease their plight.

-In Africa, 1 in 7 or 15 percent of all children die before their first birthday as compared with only 1 in 50 or about 2 percent in the United States.

-Children under the age of 5 years still pay the highest price in terms of sickness and death, primarily from malnutrition and a combination of respiratory and gastro-intestinal disease that would be routinely controlled in the United States.

-Half of the people in the developing countries are children under the age of 15 who must rely largely on others to meet their needs.

-Life expectancy in developing countries is still only 50 years or less compared to 71 years in the United States.

Today, some 85 percent of the people in developing countries still lack adequate access to basic health, family planning and nutrition services. These funds are an important means of providing such access to millions in the poor countries and, at the same time, attacking the problem of rapid population growth, which remains crucial to the future of the developing countries, and indeed to the future of all mankind.

The funds requested for this account are needed to help the poor in the developing countries gain skills and knowledge to improve their lives.

The average literacy rate in the developing countries is about 40 percent; in many countries where these funds will be used the rate is as low as 10 percent or less. The number of children aged 5 to 14 who are in school in the developing countries has risen from under 100 million in 1950 to over 200 million today. But the number not in school has also risen during the same period, so that there are still more schoolage children not in school than there are in school.

These funds will help provide some basic education to millions of children who would otherwise have none at all, and will help developing countries make their education systems, both formal and nonformal, more relevant to the needs of their people.

Technical Assistance, Energy, Research, Reconstruction, and Selected Development Problems

The funds provided for this account are to go for several important purposes which do not fit within the three major aid categories. Among them are technical assistance through U.S. private voluntary agencies; programs to help developing countries cope with their energy problems; research; reconstruction following natural disasters; special development problems faced by the poorest countries; programs to help the urban poor; and ocean freight costs paid by U.S. voluntary agencies for overseas shipments of commodities.

The full amount authorized is required to provide sufficient funds for voluntary agency programs, as well as to cover increased costs of ocean freight shipments by these agencies. The level recommended by the President would cut back on these programs at a time when the Congress has called for increased emphasis on private agencies to assist in carrying out our development aid programs.

This item represents outlays from prior year funding for this account, which in fiscal year 1976 was subsumed under "Technical Assistance, Energy, Research, Reconstruction, and Selected Development Problems."