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Joseph Molieri/Bread for the World
FOOD AID
Bread’s 2014 Offering of Letters features the story of Catarina Pascual
Jiménez and her children. This family in Guatemala has benefitted from
the early days of a U.S. food-aid program.
fiscal year, such emergency funds would have most likely already been spent on other disasters.
Fifty-five tons of nutritious emergency food was rapidly
airlifted to the Philippines from the United States. One hundred tons of rice, prepositioned in Sri Lanka just for such
an emergency, arrived within a month after the disaster. It
would have taken three months if American ships were used
to transport rice from the U.S. to the Philippines.
For more than 50 years, U.S. food aid has been an effective
response to humanitarian crises caused by conflict, famine,
and natural disasters. Food aid has benefitted more than 3
billion hungry and malnourished people in more than 150
countries over those years.
Today, our country is the largest provider of food aid, and
we are needed now more than ever. U.S. food aid has played
a significant role in preventing hunger and starvation, but
we can do better.
Bread is seeking reforms to U.S. food aid in its 2014 Offering of Letters because:
Americans support effective development. Almost
90 percent of Americans believe that improving health for
people in developing countries should be one of the top priorities of U.S. foreign assistance, according to a 2012 poll
by the Kaiser Family Foundation. Nearly two-thirds of those
individuals specifically prioritize reducing hunger and malnutrition. Americans feel strongly that we have a moral and
financial responsibility to help end hunger and poverty.
Flexibility saves dollars and lives. The practice of obtaining food close to the source of need, called local and
regional purchases (LRP), allows for better-quality food aid
2 Bread | January-February 2014
that reaches people in need more quickly. Reaching women
and children in the 1,000-day window between pregnancy
and a child’s second birthday with timely food aid is crucial.
It’s also less expensive—on average, 30 percent cheaper than
food aid that is shipped from the United States and other
countries, which is the current practice. LRP would promote
long-term food security because it supports local farmers’
efforts to improve their lives.
A 2008 pilot to implement and study LRP activities in
both emergency and non-emergency settings showed savings
in both money and time. Using cash and vouchers where appropriate can also increase efficiency in delivering food aid.
Having more options like these will enable specialized
food aid products and vitamins and minerals to be adjusted
and targeted to the most vulnerable people, giving them better nutrition.
Nutritional quality of food aid is essential. The types of
food aid distributed by the United States and other donors
do address hunger by providing needed calories but can fall
short in addressing nutritional needs. Ensuring good nutrition to vulnerable populations has not been a high priority partly because emergency programs are seen to address
immediate food shortages. Good nutrition early in life lays
a foundation for health and productivity later in life and decreases people’s risk of hunger.
Adequate funding for food assistance and nutrition is
crucial. Despite the continued importance of the government’s food-aid programs for alleviating hunger, particularly among women and children, funding has been cut significantly over the past several years. The cuts have come
about in two ma [