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Aid agency rejects $46-million from U.S.

CARE says politics behind food aid make it hurt more than help.

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published August 17, 2007

NAIROBI, Kenya - A humanitarian group has turned down $46-million worth of U.S. food aid, arguing that the way the American government distributes its help hurts poor farmers.

CARE said wheat donated by the U.S. government and sold by charities to finance antipoverty programs results in low-priced crops being dumped on local markets and small-scale growers cannot compete.

Other experts said they share CARE's concern but stressed that food donations are sometimes needed when a natural disaster harms a local area's agriculture, such as the flooding that North Korea says has devastated vast tracts of its farmland.

The Atlanta-based CARE agreed with that view. "We are not against emergency food aid for things like drought and famine," spokeswoman Alina Labrada said Thursday.

But, she added, the donation of wheat and other crops does not help in regions where people consistently go hungry because local farming has been weakened by international competition. "They are being hurt instead of helped by this mechanism," she said.

Labrada said such areas would be helped more if the United States and other donors gave cash that could be spent on locally produced crops, which would stimulate agricultural expansion.

Officials at USAID, the U.S. government agency for distributing aid, did not immediately comment Thursday.

CARE decided in 2005 to phase out accepting grain donations within four years, but the move is gaining new attention because of the current debate in the U.S. Congress over the Farm Bill, which is reauthorized every five years.

The U.S. farm sector and the maritime industry are the biggest supporters of the current system. The program soaks up surplus farm production, and shippers get lucrative contracts to transport donated grain for sale in needy regions.

The U.S. Government Accountability Office published a study in April saying that emergency American food aid takes an average of 4.5 months to arrive and that legal requirements mean two-thirds of the money spent by the government on food aid goes for packing and shipping.

Washington spends an average of $2-billion on food aid programs a year, mostly funneling the help through the United Nations' World Food Program. According to some aid groups, if the United States gave its aid in cash rather than food, it could support about twice as many people.

[Last modified August 16, 2007, 22:33:41]