Glimmer of Hope on Food Aid
With nearly a billion people facing chronic hunger, food aid is an important measure of last resort to address the crisis. Yet despite drastic rises in both food and fuel costs, the US government continues to ship its food aid thousands of miles overseas rather than paying less to purchase it closer to where it is needed. While this practice may have made sense 50 years ago, when the US had abundant food reserves, it really doesn’t make sense today. There is actually little disagreement among policymakers that this system is hugely inefficient. They fear, however, that any reforms will reduce political support for food aid funding from the powerful interests that benefit from the current system, especially US farmers, shipping companies and agribusiness firms.
ActionAid has been working to challenge that conventional wisdom. We joined forces with family-farm, religious and development organizations to demonstrate that a broad range of US organizations supports meaningful changes in US food aid programs.
We also provided evidence that when European countries chose to shift to local and regional purchases of food aid, the volume of food aid provided remained constant. In fact, European food aid reforms actually freed up new funding to address the longer term causes of food insecurity.
A new Farm Bill was finally approved on June 18. While that bill fails to make many of the changes in farm policy that citizens groups had been demanding, it does offer a glimmer of hope on food aid. It authorizes $60 million over four years for a pilot program to test local and regional purchases of food aid. ActionAid is consulting with its partners on the ground in developing countries to provide guidance on the best way to design this new program. We will track the results and continue to push policymakers to expand this important initiative.
This pilot program is a start, but it isn’t enough. Members of Congress need to hear that Americans care about this issue. ActionAid will continue to develop broader constituencies for change in US food aid policies, and we need you to join that effort. Write to your representatives in Congress to thank them for approving a new pilot program on food aid and to encourage them to take bolder new steps to ensure that developing country farmers can feed their families and their neighbors.
