25 June 2008

World’s Hungry Fed Through U.S. Government Programs

Programs target schoolchildren, disaster victims and emerging democracies

U.S. food aid is ready for distribution under the U.S. Agency for International Development's Food for Peace Program. (USAID)

By Charles W. Corey
Staff Writer

Washington -- The United States provides more than $1.5 billion in food aid annually to those in need -- with the majority of that aid going to Africa, said the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Babette Gainor.

Gainor, who is deputy director of the department’s food assistance division in the Foreign Agricultural Service, told America.gov June 23 that her department plays an important role in the U.S. government’s food assistance effort through two development programs:  the McGovern-Dole Food for Education Program and the Food for Progress Program.

Each program has its own priority countries, she said, and both together contribute nearly $300 million in annual food aid to the world’s hungry, the majority of whom are in Africa.

Both programs are administered through nonprofit organizations and through the United Nations’ World Food Programme. A third U.S. government food program, Food for Peace, is by far the largest that is administered by the U.S. Agency for International Development with more than $1.2 billion dispersed annually.

The McGovern-Dole program spends about $100 million annually to cover commodity procurement, the shipping and distribution of those commodities overseas, and any activities that could complement the program, which focuses on feeding hungry schoolchildren. Most of the food distributed under this program is wheat flour, corn meal, corn soy blend, vegetable oil, beans and rice.

Of the 22 priority countries eligible for the McGovern-Dole program in fiscal years 2009 and 2010, 16 are in Africa: Angola, Cameroon, Chad, Ethiopia, Guinea-Bissau, Kenya, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mozambique, Niger, Rwanda, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Tanzania and Uganda.

Gainor said the McGovern-Dole program’s mandate allows money for activities that enhance the feeding of schoolchildren. For example, the program can pay for construction of latrines at schools, which makes it possible for girls to attend school in a safer and more hygienic environment and encourages them to stay in school.

The Food for Progress program is an agricultural development program geared to emerging democracies. “That program has a $40 million cap on transportation, so we could procure as much commodity in a given year as we can transport within the $40 million transportation [budget],” she said.  She warned, however, that under this program, any increase in transportation costs could adversely affect the amount of food shipped.

On average, she said, the Food for Progress program has been able to move about 150,000 tons of food annually to those in need. She said, however, that since 2005, freight charges have increased by about $40 a ton.

Of the 22 Food for Progress priority countries for 2009 and 2010, 12 are in Africa: Ethiopia, Malawi, Mali, Namibia, Senegal, Uganda, Madagascar, Mozambique, Kenya, Liberia, Niger and Tanzania.

In Burkina Faso in 2002, a Food for Progress grant proved to be much more than a food “handout” -- it changed lives with new water wells, a farmers’ co-op, and micro-enterprise loans. When the Department of Agriculture awarded the $4 million Food for Progress grant, the sale of soybean oil helped establish a farmer’s cooperative group to share cultivation equipment and resources; the program also sponsored the installation of clean drinking water wells in 90 villages, and provided micro-enterprise loans to more than 1,200 women. 

All U.S. government food assistance programs, Gainor explained, are coordinated by two administering departments, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). Both USDA and USAID participate in a Food Assistance Policy Council at the beginning of each fiscal year to assess food needs worldwide. 

One distinction, she said, is that Food for Peace is the U.S. government’s emergency response program.  “So when natural disasters hit, when manmade conflict breaks out that impact peoples’ ability to have food security, USAID is the responding agency. USDA’s programs are focusing on development elements that may happen around humanitarian or natural disasters and manmade conflicts, but we are not the first agency to respond to that kind of crises.  That is USAID.”

Food for Peace also undertakes about $300 million in development programs as well, so between USAID and USDA, she explained, there is about $600 million in food-based development aid for the developing world.

“The real value in the developmental role that we are able to play is the unique USDA approach, which blends both agricultural development as well as educational merits.”

“We look at both factors. It is not just education, and it is not just agriculture.  But we really try to look at where we can maximize the agricultural industry and enhance the farming practices in some of these countries, while looking at being able to give some of those farmers’ children a future.”