Rising food costs already are squeezing international hunger relief efforts. Add a new potential problem: the U.S. farm bill.
The Bush administration and the United Nations' World Food Program say provisions in both the House and Senate versions of a new farm bill could slash the amount of money available to the United Nations for famine relief.
The measures would set aside as much as $600 million in U.S. food aid spending each year to fund international development projects operated by humanitarian organizations such as World Vision and Catholic Relief Services.
Funding for those projects, which include programs to help farmers improve crop yields, has been reduced in recent years as more and more of the food aid budget has been shifted to meeting emergency needs in Sudan, Zimbabwe and elsewhere.
But Chuck Conner, the acting agriculture secretary, says the proposed mandate for development work would be "dangerous and reckless" because it could leave the government without the cash to help the United Nations cope with emergencies.
Officials with the World Food Program, which distributes most emergency food aid, worry they'll be unable to respond to disasters adequately.
Nancy Roman, the World Food Program's director of public policy strategy, says that diverting food-aid money to development projects would mean a "significant reduction in what's been available for emergencies and emergency food aid."
The World Food Program already is struggling to keep up with the rising costs of corn, soybeans and other commodities.
The World Food Program's procurement costs have gone up 50 percent over the past five years and 20 percent in the past eight months, said Roman. Costs are forecast to rise another 35 percent over the next two years.
The problem for the private charities is that the increasing cost of emergency food aid has left less money for the development work they do.
By law, those projects are supposed to get 75 cents of every dollar the government spends on food aid. The reverse has happened. The administration can waive the requirement, and does so every year. As a result, about $1.2 billion a year goes to emergency relief, compared with $350 million to development.
The charities say that disparity in funding is shortsighted. They say projects they run are critical to preventing the kind of famines that the World Food Program has to step in and address.
"Developmental food aid helps improve people's resilience to droughts and economic downturns," Walter Middleton, a World Vision vice president, told Congress last year.
"Giving people the means to improve their lives also provides hope for a better future and helps stabilize vulnerable areas."
So, how is Congress to deal with all these concerns?
One way would be to change the way development projects are funded. The government doesn't give cash to the charities. Instead, it buys U.S. corn, soybeans and other commodities and gives the food to the charities to resell in the countries where they work.
That's inherently inefficient, because it means that a lot of the food-aid budget goes to handling and transporting the food. But giving the charities cash instead of commodities would hurt the agribusinesses and shippers that profit from supplying the food, so there's little political support in Congress for switching to cash.
Another option: Increase total spending for food aid. That doesn't look promising, given the federal budget deficit and the recent history of U.S. food-aid spending. It's been relatively flat, and the U.S. share of the World Food Program's budget has fallen from 57 percent in 2003 to 44 percent last year.
But times are different. Food prices are soaring, in part because of the worldwide boom in biofuel production. And they could very well go higher, because Congress has just enacted a new biofuels mandate.
Someone will pay the bill.Des Moines Register
