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U.S. food aid low, getting lower

Posted at 4:59 PM on 01 Oct 2007

The U.S. donates more food internationally than any other country, but shipping costs and rising food prices (thanks, biofuels!) have contributed to its lowest level of donation in a decade. The situation is likely to get worse: the appropriations bill moving through Congress contains no significant increases in the U.S. food aid budget, and the United Nations estimates that low-income countries will see a 14 percent jump in the price of grain imports next year. A restriction in the farm bill requires food aid to be shipped from the U.S.; in a rare proposal aligned with green values, the Bush administration has proposed to remove that stipulation, allowing food aid to be purchased locally in developing countries. That proposal is backed by hunger advocates but opposed by the shipping industry. Enough said.

source: The New York Times

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Comments: (3 comments)

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Foreign Aid

If Jimmie Carter suggested it we need to do the exact opposite. he suggested we give MORE money, your money, my money to these third world thugs to get fat on. We need to clean our house first and then render aid to other parts of the world. Those countries being mistreated by their own Government need to rise up. We did and we worked ourselves into the greatest country in history.

Barry

by Yrrab at 12:24 AM on 02 Oct 2007

Food Aid doesn't work.

There are two basic reasons that people need food aid. The first is war which prevents people from getting to their normal source of food; either agricultural lands or trade good production. The second is crop failure in areas that did not have adequate reserves.

The tricky thing about agriculture is that you have to produce a surplus most years and NOT EAT IT. You have to store it, or feed it to livestock so that you have sufficient in those years when there is crop failure. When crops fail the first thing you need to do is kill and eat the livestock. Then you go ahead and eat last years grain yourself.

If you fail to kill livestock early in a drought season you will end up with stock that is useless as food that still eats fodder and depletes water resources. Cultural groups that fail to do this die off or have their numbers trimmed drastically by disease.

In the last century these cycles have been interrupted by medicines and food aid. Where western intervention has been able to extend lifespans of agricultural and pastoral people it has not been able to change cultural preferences for multiple children.

As a result around the world increased populations of humans force increased environmental damage as populations grow beyond the sustainable support of local ecosystems. Human populations around the world are faced with local overshoot and collapse if trade systems fail. Saudi Arabia this means you.

So far trade systems and food aid have limited human population collapses to rural populations in Africa and India. As the genocides in Rwanda and Darfur have demonstrated industrial cultures are quite willing to observe malthusion forces acting from a distance. Ditto the starvation of N. Korea. Condensed: Fat people in the U.S. will do very little to help starving people who don't look like them.

Local cultural systems will have to learn to live within their local environmental sustainability restraints or suffer the consequences. It's nasty but that's how things have worked so far.

Put the Carbon Back

by Pangolin at 1:07 AM on 02 Oct 2007

Just because it hasn't worked doesn't mean stop...

I agree that food aid is not the answer --- least not in the manner in which we've historically done it. Dumping food in times of crisis. This is a necessary course of action when the people on the receiving end will die without it. But, to me, it seems that to be effective we need to be more grass roots in our efforts. We need to send people in to enable development of sustainable agriculture.

Maybe if we put more effort into spreading our good fortune through peaceful means there'd be less people out there that hate us and we wouldn't be wasting money on war and the so-called "war on terrorism". I know this is a naive view, but I'd rather have hope than spew negativity and selfishness.

foodkarmaalert.blogspot.com

Cory

by cmbryant1 at 9:48 AM on 02 Oct 2007

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