Ag Policy Blog

Diverging Views on How to Deliver International Food Aid

Chris Clayton
By  Chris Clayton , DTN Ag Policy Editor
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Earlier this week a pair of leaders in food aid and agriculture wrote an op-ed piece citing that "the U.S. will have a golden opportunity to provide even more food to the hungry while spending less taxpayer dollars in the years ahead."

Catherine Bertini, former executive director of the U.S. World Food Program and Dan Glickman, former agriculture secretary from 1995-2001, penned the op-ed seeking to convince lawmakers go along with a possible recommendation in President Barack Obama's budget for international food aid.

There have been long-standing turf battles among the global food-aid supporters and U.S. commodity groups about distribution of food aid. Obama is expected to recommend shifting more aid to buying food from local markets rather than relying on logistics of international shipping to get U.S. commodities overseas. It's an approach President George W. Bush also proposed that got little traction.

Bertini and Glickman wrote that $2 billion annually in food aid has provided a "soft power" tool to help the U.S. with other foreign policy goals. But the practice of relying on U.S. commodities transported by U.S.-flagged ships is an outdated concept that adds to costs "and diminished our flexibility in responding quickly to crisis." http://www.politico.com/…

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Groups that like the current system have already ramped up their efforts to oppose such a shift in aid. A long list of groups representing commodity organizations, shippers and others wrote the president and agricultural appropriation committees back in February opposing any shift in aid from in-kind contributions to cash. The groups want to sustain funding for Food for Peace and Food for Progress programs "and strongly oppose proposals to eliminate or drastically reduce program funding or to shift these resources to overseas commodity procurement." http://www.soygrowers.com/…

Bertini and Glickman cite "Our agricultural, foreign policy and national security objectives would be better served by focusing our efforts more precisely toward getting food aid as quickly as possible to the people who desperately need it. The United States is the only food aid donor that still gives food in-kind rather than in cash. Now is the time for (a) flexible food aid program that uses our foreign assistance monies more efficiently and ensures America's leadership in the fight against global hunger."

The shippers, processors and commodity groups counter "Growing, manufacturing, bagging, shipping and transporting nutritious U.S. food creates jobs and economic activity here at home, provides support for our U.S. Merchant Marine, essential to our national defense sealift capability, and sustains a robust domestic constituency for these programs not easily replicated in alternative foreign aid programs. Overseas, Food for Peace has a strong track record of reducing child malnutrition and increasing incomes and food supplies for very poor and vulnerable populations."

The American Soybean Association, in its weekly emailed news letter this week, spotlighted its stance in keeping the food-aid programs as they now function.

"The Food for Peace and Food for Progress programs provide nutritious foods to developing markets and have been a key priority for ASA for multiple years," said ASA President Danny Murphy. "We are expressly opposed to the replacement of in-kind food aid with cash aid, which takes a key market away from American producers, placing aid recipients at a potential risk by allowing them to purchase commodities from foreign suppliers whose safety and quality are unknown."

Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, was asked by a reporter in a conference call this morning about the possible shift in food aid. Grassley said he couldn't comment on what may or may not be in the president' s budget, but he added a comment that reflects why it is so difficult to make changes to any program in Washington, D.C., regardless of potential efficiencies or necessity of budget cuts.

"When you are trying to eliminate an entire program, you tend to not be able to it because somebody else who might vote against cutting something for agriculture might (not) be willing to do that because they think the next step is going to eliminate some program that they favor," Grassley said. "They may not favor program A, but they don't want to lose program B."

So trying to eliminate entire programs almost never works, Grassley said. That's why he advocates cutting programs across the board. "Then everybody shares a little bit of the pain."

I can be found on Twitter @ChrisClaytonDTN.

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