Food for Peace
In different administrative and organizational forms, the Food for Peace program of the United States has provided food assistance around the world for more than 60 years. Approximately 3 billion people in 150 countries have benefited directly from U.S. food assistance.[1] The Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance within the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) is the U.S. Government's largest provider of overseas food assistance.[2] The food assistance programming is funded primarily through the Food for Peace Act. The Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance also receives International Disaster Assistance Funds through the Foreign Assistance Act (FAA) that can be used in emergency settings (more information below).
While U.S. food aid started out in the 1950s by donating surplus U.S. commodities to nations in need, the U.S. now purchases food for donation directly from American farmers through a competitive process. The Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance identifies need in close consultation with the host government requesting the assistance.[3]
During the 2010s the program underwent revisions offered by in the Administration's Fiscal Year 2014 budget. These revisions would change the program to provide cash donations rather than American grown and delivered food. On April 24, 2013, the chairman of USA Maritime, a coalition of carriers and maritime unions, wrote a statement which discussed the efficacy of the program and specifically the importance of the U.S. Merchant Marine in delivering the U.S. food aid to people who are undernourished around the world. Henry cited the fact that USAID's own data actually revealed that the traditional efforts to deliver food as opposed to cash transfers for countries to buy their own food is actually 78 percent cheaper per ton of food. Henry offers that this is a significant fact in the effort to address global hunger.[4]
Early history of United States food assistance[edit]
America's food assistance programs began in 1812 when James Madison sent emergency aid to earthquake victims in Venezuela. As director of the American Relief Administration, Herbert Hoover led a $20 million feeding program in Russia during the 1920s under the Russian Famine Relief Act. In 1948, the United States launched the Marshall Plan, which provided dollars for Europeans to purchase American food exports. The Marshall Plan helped rejuvenate and unite Europe while laying the foundations for a permanent U.S. food assistance program. Many of the European countries the U.S. Government helped at that time have since become major food exporters and important international donors.
Authorizing legislation[edit]
Public Law 480 (1954)[edit]
Minnesota Senator Hubert Humphrey, a leading liberal Democrat, promoted a food for peace program that would give away surplus crops owned by the U.S. government as an instrument of foreign policy in the Cold War. It appealed to conservative Republicans from farm states (but was opposed by Senator Barry Goldwater.[5]
On July 10, 1954, Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the Agricultural Trade Development and Assistance Act — or Public Law (P.L.) 480 — an action which simultaneously created the Office of Food for Peace. By signing this legislation, the President laid "the basis for a permanent expansion of our exports of agricultural products with lasting benefits to ourselves and peoples of other lands." The bill, a solution for food deficient, cash-poor countries, created a secondary foreign market by allowing food-deficient countries to pay for American food imports in their own currencies instead of in U.S. dollars. These currencies were, for the most part, worthless outside their issuing countries. The U.S. used these currencies to pay for economic development projects inside those countries.[6] The law's original purpose was to expand international trade, to promote the economic stability of American agriculture, to make maximum use of surplus agricultural commodities in the furtherance of foreign policy, and to stimulate the expansion of foreign trade in agricultural commodities produced in the United States.[7] Critics view the law as "a means of disposing of costly domestic agricultural surpluses."[8][9][10][11][12][13]
The law was originally drafted by future Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS) administrator Gwynn Garnett after returning from a trip to India in 1950. The bill is unusual in that it gave the FAS the ability to conclude agreements with foreign governments without the approval of the United States Senate.[6][14]
Lyndon B. Johnson limited the PL-480 grain shipments for critical famine aid to India, to pressure it into toning down its criticism on the US involvement in the Vietnam War.[15][16][17]