Plan for changing food aid faces fight

U.S. Sen. Mark Pryor, D-Ark., and U.S. Rep. Rick Crawford, R-Ark., who serves on the House Agriculture Committee, said the Food for Peace program is an essential tool of “soft diplomacy” that helps enhance the United States’ standing internationally. Pryor is shown reading to children in this file photo.
U.S. Sen. Mark Pryor, D-Ark., and U.S. Rep. Rick Crawford, R-Ark., who serves on the House Agriculture Committee, said the Food for Peace program is an essential tool of “soft diplomacy” that helps enhance the United States’ standing internationally. Pryor is shown reading to children in this file photo.

WASHINGTON - The White House wants a U.S. foreign-aid program to distribute more cash and fewer American-grown commodities, a move that could hurt Arkansas agriculture, lawmakers and farmers say.

In his budget blueprint, President Barack Obama proposed gutting the Food for Peace program, a set of government initiatives run by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and U.S. Agency for International Development, which buys food from U.S. farmers and ships it abroad to people in need.

The administration argues that food shipments are too expensive and take too long.

U.S. Sen. Mark Pryor, D-Ark., defended the program, which began in 1954.

“It’s worked well,” Pryor said. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

Pryor and U.S. Rep. Rick Crawford, R-Ark., who serves on the House Agriculture Committee, said the program is an essential tool of “soft diplomacy” that helps enhance the United States’ standing internationally.

“The first thing starving people see when they receive a bag of rice from Arkansas is the stamp of the American flag,” Crawford said.

According to the USA Rice Federation, $89 million in American-grown rice was shipped overseas under the Food for Peace program last year. Arkansas is the nation’s largest rice producer.

“It would have a negative impact on our producers to take away this program,” said Matt King, an economist with the Arkansas Farm Bureau. King said donating food in times of need helps people in impoverished areas develop a taste for American products, making it more likely they will buy U.S. goods when their economies strengthen.

The administration said changing the program, which is budgeted to receive $1.4 billion next year, would save $500 million over 10 years by reducing transportation costs and would allow for the purchase of cheaper commodities.

The proposed change would shift oversight of the funds from the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Agriculture, which Pryor heads, to the Subcommittee on Foreign Operations, whose chairman is Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont.

Leahy supports the administration’s plan, according to his spokesman.

Secretary of State John Kerry told Leahy and other panel members on April 18 that switching food aid over to the State Department and allowing for the use of direct cash payments would feed between2 million and 4 million more people than the 45 million people who currently receive food aid annually.

“American growers and producers will still play a major role in our food assistance,” Kerry told Leahy and other panel members. “But by giving us the ability to modernize, including the flexibility to also procure food aid in developing countries closer to crisis areas, not only can we feed more people, we can get food to malnourished people 11 to 14 weeks faster … this change allows us to do more to help more people lift themselves out of hunger and poverty without spending any more money.”

According to U.S. Agency for International Development Administrator Rajiv Shah, who is scheduled to testify before Leahy’s panel Tuesday, shipping costs, which are currently about $1,180 per metric ton, have almost tripled in the past 11 years.

He insisted that 55 percent of the $1.4 billion marked for assistance in the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1 would consist of commodity purchases from U.S. farmers.

But increasing the use of cash transfers to avoid shipping charges would lower costs, Shah said, as would procuring grains and produce closer to the needy countries. Doing so, he said, would reduce the wait for food in some countries by 98 days.

“Waiting every additional day - every additional hour - can mean the difference between life and death,” he said in an April speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

If the change is made, some hunger advocates worry that it will open the door for more widespread cuts.

Ellen Levinson, executive director of the Alliance for Global Food Security, said the commodity-based program saves money by buying grain in bulk, and on a regular basis. She said she’s concerned that shifting money now directed at alleviating hunger to broader development programs will mean that basic food efforts will be overlooked.

“They’re looking for flexibility, but they’re losing reliability, accountability and effectiveness,” she said.

Eric Mitchell, director of government relations for Bread for the World, a Christian group in Washington dedicated to ending hunger, disagreed. He said changing the program would help alleviate hunger and cut costs. He said the introduction of cash would help re-establish foreign markets that have been devastated by drought and natural disasters.

But, he said, farm-state lawmakers, such as Pryor and Crawford, have effectively mobilized against the proposed shift. The administration proposal, he said, faces a big fight.

“It’s going to be an uphill battle,” he said.

Front Section, Pages 1 on 05/06/2013

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