International Food Aid: Local is the New Global

When you ask people what food aid means, you hear talk of humanitarian aid, feeding the poor, and providing food after natural disasters. What you don’t hear is talk of economics, foreign policy, or farming and shipping industry gains. Yet despite recommendations by humanitarian aid experts worldwide, these seem to be the primary drivers of US food aid—NOT providing food to the starving. After much political debate, the 2014 Farm Bill made small improvements in the way we are allowed to provide food aid. This is a step in the right direction. But aid organizations are calling for far more flexibility in 2015 in order to meet the growing worldwide need for food aid.

Today’s US food aid program is outdated, inefficient, and self-serving. We supply more food aid than any other country. However, we are the only country to continue to require that our food aid originate with US grown foods and be shipped on US owned ships. We prize flexibility, cost-cutting, and increases in efficiency in business. Yet our congressmen refuse to allow for these same improvements in our food aid programs, despite the recommendations of presidents from both parties as well as humanitarian food aid agencies.

We pay for this inefficiency in lives, dollars, and dependency. Instead of being able to provide food aid quickly in response to growing need, we have a 14 week lag time and people die while waiting for food. In addition, sending food to other countries is increasingly more expensive—costing 25-55 cents of every food dollar. Rising fuel costs, piracy, and changes in weather patterns that threaten shippers and food warehouses all contribute to this expense. And when (and if) the food arrives? We feed some people, while we harm others in the process. By sending our food abroad and selling it at very low prices, we take business from foreign farmers and hurt local economies. They stop producing, because they cannot compete with our prices. They then become dependent on our aid.

Yet aid agencies agree on a simple solution. By creating a more flexible aid program that does not require all of our food aid to be produced and shipped from the US, we can feed between 4 and 10 million more people and at the same time help foreign farmers. We need policy changes that allow for some food to be produced where it will be used, in order to both eliminate shipping costs and support independence of local economies. We also need policy changes that allow for cash grants and vouchers so that food can be purchased from regional growers. This would ensure that more of our tax dollars are spent directly on aid, rather than on shipping.

It’s admirable to believe that our goal in providing food aid is actually feeding the hungry, not bolstering the US economy. Yet the main argument against these changes is that we would be hurting US farmers and shippers. However, proponents of reform bills provide evidence that we could deliver the same amount of food for half the money. If this is true, we could spend the difference on programs to help US farmers. In addition, representatives of the Department of Defense suggest that only 8-10 shipping vessels would be impacted by such a change. Those ships could offer competitive pricing in the international trade market—which is nearly 700 times greater by metric ton than shipping of food aid—to remain in business.

The US food aid program was started to help farmers by purchasing their surplus and to support US foreign policy by supplying other countries with some of that surplus. However, while US policies regarding surplus have since changed, our food aid policies have not. Now, instead of giving away our extra food, we use tax dollars to pay for farm subsidies that in turn pay for production of food to be sent abroad and sold for low prices in foreign markets. We do so at significant cost in lives, foreign farmer independence and sustainability, and wasted tax dollars spent on transportation.

Tell your legislators that you support changes to our food aid policy that reflect a reliance on local aid rather than wasteful spending of your tax dollars. Tell them that you support changes that demonstrate that the US is a world leader in flexibility and efficiency in quickly responding to world crises. And tell them that you support changes that allow us to better help our worldwide neighbors in need.