I was just reading over one of my association newsletters (which i don't do nearly enough) and noticed they made a mention of the "Coalition for Agricultural Development" and how it was a member of this coalition, makes sense right? (after all my work is "international agricultural development"). I wasn't familiar with the Coalition for Agricultural Development (CAD) so i googled it and the first document that came up was a pdf that apparently was a letter to congress. In it they pretty much implore these congressional members to put more money into international agricultural aid. I can honestly say I agree with most of the arguments they put forth (at least i am accurately represented) but i would be really curious to know about the monetary lobbying going on. I am almost positive my organization isn't doing any direct monetary lobbying or if they are it is not through membership fees (i think it is made up of less than 1,000 members and the $50/year membership fee probably doesn't leave much for enticing congressional members). I did however notice that the CAD is made up of some much more (monetarily) influential organizations like BASF, Monsanto, Chemonics, ACDI/VOCA, etc (a mix of direct agriculture interests commercial and development organizations).
I was amused at how they threw in the bit about HIV and political instability, makes sense though, i guess i don't have to tell people that agriculture just doesn't engender as much sympathy and emotion as say a person dying from HIV, or school girls being kept out of schools, or even fuzzy little mammals that are endangered of going extinct... or scare people as much as some hooded terrorist (and yes, i do sincerely believe those all are important things but in a head-to-head fight for attention agriculture usually takes a back seat to these other issues; hence the CAD's probably seeing the need to link agriculture to these more popular issues).
Anyway, just interesting to find out i was (apparently) part of a lobby.
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