Food aid program helps U.S. farms, hobbles anti-hunger efforts ...

WASHINGTON — A federal requirement that most international food aid be grown domestically — a boon for America’s farmers — is also hobbling efforts to feed the world’s hungry, according to a new government report released Thursday.

International aid programs that purchased food close to those in need not only spent much less, in many cases, but also delivered the assistance much faster than comparable programs like that of the United States, where the food was shipped from abroad, the non-partisan Government Accountability Office found. GAO is recommending that the White House take a closer look at whether local-purchase programs can create efficiencies without harming local markets or sacrificing quality and nutrition.

The report has added fuel to the argument from many relief groups that Washington should re-tailor its multi-billion-dollar food aid program to allow for greater in-cash contributions, which grant aid organizations more power to tackle emergencies than the mandatory in-kind program currently in place.

“The way the United States does in-kind food aid is particularly costly and inefficient,” said Kimberly Elliot, a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development. “The key is flexibility, and cash offers that better than anything else.”

Elliot’s is not a new argument, but it is one that hasn’t gotten very far on Capitol Hill. That’s because the nation’s largest food aid program, called Food for Peace, requires that the crops be purchased from U.S. growers, processed through U.S. companies, and shipped using U.S.-flagged vessels — an enormous prize for America’s farmers, millers and shippers, who continually lobby Congress to keep the program exactly as it is.

And Congress continuously listens.

Each year during the second half of his tenure in the White House, President George W. Bush proposed that up to 25 percent of the Food for Peace funding — roughly $2 billion a year for the last half of the decade — go to buy food closer to those who need it. In each case, the proposal went exactly nowhere in Congress.

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