Ali Carter

Professor Powers

Global Justice

Fall 2014

Harmful Humanitarians? When Food Aid is Morally Problematic

Hunger kills more people each year than AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis combined.[footnoteRef:1] Roughly one in nine people in the world are malnourished, most of them children.[footnoteRef:2] And these hungry children grow up physically and cognitively stunted, with poorer life outcomes educationally, economically, and in health metrics.[footnoteRef:3] Food aid is one tool to combat world hunger. Food aid is typically distributed by sending food produced in developed countries to developing areas suffering from a shortage of food. In this paper I will investigate food aid sent from the United States through the United States Agency for International Development through the Food for Peace Title II Programs. First I will look at the background of global hunger and the history of U.S. food aid, and then I will explore the moral questions that the current system raises. [1: World Food Programme. News. Published 4 June 2009. Accessed online 18 December 2014 at http://www.wfp.org/content/wfp-says-hunger-kills-more-aids-malaria-tuberculosis-combined] [2: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Towards the Future We Want: End hunger and make the transition to sustainable agricultural and food systems. Rome, 2012. Accessed online 18 December 2014 at http://www.fao.org/docrep/015/an894e/an894e00.pdf] [3: Save the Children. Food for thought: Tackling child malnutrition to unlock potential and boost prosperity. London, 2013. Accessed online 18 December 2014 at http://www.savethechildren.org/atf/cf/%7B9def2ebe-10ae-432c-9bd0-df91d2eba74a%7D/FOOD_FOR_THOUGHT.PDF]

Global Hunger

The global hunger problem isnt that there is an overall lack of food in the world. We have enough food production worldwide to satisfy every person on the planets caloric needs.[footnoteRef:4] Yet this food production is clustered in certain highly productive areas, so many regions of the world cant produce enough to feed local populations. Additionally, even many regions that do produce enough of certain crops dont produce enough crop diversity to provide appropriate levels of micronutrition. Micronutrients are vitamins and minerals found in varying levels in different foods that are needed consistently in low amounts for optimal health.[footnoteRef:5] For example, in many countries people do not have access to enough iron through meats and dark green leafy vegetables. A lack of iron can contribute to developing anemia, which causes chronic fatigue and lowers productivity levels.[footnoteRef:6] Similarly, in some areas there is a dearth of beta-carotenean important precursor for Vitamin Awhich is highly important for growth and development, vision, and immune system maintenance.[footnoteRef:7] So, even if a person is eating enough calorically, they can be malnourished through a lack of micronutrients. [4: Banerjee, Abhijit and Esther Duflo. Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty. PublicAffairs: New York, 2011.] [5: World Health Organization. Nutrition: Micronutrients. Accessed online 18 December 2014 at http://www.who.int/nutrition/topics/micronutrients/en/] [6: National Institutes of Health, National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. What is Iron-Deficiency Anemia? 26 March 2014. Accessed online 18 December 2014 at http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health-topics/topics/ida] [7: National Institutes of Health: Office of Dietary Supplements. Vitamin A Fact Sheet for Professionals. 5 June 2013. Accessed online 18 December 2014 at http://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/VitaminA-HealthProfessional/]

History and Organization of Food for Peace Title II Programs

Food aid was developed in the United States as a way to fortify our agricultural sector and provide food to those in need in other countries. Institutionalized food aid began in 1954 in the United States by President Eisenhower at a time when the country had large food surpluses.[footnoteRef:8] When he signed the legislation, he said that the program would lay the basis for a permanent expansion of our exports of agricultural products with lasting benefits to ourselves and peoples of other lands.[footnoteRef:9] It was expanded radically into its current form by President Kennedy who said, Food is strength, and food is peace, and food is freedom, and food is a helping hand to people around the world whose good will and friendship we want. From these two quotations it is clear to see that U.S. food aid was never designed to be a purely altruistic program, but instead was designed to be a tool that would benefit ourselves as well. [8: U.S. Department of State Office of the Historian. USAID and PL-480, 1961-1969. 31 October 2013. Accessed online 18 December 2014 at https://history.state.gov/milestones/1961-1968/pl-480] [9: US Food Aid and Security. The History of Food Aid: Food for Peace Program. Alliance for Global Food Security. Accessed online 18 December 2014 at http://foodaid.org/resources/the-history-of-food-aid/]

Distributing food aid bolsters our agricultural exports and generates goodwill in other nations, and therefore is used as a geopolitical tool to increase United States power in the world. As shown in Figure 1, U.S. food aid policy has more nuanced objectives than the fairly straightforward aim of getting food to those in need. It benefits American famers by disposing of any surpluses in certain crops and increases farm income by adding another large-scale buyer to the market. We distribute food aid, as Kennedy remarked, to those whose goodwill and friendship we want, or in other words to those governments from whom we would like to obtain political and military benefits. This is not to say that U.S. food aid does not accomplish its goal of feeding undernourished populations or supporting foreign governments (often those who we would like to prop up, again possibly for our own benefit), but it does warrant emphasizing that U.S. food aid is designed in a way that strongly benefits the United States interests.

Figure 1. Objectives, beneficiaries, and motives of United States food aid policy. Original source unknown; accessed online 18 December 2014 at http://www.westga.edu/~awalter/teaching/global/globalfoodsystemii.pdf

The United States predominate method of distributing food aid is through Food for Peace, a program of USAID. In this program, private voluntary organizationstypically either non-governmental organizations working on the ground in developing countries or the World Food Program of the United Nationsfirst submit proposals to USAID for how and why food aid should be distributed in a particular area.[footnoteRef:10] If the aid organization is awarded a grant then they are allowed to choose which foods they would like the USDA to purchase from American farmers from a pre-approved list of surplus crops. Then USDA purchases the foods on the open market after submitting a call for bids. Then the crops are taken to port and loaded onto U.S.-flagged vessels. U.S.-flagged vessels are shipping carriers registered with the United States to be able to fly the American flag. The list does not include all U.S.-owned vessels, and does include some non-U.S.-owned ships. Finally, once the cargo arrives in the destination port it is sent to the area of need and is either distributed for free or is monetized to raise money for development programs. [10: United States Agency for International Development. How Title II food aid works. 27 March 2013. Accessed online 18 December 2014 at http://www.usaid.gov/what-we-do/agriculture-and-food-security/food-assistance/quick-facts/how-title-ii-food-aid-works]

Figure 2. Process diagram of Food for Peace procurement.

Positive Aspects of Food Aid

There are several important positive aspects to distributing food aid. The first, which cannot be understated, is that it gets food to people who are in desperate need. Despite the negative aspects of food aid that I will explore later in this paper, it is important to note that food aid in and of itself is a powerful tool to help those in extreme suffering. Because of this, I will not argue that food aid needs to be completely eliminated, but rather that the U.S. programs to distribute food aid could be more effective if reformed.

Additionally, food aid can be distributed in creative ways to incentivize good behaviors. For example, another U.S. food aid program called Food for Education distributes food in schools to encourage families to send their children to school, and some US food aid programs have provided nutrition education to mothers.[footnoteRef:11] Food aid can also be distributed in conjunction with medications so that individuals are provided access to certain drugs that they may need. [11: United States Agency for International Development. Food assistance. 22 September 2014. Accessed online 18 December 2014 at http://www.usaid.gov/what-we-do/agriculture-and-food-security/food-assistance]

Negative Aspects of Food Aid

Unfortunately, while food aid does a great deal of good in the world, it also is at times inefficient and has even been called harmful. In this section I will briefly touch on some of the major problems that have been found to be associated with food aid.

Sometimes U.S. food aid is inefficient or ineffective because of bad actors. For example, after Cyclone Nargis devastated Burma in 2008, the authoritarian government largely closed the borders of the country to all foreigners and refused to issue visas. This meant that much aid that arrived to help the Burmese people spoiled at the borders of the country with nobody to access it.[footnoteRef:12] However, this is a failure of certain individuals more than it is indicati