Ag industry, relief groups defend American food-aid programs

Ag industry, relief groups defend American food-aid programs    With nearly 850 million malnourished people scattered throughout the world, American agriculture and relief groups asked Capitol Hill lawmakers to strengthen funding for U.S. food aid programs.
   “Food aid budgets need to be predictable and big enough to make a real dent in the number of malnourished people around the world, to improve education levels and help HIV/AIDS remediation,” testified James A. Madich, chairman of the North American Millers’ Association’s International Trade Committee, and vice president of Horizon Milling, before the House Agriculture Committee Thursday. “We’re clearly doing far too little.”
   On June 8, the House passed the fiscal 2006 Agricultural Appropriations bill. Of the total $17 billion provided in discretionary resources, $1.07 billion is for Food for Peace (PL 480) Title II. Funds for this food-aid program are used for development programs and emergencies.
   “This piecemeal funding process does not allow for long-term planning and forces programs to be cancelled and recipients dropped,” Madich warned.
   It’s estimated by agriculture and relief groups that to tackle the current level of global hunger, Title II programs require a fiscal 2006 budget of at least $2 billion.
   Agriculture and relief groups recently banned together to fight a Bush administration budget proposal to transfer $300 million from food commodity purchases to a spending program managed by the U.S. Agency for International Development. The agency said it would use the money to purchase food aid from sources closest to the crisis zone.
   Barbara Spangler, executive director for the Wheat Export Trade Education Committee, told the House Agriculture Committee this proposed USAID plan would “contradict everything that the U.S. is trying to accomplish with its public diplomacy initiatives.
   “Will some future industrialist, in a current developing country that will eventually be a commercial trading partner, even know that the American taxpayer paid to send cheaper Kazakhstan wheat as U.S. food aid?” she said.
   As an alternative, the Food Aid Coalition members praised USAID’s pilot project to store processed U.S. commodities in warehouses close to traditional crisis areas. The agency’s prepositioning center in Dubai helped the United States quickly provide food aid to Tsunami survivors in South Asia.
   Agriculture and relief groups also expressed concern about attempts by some countries involved in the World Trade Organization Doha negotiations to turn commodity-based food aid programs into cash donations.
   “The American people’s ability to offer a hand up to the needy should not be a bargaining chip for agriculture trade negotiations with other countries,” testified Sean Callahan, vice president of Catholic Relief Services. “The WTO should have little to no role in determining how humanitarian food aid is provided. It should leave food aid decisions to institutions with food aid expertise.”
   “It must remain a country’s right to maintain humanitarian programs that meet recipient countries’ needs and to be able to respond directly to these needs,” Spangler said.