Thank you, Chair.
I thank the witnesses for coming this morning.
As a vegetable farmer, I worked a lot in Central America with small farmers in setting up co-ops, so your testimonies are very dear to me, and I'm learning more as I hear from you.
In my experience, once you get rid of the strongmen, the dictators, and people have rights to land and some individual rights, much can be done with small, strategic investments. You have mentioned some of them.
Your testimonies are different, but they all link together in a whole-community approach. You are well aware of the millennium goals and the work that's been done.
I also did some work with the Gates and Rockefeller foundations on this community approach, more or less. I guess that's where I'm coming from. Of course it starts when you get into these communities. You do the soil tests concerning the deficiency in the soils, which has an impact on grains and livestock and humans and water and various things. Sometimes I think we have different organizations out there but maybe they're working in different silos. That's why I like the millennium goals of the Gates Foundation. I'm not saying they were doing a perfect job, but they had that whole-community approach.
In your experience, do you see enough of that? Should there be more of that? Should we, as governments, encourage more of that to set up the parameters? If we have clean drinking water close at hand, the kids don't have to haul it. They are going to school, so there is a whole-community approach. Does there have to be more of that? Are other countries doing that? Should we, as a government, be encouraging that kind of thing?
Anybody can answer.