The aid organization, Care, is withdrawing from U.S. food assistance programs because of inefficiency and the harm the programs do to local efforts to achieve food sufficiency.
"We came to the realization that if we wanted to do what was in the best interest of poor people and efficiency in aid, that this wasn't it," Helene Gayle, president of the aid NGO told Reuters news agency.
Care signaled its discomfort with U.S. food assistance in 2005 with a decision to phase out buying grain donations in the United States. But the current congressional debate over farm policy has brought attention to this decision. A new farm bill will establish food aid and farm policy for the next five years.
In March 21 testimony before the U.S. Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry, Care senior technical advisor, David Kauck, told the legislators, "…the practice of purchasing commodities here in the United States, shipping those resources overseas, and then selling them to generate funds for food security programs is far less efficient than the logical alternative—simply providing cash for those programs."
Care alone has sold about US$60m worth of U.S. crops, mostly in Africa, to fund development projects.
Such "monetization" - as it is called - in 2001 provided about 30 percent of the gross revenues of aid organizations, according to the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy. Care plans to phase out monetization by 2009.
Monetization is one of four areas of food aid criticized by Care in a June 2006 "White Paper" reviewing food aid policy. The paper said in part that monetization was "fraught with legal and financial risks." It added that because food aid deliveries are tied to domestic agricultural priorities, the U.S.Department of Agriculture's "Food for Peace" program has "harmful unintended consequences."
The system requires that U.S. crops earmarked as assistance be delivered on U.S. vessels at a high cost that swallows much aid money.
Oxfam said in a recent report that although food aid has increased, almost all of it is imported by recipient countries, it can take months to deliver and it can cost 50 percent more than locally-purchased goods.
Meanwhile, aid for agricultural production in Africa has been falling, from US$1.7 billion between 1990-1992 to US$944 million between 2000 and 2002. Food emergencies in Africa have almost tripled over the last two decades, Oxfam says.
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Care says there is also a need to think very carefully about the impact of trade liberalization, especially the potential effects of agricultural subsidies on poor farmers.
"Of particular interest is the possibility that the proposed reduction of agricultural subsidies and trade barriers may be linked to reform of the food aid system, a development that could lead to the elimination of safety nets at a time [of] rising commodity prices, thus causing the erosion of poor people's purchasing power and access to food," Care said in its June white paper.
Care's stance is still being heavily debated among aid organizations. Many say that while a giant organization like Care may be able to find alternative sources of money, it is much more difficult for smaller NGOs to walk away from U.S. funds.
Related: Helene Gayle Discusses Care's Work
