Print
Share
GAO Report Highlights Costs of U.S. Food Aid Restrictions
June 5, 2009
This post originally appeared on the Huffington Post on June 5, 2009.
According to a testimony before congress yesterday and a new Government Accountability Office report, congressional restrictions on U.S. food aid raise the costs of delivering it by as much as a third and delay it reaching hungry people by up to 100 days. When donors purchase food locally or regionally, it not only gets to needy people faster and more cheaply, it may also better match local preferences and nutrition needs. Yet, in the midst of last year’s global food price crisis, Congress passed a farm bill that continued the long-standing practice of requiring that food aid be purchased in the United States and that 75 percent of it be delivered by U.S.-flagged ships.
The madness of this system has been clear for some time. But in the congressional testimony yesterday, the GAO’s Thomas Melito quantified the costs, noting that, delivering in-kind U.S. food aid costs, on average, 34 percent more in Africa and 29 percent more in Asia, compared to World Food Program projects that purchased food locally or regionally.
The GAO report does not suggest that local or regional purchases are a panacea. Like my colleague Jenny Aker, the GAO noted that such purchases can disrupt local markets and create shortages if not done carefully and under appropriate circumstances. The GAO’s research also interviewed World Food Program officials who noted problems in identifying reliable suppliers and enforcing contracts for local purchase (particularly during last year’s price spikes). GAO researchers also noted that insufficient evidence exists to assess whether locally purchased food reliably meets quality and nutritional standards. In a blog and paper from last Fall, Aker suggests some guidelines for ensuring that local purchase is a good idea in a given situation.
But the key conclusions from the GAO’s research that we should draw are:
- U.S. food aid dollars are feeding far fewer people than they could.
- Flexibility is key.
If the United States provided food aid as cash, as both the European Union and Canada now do, it could be used to buy food wherever it makes the most sense in terms of price and timeliness. Some times that will be locally or regionally, and some times it will be in the United States, Canada, or Australia.
2 Responses to “GAO Report Highlights Costs of U.S. Food Aid Restrictions”
Post a Comment
We value frank and constructive exchanges and encourage you to use your real name in your comments.
June 9th, 2009 at 11:41 am
I am surprised that advocates of LRP do not also focus on the developmental benefits of this approach. Procuring food locally stimulates both local production and markets. By increasing demand in local markets, there will be more competition, higher volumes, more efficiencies introduced, and ultimately more food available at lower prices. Market inefficiencies contribute to food shortages in low income countries….local and regional procurement of food aid will ameliorate this constraint.
June 9th, 2009 at 4:30 pm
I think the question at the heart of this initiative is who will they be giving the money to. If this money is going to governments the plan is doomed to failure. A far better approach will be to give this money to farmers unions/co-operatives who can increase productivity by sharing the money according to food proceeds. This does two things. First, it creates a base for co-operation among farmers for things like prices at which goods are sold to other people. The state department can get a better deal while enhancing farmer’s lives (I know few farmers who would reject the opportunity to feed their country people). Third, when the feeding project is over, these farmer’s co-operatives can be the basis for negotiating more equitable trading deals with corporate bodies (a far better approach to these things than “fair” trade). Lastly, farmers could co-operate to assist each other in expansion projects by creating their own micro finance institutions (not loan sharking institutions run by Wall Streets greedy mzungus)
just my thoughts