U.S. law may hinder urgent food aid
United States law requires that virtually all donated food be grown in America and shipped at great expense across oceans, mostly on vessels that fly American flags and employ American crews - a process that typically takes four to six months.
For a third year, the Bush administration, which has pushed to make foreign aid more efficient, is trying to change the law to allow the United States to use up to a quarter of the budget of its main food aid program to buy food in developing countries during emergencies. The proposal has run into stiff opposition from a potent alliance of agribusiness, shipping and charitable groups with deep financial stakes in the current food aid system.
I am not sure the situation is quite as simple as the article presents, although this does certainly seem to be an ag-subsidy and I am no fan of those. In general though, I don’t think changing this situation would result in a major improvement of the situation in Africa. I can imagine more corruption resulting from buying food in Africa rather then shipping it there, although obviously purchasing it locally would be more efficient, as well as promoting development of Africa’s own agriculture.
Africa’s problems are by and large not that it cannot produce enough food to feed its people, but that corruption and governmental theft is so wide spread that private industry cannot really succeed. Solving that seems impossible at times.
One interesting thing about the story is that it is a twist on American political stereotypes. The Republican President is trying to make it easier to get aid to poor people, while a Democratic congressman is leading the charge to protect corporate interests.
I am no fan of Ralph Nader’s politics, but I do think he was right when he said that there isn’t really that much difference between Democratic and Republican politicians. True believers of all stripes should probably remember that.
Dave, there has been quite a bit of the blogiverse making similar comment over the past few days.
I agree, let’s make that clear to start with. Bush is a brave man taking it on.
But when is someone going to point to the consequences of this law - f’rinstance…
The measurement of US aid to poor countries is effectively based upon retail purchase and shipping cost rather than true cost. In other words, wheat sells at $x plus $y government subsidy, plus $t freight equals quite a large bit of money. True cost of producing the wheat - quite a large amount less. But then the corporate farmers would not be growing wheat if it were not for the subsidies, hmmm?
It is probably the biggest pork pipeline the government has - who would dare check on the beneficiaries of all of the good money spent on aid to the poor?
But the saddest thing of all that comes to my mind is that Bush can afford to propose this. He knows full well that a $10 bill would last three times longer in Hell than will his idea in Congress…