PHA-Exchange> US food aid at the crossroads

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From: David Legge

Even as Africa Hungers, Policy Slows Delivery of U.S. Food Aid 

By CELIA W. DUGGER
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/d/celia_w_du
gger/index.html?inline=nyt-per> 
(excerpts)
MULONDO, Zambia
 - Traveling to school in wobbly dugout canoes, Munalula Muhau and her three 
cousins, 7- and 8-year-olds whose parents had died from AIDS, held onto just 
one possession: battered tin bowls to receive their daily ration of gruel. 

Within weeks, those rations, provided by the United Nations World Food Program
 are at risk of running out for them and 500,000 other paupers, including 
thousands of people wasted by AIDS who are being treated with American-
financed drugs that make them hungrier as they grow healthy. 

"Not to put too fine a point on it," said Jeffrey Stringer, an American
doctor who runs a nonprofit group treating more than 50,000 Zambians
with AIDS, "but it will result in the death of some patients."

Hoping to forestall such a dire outcome, the World Food Program made an
urgent appeal in February for cash donations so it could buy corn from
Zambia's own bountiful harvest, piled in towering stacks in the
warehouses of the capital, Lusaka. 

But the law in the United States requires that virtually all its donated
food be grown in America and shipped at great expense across oceans,
mostly on vessels that fly American flags and employ American crews - a
process that typically takes four to six months. 

For a third year, the Bush administration, which has pushed to make
foreign aid more efficient, is trying to change the law to allow the
United States to use up to a quarter of the budget of its main food aid
program to buy food in developing countries during emergencies. The
proposal has run into stiff opposition from a potent alliance of
agribusiness, shipping and charitable groups with deep financial stakes
in the current food aid system. 

Oxfam, the international aid group, and other proponents of the Bush
proposal say it would enable the United States to feed more people more
quickly, while helping to fight poverty by buying the crops of peasants
in poor countries. 

The United States Agency for International Development estimated that if
Congress adopted the Bush proposal, the United States could annually
feed at least a million more people for six months and save 50,000 more
lives. 

But Congress quickly killed the plan in each of the past two years,
cautioning that untying food aid from domestic interest groups would
weaken the commitment that has made the United States by far the largest
food aid donor in a world where 850 million go hungry. 

The administration proposal, which would
affect less than half of 1 percent of American agricultural exports,
would not undercut American interests.

The burden of proof is on producers and shippers to show this is going
to significantly damage their interests, because we can
provide compelling evidence that allowing local procurement is going to
save lives by speeding up delivery of supplies.

With cash donations, the World Food Program could get
Zambian corn to the hungry in a month.

The cash would also stretch further than importing food. In recent
years, the World Food Program has procured 75 percent more food for
Zambia, Kenya and Uganda by buying corn grown in those countries rather
than shipping American food.

There are billions at stake for the main players in American food aid.

Over the past three years, the same four companies and their
subsidiaries - Archer Daniels Midland, Cargill, Bunge and the Cal
Western Packaging Corporation - have sold the American government more
than half the $2.2. billion in food for Food for Peace, the largest food
aid program, and two smaller programs, according to the Department of
Agriculture. 

Shipping companies were paid $1.3 billion over the same period to move
the food aid overseas, the department's figures show. 

Nonprofit groups received over $500 million in donated American food,
which they sold at market rates in developing countries to raise money
for antipoverty programs, according to the international development. 

Agribusiness and shipping groups vigorously oppose the Bush
administration proposal to buy food in developing countries with cash,
which they argue is more likely to be stolen. They say that American
food is safer and of higher quality and that the government can speed
delivery by storing it in warehouses around the world. 

And they defend the idea that federal spending should benefit American
business and farming interests, as well as the hungry. Without support
from such interest groups, food aid budgets from Congress would wither,
they say. 

Many charitable groups involved in food aid share that worry, and also
warn that a badly managed program to buy food in poor countries could
drive up food prices and worsen hunger. 

The Alliance for Food Aid, made up of 14 nonprofit groups involved in
distributing and selling American food aid overseas, maintains that the
Bush proposal is too ambitious and advocates a modest pilot program. 



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