The Food for Peace program, created during the Cold War to relieve hunger overseas through the donation of U.S.-produced food, would be mothballed by the Trump administration in its fiscal 2019 budget. In its place, the State Department would provide emergency food aid through a smaller-ticket disaster assistance office that is expected to be thriftier and fleeter of foot.
The White House says its foreign aid budget request “retains sufficient funding for emergency food assistance in the International Disaster Assistance (IDA) account, which already provides food aid through the most effective means for each crisis and provides U.S. food commodities where they are the most appropriate emergency response.” Some $1.6 billion was appropriated for Food for Peace donations this year. The USDA zeroed out the account in its fiscal 2019 budget, while the State Department said the IDA account would include $497 million for the USAID Office of Food for Peace.
The United States is the largest food-aid donor in the world and the only major country to provide that aid through the delivery of domestically grown food. But during the Obama administration, studies showing that the U.S.-sourcing requirement for food aid drove up costs and slowed delivery of the food by weeks led to proposals to purchase food aid closer to disaster zones. Another concern is the requirement that half of U.S. food aid be moved on U.S.-flagged cargo ships. Analysts say that up to 60 percent of U.S. food-aid funding goes to non-food expenses such as transportation.
Since 2010, IDA outlays have been coordinated with Food for Peace spending, said the State Department. It said the IDA account “will continue to support food assistance interventions such as local and regional procurement of agricultural commodities, procurement of U.S. commodities, cash transfers, food vouchers, and complementary activities that support the relief, recovery, and resilience of populations affected by food crises.”
Some proponents of Food for Peace reform, such as Sen. Bob Corker, who chairs the Foreign Relations Committee, say that a mix of U.S., local, and regionally sourced food would save up to $300 million and allow an additional 9 million people to receive food annually. Administration budget documents do not address that point. The Trump reforms would terminate Food for Peace support of local agricultural development projects. The White House says longer-term food security and nutrition efforts will continue through other U.S. programs.
U.S. farm groups joined aid groups, unions, and shipping companies to oppose previous efforts to scale down or eliminate the prominent role of U.S. food in the Food for Peace program. The donations were a matter of pride for farmers, defenders of the U.S. role said, and a form of “soft” diplomacy that showed American generosity. Over the decades, hundreds of millions of people have received food through the program.
In an essay in the Nashville Tennessean newspaper, Corker, Delaware Sen. Chris Coons, and Zippy Duvall, president of the American Farm Bureau Federation, said updating Food for Peace, so it can reach more hungry people, should be a priority for the 2018 farm bill. “Modernizing Food for Peace will save millions of lives without undermining our farmers, who will continue to be a key component of the Food for Peace program,” they wrote in advocating “a more flexible mix” of local, regional, and American food.
The White House also proposed eliminating the 1985 Food for Progress program, which provides U.S. agricultural commodities as a way to encourage free-market reforms in developing economies, as well as the McGovern-Dole program for school meals overseas.