Ag Policy Blog

The political standoff over staff and programs at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) blew up into an international story over the weekend as Elon Musk attacked the agency, along with President Trump. USAID is responsible for about $2 billion in U.S. commodity purchases annually for humanitarian food aid.

Few people had likely ever heard of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) before this past weekend when staff for Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency team moved into the agency, accessed secure computer systems and essentially shut down the agency, which employs about 10,000 people globally.

USAID, however, goes back to the early 1960s under President John Kennedy and has become over decades the lead arm for U.S. humanitarian food aid, including buying on average about $2 billion a year in small grains and pulse crops as part of its mission.

USAID has a $40 billion budget overall. The agency saw its international food aid budget soar during the pandemic and the war in Ukraine. Foreign humanitarian assistance jumped from $10.7 billion in 2020 to $15 billion by late 2022. In some parts of the world, USAID funds nearly 90% of the food aid support to groups such as the World Food Program.

USAID also has large programs involving areas in medicine, such as funding AIDs clinics in Africa.

TIES TO USDA

USDA's Commodity Credit Corp. (CCC) has what it describes as a "parent/child" account relationship with USAID. The CCC provides roughly $2 billion annually to buy commodity products through the P.L. 480 "Food for Peace" program, "Food for Progress" and the Bill Emerson Humanitarian Trust program.

Those commodity purchases include rice, wheat, lentils and peas that are purchased with those funds.

USDA and USAID last April announced a $950 million purchase of U.S.-grown commodities for emergency food aid to 18 countries. The money was part of an agreement to use CCC funds to increase both export promotions and international food aid. In a news release at the time, USDA stated the funds were used to buy "wheat, rice, sorghum, lentils, chickpeas, dry peas, vegetable oil, cornmeal, navy beans, pinto beans and kidney beans."

In the past members of Congress pressed USAID to buy more U.S. commodities for food aid rather than using funds to buy commodities produced closer to areas of famine. Senators said they liked seeing the U.S. flag on bags of rice or wheat, for instance.

WORLD FOOD PRIZE AND USAID

USAID's "Feed the Future's deputy coordinator for Diplomacy, Dr. Cary Fowler, was honored last fall as a World Food Prize laureate. Fowler was the Biden administration's special envoy for Global Food Security but was recognized for his work helping to develop the Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Norway. Feed the Future also used the World Food Prize event to announce a new $57.4 million investment on food security initiatives and climate-smart agriculture.

Samantha Power, USAID's administrator during the Biden administration, also spoke at the World Food Prize's Borlaug Dialogue in 2022, focusing on the increased demands on food aid globally. Power noted in her speech that the U.S. was spending $15 billion in 2022 on humanitarian food aid. She had called for other countries to step up their food-aid donations.

"There are many culprits behind today's food crisis, you know them well. The COVID-19 pandemic grinding economies to a halt, splintered supply chains, causing huge spikes in inflation, everywhere it seems," Power said in her speech. "Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine, holding hostage global supplies of food, fertilizer, and fuel, denying food to the world's poorest communities -- and that's one of the many conflicts actually that is contributing to hunger around the globe."

STANDOFF BECOMES POLITICAL, CONSTITUTIONAL BATTLE

One of President Trump's first executive orders was freezing international aid for 90 days. Musk's team started late last week freezing out USAID staff and getting access to sensitive computers after a standoff. Musk said on social media that USAID was a "criminal organization" that was being fed "into the woodchipper." President Trump said USAID was "run by radical lunatics" that should be fired. Staff were ordered not to come into work and email access was shut off.

USAID's website was shut down on Saturday.

By Monday afternoon, Secretary of State Marco Rubio was named acting administrator of the agency and the Trump administration said they were merging USAID into the State Department. Meanwhile, Democrats in Congress held a protest outside the USAID headquarters in

Washington and were blocked from entering the agency.

Democrats say Trump doesn't have the authority to close USAID, but Trump said Monday that Musk has the authority to let people go.

In closing down USAID's website, the move also shut down initiatives such as the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET), a network that started in 1985 after famines in Africa. FEWS NET is meant to alert countries to some of the places in the world with the greatest food insecurity.

UKRAINE FUNDING

USAID has spent at least $23 billion in direct support and $5 billion in funding non-governmental agencies in Ukraine since the invasion by Russia in February 2022. The Government Accountability Office last year released details on how those funds were being used and called for more scrutiny of those funds to ensure NGOs receiving those funds are screened and audited to ensure they were doing the contracted humanitarian aid.

Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered USAID out of Russia in 2012. Russian officials praised Musk and the Trump administration for its moves. Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, a member of the Russian Security Council, on Monday, noted "Smart move by @elonmusk, trying to plug USAID's Deep Throat. Let's hope notorious Deep State doesn't swallow him whole..."

Chris Clayton can be reached at Chris.Clayton@dtn.com

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