This week, UN World Food Program issued a bleak warning: In the future, the WFP said, there will be food on the shelves. It's just that many won't be able to afford it.

As food prices have spiked--in some places, by up to 40%--the WFP announced that its $2.9 billion budget is no longer enough to maintain even current food deliveries, much less expand. Last year to take one example, with the rising cost of fuel and food prices, the United States purchased less than half the amount of food aid it did in 2000.

But in the case of the U.S., it doesn't have to be that way. Currently, existing U.S. rules mandate that at least 75% of its food aid be grown and packaged in the United States (that is, benefit U.S. producers) before being shipped across the sea. Accordingly, the cost in transport--particularly as oil prices have risen--is extraordinary. (A recent GAO study reported shipping costs account for 65% of total program expenditures for the largest U.S. food emergency program.) These days as the UN scrambles to ration food, as the Bush administration has proposed (and Congress has rejected), it'd be a much more charitable gesture for the U.S. to step up what it buys locally--where it's needed.

Comments (5)

1. I had no idea that our food aid contributions had a requirement associated with them that the bulk of our aid product be grown within the US. Given that our aid (somewhat less than the 3 billion dollar WFP budget, presumably) is tiny in comparison to our 2007 Farm Bill (nearly 290 billion dollars over 5 years) it seems very greedy to me to so immensely impact the the WFP by slamming them with the transportation costs of already over-subsidized American agricultural products.

   The need is for the US to revisit the quasi-socialist and protectionist policies that we use to govern our agriculture, not to demand that even our "charity" in reality be about subsidizing corporate agribusiness further.

   Posted by Zero at 02/27/2008 @ 4:14pm

2. not to demand that even our "charity" in reality be about subsidizing corporate agribusiness further.----Posted by ZERO 02/27/2008 @ 4:14pm

   Occasionally even a blind squirrel finds a nut....

   in this case, ZERO has a point. Wouldn't an increase in food bought by the US for the UN mean....more money for Archer-Daniels-Midland and friends?

   Just curious.

   Posted by Mask at 02/27/2008 @ 4:22pm

3. CHEN: ....it'd be a much more charitable gesture for the U.S. to step up what it buys locally--where it's needed.

   I have a silly question! If they are growing the food needed by the hungry "locally", why the hell do they need our help???!!!

   I have no problem w/requiring foreign aid be mostly American sourced.....many countries have same! As for wiring funds abroad and buy the needed stuff closer to where it's needed and transport costs are lower, this is where corruption invariably will take some big bites! One solution is simply help out in our own hemisphere, have China & Japan handle Asia, Europe w/Africa and Russia w/the Mid East.

   Posted by Happy at 02/27/2008 @ 9:53pm

4. Happy: the phrase "locally" is taken in this writing to mean "closer to Africa than North America". In other words, it might be possible to buy some of the needed foods in for example Europe and thus cut down the fuel cost of shipping across the Atlantic Ocean.

   Posted by Zero at 02/27/2008 @ 10:22pm

5. Also, Happy: American agriculture is already protected to the point of being governed by a near-socialist regime. We are in trouble with the WTO, Brazil is getting ready to have us sanctioned to the tune of 4 billion dollars, and our Farm Bill policy keeps our agricultural system somewhat mired in the past while keeping some foreign agriculture apparently underdeveloped. It seems like a pro- "free" trade person such as yourself could see quickly that, in the very least, there is absolutely no need in the face of all this that we require the paltry aid be spent on American crops. We are already paying all our big ag operations to overproduce and destroy the surplus, AFTER dumping whatever can be dumped on foreign markets so cheap it nukes foreign agriculture.

   Posted by Zero at 02/27/2008 @ 10:38pm