Posted on 08/16/2007 6:26:59 PM PDT by decimon
NAIROBI, Kenya - A humanitarian group has turned down $46 million worth of U.S. food aid, arguing that the way the American government distributes its help hurts poor farmers.
CARE said wheat donated by the U.S. government and sold by charities to finance anti-poverty programs results in low-priced crops being dumped on local markets and small-scale growers cannot compete.
Other experts said they share CARE's concern, but stressed that food donations are sometimes needed when a natural disaster harms a local area's agriculture, such as the flooding that North Korea says has devastated vast tracts of its farmland.
The Atlanta-based CARE agreed with that view. "We are not against emergency food aid for things like drought and famine," spokeswoman Alina Labrada said Thursday.
But, she added, the donation of wheat and other crops does not help in regions where people consistently go hungry because local farming has been weakened by international competition. "They are being hurt instead of helped by this mechanism," she said.
Labrada said such areas would be helped more if the U.S. and other donors gave cash that could be spent on locally produced crops, which would stimulate agricultural expansion.
The United States Agency for International Development said Thursday that its experts carry out detailed assessments to try to ensure that commodities do not disrupt local production. Jim Kunder, USAID's acting deputy adminstrator, said $375 million is the approximate average cash value of commodities that are donated for sale.
CARE decided in 2005 to phase out accepting grain donations within four years, but the move is gaining new attention because of the current debate in the U.S. Congress over the Farm Bill, which is reauthorized every five years.
"This is a crucial time. It will set policy for the next five years," Labrada said.
The U.S. farm sector and the maritime industry are the biggest supporters of the current system. The program soaks up surplus farm production, and shippers get lucrative contracts to transport donated grain for sale in needy regions.
The U.S. Government Accountability Office published a study in April saying that emergency American food aid takes an average of 4.5 months to arrive and that legal requirements mean two-thirds of the money spent by the government on food aid goes for packing and shipping.
Washington spends an average of $2 billion on food aid programs a year, mostly funneling the help through the United Nations' World Food Program. According to some aid groups, if the U.S. gave its aid in cash rather than food, it could support about twice as many people.
In the last two farm bills, the U.S. administration called for a partial shift to cash donations instead of grain, but that was voted down by farm supporters.
According to the International Center for Trade and Sustainable Development, the U.S. administration's proposals for future farm spending call for 25 percent of the food aid budget to be in cash.
The European Union has spoken out strongly against U.S. food aid policy in the Word Trade Organization, accusing Washington of using such programs to skirt rules limiting agriculture subsidies.
Christian Rasmussen, at the EU's agriculture directorate in Brussels, Belgium, said the bloc had replaced food aid with cash to ensure help gets to poor countries more quickly.
"It ensures a correct diet, because you also try to buy the proper products. It's also very cost effective because you can buy the food close to the market, unlike in the U.S. case," he said.
Like aid groups, African farmers are divided.
Ousmane Ndiaye, director of the farmer and rural worker group in the West African nation of Senegal, said dumping cheap crops undermines local agriculture.
"We have the resources that we need to nourish our population. We have land. We have men and women with the capacity to do it," he said. "We have millet here. But instead of buying the millet that comes from the middle of Senegal, some people prefer to buy sorghum from foreign countries."
In neighboring Mali, however, the secretary-general of the farmers association said foreign aid helps Malians get crops that aren't produced locally.
"We farm wheat in the north of Mali, around Timbuktu. But that's not enough for all the flour we need for bread," said Fousseyni Traore. He said Mali could never produce enough wheat because its southern areas are too wet and tropical.
The Minnesota-based Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy said that in 2001, the sale of donated American grain provided 30 percent of U.S. aid groups' gross revenues, totaling $1.5 billion.
Tom Getman, executive director for international relations at the aid group World Vision, said he shared CARE's concern about the system but didn't want to turn away any kind of aid.
World Vision also is pushing to get more cash donations and less food, "because we've all gotten more and more anxious about how much it costs to do the shipping and the mixed results on the ground," Getman said.
"But there is going to be a continuing need, like in (North) Korea right now, where we've got to have food available for emergency situations. So it's just finding the balance that is so tough."
___
Associated Press writers Alexander Higgins and Frank Jordans in Geneva and Heidi Vogt in Dakar, Senegal, contributed to this report.
They’re right. The local producers can’t compete with free stuff. That puts them out of business making everyone else more dependent on free stuff. Just more heart of mind thinking that has bad consequences.
To "protect the price of corn" the Brits allowed a government administrator to disallow the import of food for starving people.
I think the CARE administrator who came up with that argument should be dealt with roughly and sent away.
Are the people at CARE under the impression that Nairobi, Kenya is in North Korea?
And strangely, once the corruption ends the need for aid seems to end along with it. Funny how that works out.
-Washington spends an average of $2 billion on food aid programs a year, mostly funneling the help through the United Nations’ World Food Program. According to some aid groups, if the U.S. gave its aid in cash rather than food, it could support about twice as many people.-
Ahhh, but you missed the clincher. They still want free stuff, they just want our cash instead of food.
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In the last two farm bills, the U.S. administration called for a partial shift to cash donations instead of grain, but that was voted down by farm supporters.
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The European Union has spoken out strongly against U.S. food aid policy in the Word Trade Organization, accusing Washington of using such programs to skirt rules limiting agriculture subsidies.
I believe the EU statement is correct but that they do similar.
But in this case, the Kenyan’s are not experiencing a famine due to a disease afflicting their primary foodstuff. The influx of unneeded (by Americans) U.S. wheat DOES negatively impact the Kenyan agricultural sector and thus their economy in general. Furthermore, it’s a perpetuating cycle that will not easily allow the Kenyans (and other 3rd world countries) to improve their standard of living.
Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that I think this is a step in the right direction.
The result is dependency either way.
Whoops, reading on in the article, I don’t agree that they should receive cash from the U.S.like sheana mentioned.
Free used clothes are basically dumped into the local markets which put the tailors out of business.
The same thing happens with the food market. The small farmers grow enough for themselves and a bit for market. But it is impossible to sell what you have grown when there is a surplus of a higher quality lower cost product already there. The end result is that people do not have enough cash to buy the things they can not grow.
Fur shur, the thing that drives farmers out of business (permanently) is if they don't have enough to eat, or if their customers die off.
Here is the "money quote", the real reason we dump cheap "charity" food on underdeveloped nations. Has nothing to do with "Aid" except to US shippers and farmers.
In exceedingly impoverished societies, tailors have no work unless someone brings them cloth with which to work.
Here's the deal, more stuff is good, less stuff is not good. Anything that violates the integrity of that belief is BS.
Oh I agree, but just think about what they could do with all that cash, wheat kind of limits them. ;)
In Kenya people die in a drought/famine because their crop has failed. The famine of 1980-81 was caused by a number of things:
1) The rains failed.
2) There was not engough storage capacity for the 1978-79 bumper harvest.
3) The Kenya government would not admit to shortages until 3 months into FAMINE and did not admit famine until 5 months into severe famine.
4) The Kenya government continued to sell the bumper harvest on the international market for hard currency even after it admitted there was famine. This included selling off the “strategic reserve”.
5) Some Kenyans would not eat USAID donated maize meal because it was yellow corn. Kenyans are used to white maize meal. They believed that the USAID maize was yellow because the US had treated it with “contraceptives to prevent Kenya from having lots of children and being as strong as the US”.
African govenments want cash donations because 20%, 30%, 50% (pick a number) is skimmed off the top by corrupt governments.
No one can compete with free so free has to be used carefully or you create the very situation you are trying to remedy.
“The argument that free or reduced cost food drives farmers out of business is absurd.”
You are dead wrong.
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