As Prices Soar, U.S. Food Aid Buys Less - New York Times
Congress is considering changes to the food aid program as part of the omnibus farm bill that some economists and advocates for the hungry say would improve the efficiency of the program and allow it to feed more people. They point to a Bush administration proposal that would allow the government to use up to $300 million of the food aid budget to buy food in African countries close to hunger emergencies rather than shipping it from the United States on mainly American-flagged vessels as current law requires.
In his speech to the United Nations this week, President Bush said the proposal would speed delivery and help provide a market for poor farmers in developing countries.
The House version of the farm bill includes no such provision. The Senate Agriculture Committee has not produced a farm bill.
“But the shipping guys are hanging tough,” [said Emmy Simmons, an agricultural economist and retired senior manager at the United States Agency for International Developmen]. She added, “They’re defending that little chunk of revenue. They aren’t super concerned whether you feed less people.”
Groups representing shipping companies and agribusiness interests have opposed using the budget of the main food aid program to buy food in developing countries instead of relying on American food shipped overseas.
Gloria Tosi, who represents most of the American ship owners involved in the food aid system, said buying commodities abroad would erode domestic political support for the program and lead to lower food aid budgets from Congress. She said it was “politically naïve” to think the food commodity groups and ship owners that have for decades supported food aid in Congress would favor buying commodities abroad.
“None of us will be working toward that,” she said.
Credit where it's due: The Bush proposal is spot-on. So now it's time for Democrats to lobby their leaders in Congress to support that proposal in spite of the deep-pocket pressure of agri-business and the shipping companies.
Gloria Tosi, although I doubt her name will ever come up again, has officially earned the nick Wicked Witch of the West. Scummy crumbs like her should be put out of their jobs.
Imagine having the ice to say that Americans would reduce their support for feeding hungry children based upon where the food aid is purchased! I thought the Wicked Witch of The West was dead!
Not only will food purchased nearer the point of need be more economical for the U.S., it will also benefit the economies of those countries where the food is purchased. It's win-win for the poor and hungry. More importantly the food purchased locally, near the point of need, will be better suited to the nutritional needs of those being fed!
You've all seen the pictures of reconstituted powdered milk being slopped out into cups for hungry African children, right? Well, like Asians, Africans lack the enzyme in their systems to break down the lactose in bovine milk products. So we give the kiddies cow milk and, like anyone else who is lactose intolerant, they get the runs from it which leads to dehydration and they die despite all of the money we spend feeding them!
It's largely the same for the grains and other things we send overseas. As was recently reported, the nutritional values in the stuff the huge agricultural conglomerates are growing is nose-diving. We tolerate the nearly nutritionally void garbage grown by big American agri-bussiness corporations (because we spend umpteen-bazillion in health care costs to keep ourselves alive) but the people we send it to, being used to more nutritious fare, can't get the proper nutrition from the same size portions.
To recap:
* The Bushies are right about this one.
* The Democrats need to get off their asses and concur, write the legislation and feed the hungry children of the world.
* The shipping companies and giant agri-corpos need to stop profiteering off of poor people's hunger.
* Gloria Tosi is an asshole.
