US Food Aid: A Humanitarian Program?

The United States contributes nearly half of the food aid distributed worldwide each year, and current policies have made this aid both a blessing and a curse to the societies which receive it. Due to the influence of several groups – U.S. agribusiness, shipping companies, and private voluntary organizations (PVOs) – U.S. food aid policy is designed to help these organizations as much as it is to help those suffering from chronic malnutrition worldwide.  This paper examines the efficacy of three proposals to address the current problems:

• Maintaining the status quo after minor reform

• Eliminating monetization and in-kind aid and distribute only cash donations

• A compromise policy in which monetization is gradually phased out and food sustainability is examined as a larger development issue.

It concludes that the last of these is most promising.