Food for Peace


Since the 1950s, in different administrative and organizational forms, the United States' Food for Peace program has used America's agricultural surpluses to provide food assistance around the world, broaden international trade, and advance U.S. international diplomacy. Approximately 4 billion people in 150 countries have benefited directly from U.S. food assistance.
The Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance within the United States Agency for International Development is the U.S. Government's largest provider of overseas food assistance. The food assistance programming is funded primarily through the Food for Peace Act. The Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance also receives International Disaster Assistance Funds through the Foreign Assistance Act that can be used in emergency settings.
While U.S. food aid started out in the 1950s by donating surplus U.S. commodities to nations in need, the U.S. now purchases food for donation directly from American farmers through a competitive process. The Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance identifies need in close consultation with the host government requesting the assistance.
During the 2010s the program underwent revisions offered by in the Administration's Fiscal Year 2014 budget. These revisions would change the program to provide cash donations rather than American grown and delivered food. On April 24, 2013, the chairman of USA Maritime, a coalition of carriers and maritime unions, wrote a statement which discussed the efficacy of the program and specifically the importance of the U.S. Merchant Marine in delivering the U.S. food aid to people who are undernourished around the world. Henry cited the fact that USAID's own data actually revealed that the traditional efforts to deliver food as opposed to cash transfers for countries to buy their own food is actually 78 percent cheaper per ton of food. Henry offers that this is a significant fact in the effort to address global hunger.

Early history of United States food assistance

America's food assistance programs began in 1812 when James Madison sent emergency aid to earthquake victims in Venezuela. As director of the American Relief Administration, Herbert Hoover led a $20 million feeding program in Russia during the 1920s under the Russian Famine Relief Act. In 1948, the United States launched the Marshall Plan, which provided dollars for Europeans to purchase American food exports. The Marshall Plan helped rejuvenate and unite Europe while laying the foundations for a permanent U.S. food assistance program. Many of the European countries the U.S. Government helped at that time have since become major food exporters and important international donors.

Authorizing legislation

Public Law 480 (1954)

Minnesota Senator Hubert Humphrey, a leading liberal Democrat, promoted a food for peace program that would give away surplus crops owned by the U.S. government as an instrument of foreign policy in the Cold War. The bill appealed to some conservative Republicans from farm states, but was opposed by others, including Barry Goldwater.

Another account credits the idea to Cheyenne County, Kansas farmer Peter O'Brien, who shared the idea, in 1953, while attending a local Farm Bureau meeting. A U.S. Senator from Kansas, Andy Schoeppel, sponsored such legislation.
On July 10, 1954, Dwight D. Eisenhower, another Kansan, signed the Agricultural Trade Development and Assistance Act — or Public Law 480 — an action which simultaneously created the Office of Food for Peace. By signing this legislation, the President laid "the basis for a permanent expansion of our exports of agricultural products with lasting benefits to ourselves and peoples of other lands." The bill, a solution for food deficient, cash-poor countries, created a secondary foreign market by allowing food-deficient countries to pay for American food imports in their own currencies instead of in U.S. dollars. These currencies were, for the most part, worthless outside their issuing countries. The U.S. used these currencies to pay for economic development projects inside those countries.
The law's original purpose was to expand international trade, to promote the economic stability of American agriculture, to make maximum use of surplus agricultural commodities in the furtherance of foreign policy, and to stimulate the expansion of foreign trade in agricultural commodities produced in the United States. Critics view the law as "a means of disposing of costly domestic agricultural surpluses."
The law was originally drafted by future Foreign Agricultural Service administrator Gwynn Garnett after returning from a trip to India in 1950. The bill is unusual in that it gave the FAS the ability to conclude agreements with foreign governments without the approval of the United States Senate.
Lyndon B. Johnson limited the PL-480 grain shipments for critical famine aid to India, to pressure it into toning down its criticism on the US involvement in the Vietnam War.

Kennedy era and Food for Peace Act (1966)

In 1961, President John F. Kennedy termed the law "Food for Peace," stating, "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." Through new amendments, the law switched its focus from disposing of surplus agricultural commodities to addressing humanitarian needs and responding to growing food crisis demands. In signing the extension of the Agricultural Trade Development and Assistance Act in 1959, President Eisenhower criticized the shortcomings of the amendment. He specifically referred to the extension as the Food for Peace program. Although Kennedy may have expanded the program, he was not the first to refer to the program as Food for Peace.
Former U.S. Representative from South Dakota George McGovern was picked to become a Special Assistant to the President and first director of Kennedy's high-priority Food for Peace program, which realized what McGovern had been advocating in the House. McGovern assumed the post on January 21, 1961.
As director, McGovern urged the greater use of food to enable foreign economic development, saying, "We should thank God that we have a food abundance and use the over-supply among the under-privileged at home and abroad." He found space for the program in the Executive Office Building rather than be subservient to either the U.S. Department of State or U.S. Department of Agriculture. McGovern worked with deputy director James W. Symington and Kennedy advisor Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. in visiting South America to discuss surplus grain distribution, and attended meetings of the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization.
By the close of 1961, the Food for Peace program was operating in a dozen countries, and 10 million more people had been fed with American surplus than the year before. In February 1962, McGovern visited India and oversaw a greatly expanded school lunch program thanks to Food for Peace; subsequently one in five Indian schoolchildren would be fed from it, and by mid-1962, 35 million children around the world. During an audience in Rome, Pope John XXIII warmly praised McGovern's work.
McGovern resigned his post on July 18, 1962, wanting to resume his electoral political career. Kennedy said that under McGovern, the program had "become a vital force in the world", improving living conditions and economies of allies and creating "a powerful barrier to the spread of Communism". Columnist Drew Pearson wrote that it was one of the "most spectacular achievements of the young Kennedy administration," while Schlesinger would later write that Food for Peace had been "the greatest unseen weapon of Kennedy's third-world policy".
McGovern was succeeded by Richard W. Reuter, who had been the executive director of CARE. In 1965, during the Lyndon B. Johnson administration, the program was folded into the State Department under Secretary Dean Rusk. A year later Reuther resigned his retitled position of Special Assistant to the Secretary of State for Food for Peace, reportedly dismayed by the direction the food program had taken.
The Food for Peace Act of 1966, ,, revised the basic structure of the programs and placed the emphasis clearly on the humanitarian goals of the program. The policy statement shifted from surplus disposal to planned production for export to meet world food needs.

Food, Agriculture, Conservation, and Trade Act (1990)

In 1990, the U.S. Congress passed, and President George H. W. Bush signed into law the first comprehensive restatement and reorganization of P.L. 480 in the Food, Agriculture, Conservation and Trade Act. This bill made a significant change in the overall focus of P.L. 480. Once seen as simply an aspect of foreign policy, P.L. 480 now has food security as a primary goal.

Food for Peace Act (2008)

In 2008, the Food for Peace Act, formally replaced the Agricultural Trade Development and Assistance Act. Programs are authorized, along with all U.S. agricultural programs, through the Farm Bill which Congress typically amends and reauthorizes every five years.

Provisions

The purpose of the Food for Peace Act is to:
  • Combat world hunger and malnutrition and their causes
  • Promote broad-based, equitable and sustainable development, including agricultural development
  • Expand international trade
  • Foster and encourage the development of private enterprise and democratic participation in developing countries
  • Prevent conflicts
The Food for Peace Act includes four sections, referred to as titles, which regulate food aid commodities and development and relief support. The United States Department of Agriculture manages Title I, while USAID manages Titles II, III and V.
  • Title I: Economic Assistance and Food Security—governs concessional sales of U.S. agricultural commodities to developing countries and private entities
  • Title II: Emergency and Private Assistance Programs—provide for the direct donation of U.S. agricultural commodities for emergency relief and development programs
  • Title III: Food for Development—provides government-to-government grants of agricultural commodities, which are tied to policy reform
  • Title IV: General Authorities and Requirements – establishes prohibited uses including no aid to human rights violators, no aid to military, and no competition with U.S. producers
  • Title V: John Ogonowski and Doug Bereuter Farmer-to-Farmer Program—-provides voluntary technical assistance to farmers, farm groups, and agribusinesses.
  • Title VI: Enterprise for the America's Initiative – official debt relief linking Food for Peace and AID debt owed to the United States to the promulgation of structural adjustment and open investment policies