Shippers warn against buying US food aid overseas
By Missy Ryan
WASHINGTON, May 20 (Reuters) - The U.S. shipping industry cautioned Congress that a proposal to buy U.S. food aid from farmers overseas, which the White House contends will help save lives when hunger strikes, will drain aid budgets and could even make things worse for the world's poor.
"Cash aid, with no constituency to fight for it and competing with other pressing national priorities, would simply melt away, leading to an overall decline in much-needed international humanitarian assistance," the Maritime Food Aid Coalition said in a statement last week to Sen. Joe Biden, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
The coalition of shipping firms and industry groups hit back against mounting criticism of Congress' opposition to the Bush administration proposal, which would free a quarter of emergency food aid funds from purchasing rules requiring U.S. crops and, mostly, U.S.-flagged ships be used in donating aid.
The proposal, a shift away from the program's roots in sending surplus U.S. crops overseas, has been painted as a way to save money and time when lives are at stake.
But the administration has made little headway in getting Congress to embrace the change over resistance from shippers, crop producers and aid groups that receive U.S. food donations and sell them overseas to fund development work.
"I'm a 'buy American first' guy myself," Agriculture Secretary Ed Schafer said earlier this month. "But the reality is, we can respond faster, we can respond better, and we can take care of people better in an emergency situation by buying locally."
Officials fought for over a year to get the proposal in the the 2008 farm bill, a giant agriculture law the White House is promising to veto over a host of complaints, including the rejection of the local purchase, or "cash," food aid plan.
Instead, lawmakers chose a much smaller pilot program, worth $60 million over several years, to explore the effects of buying those crops in poor countries.
The debate intensifies as soaring global prices for food and fuel deepen poverty and hunger in poor countries while shrinking the buying power of wealthy nations' aid budgets.
Against that backdrop, Bush's local purchase proposal has garnered growing support from activists, some aid groups, and on editorial pages across the United States.
According to a government watchdog, overhead eats up about 65 percent of money spent on U.S. emergency food aid.
But the shipping coalition, in the statement to Biden as he held a hearing on the global food crisis, disputed that point and pointed to declining aid in Europe as proof that shifting aid budgets to cash might erode overall funding.
More and more donors have been shifting aid toward cash in recent years, while the United Nation's World Food Program is working to procure more food aid in poor countries, hoping to build steady demand for crops and help poor farmers.
The shipping sector is skeptical.
"Local suppliers do not store and allocate their commodities across harvests and, emergencies being what they are, aid agencies do not time their purchases to soften the impact on local markets," the coalition said.
The coalition said proponents of local purchase "promise great things, but little is said about the risk," suggesting donors could fall prey to corrupt officials, unscrupulous traders, or drive up prices in already troubled economies.
Instead, the shippers believe such purchases will benefit countries with already robust farm sectors like South Africa.
They also suggested that, in the case of emergencies, food aid could be diverted from other destinations, and pointed to growing "pre-positioning" of aid stocks in places like Dubai.
"Spending hundreds of millions of U.S. tax dollars on our agriculture competitors is not only bad policy, but bad politics," they said. (Editing by Marguerita Choy)
WASHINGTON, May 20 (Reuters) - The U.S. shipping industry cautioned Congress that a proposal to buy U.S. food aid from farmers overseas, which the White House contends will help save lives when hunger strikes, will drain aid budgets and could even make things worse for the world's poor.
"Cash aid, with no constituency to fight for it and competing with other pressing national priorities, would simply melt away, leading to an overall decline in much-needed international humanitarian assistance," the Maritime Food Aid Coalition said in a statement last week to Sen. Joe Biden, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
The coalition of shipping firms and industry groups hit back against mounting criticism of Congress' opposition to the Bush administration proposal, which would free a quarter of emergency food aid funds from purchasing rules requiring U.S. crops and, mostly, U.S.-flagged ships be used in donating aid.
The proposal, a shift away from the program's roots in sending surplus U.S. crops overseas, has been painted as a way to save money and time when lives are at stake.
But the administration has made little headway in getting Congress to embrace the change over resistance from shippers, crop producers and aid groups that receive U.S. food donations and sell them overseas to fund development work.
"I'm a 'buy American first' guy myself," Agriculture Secretary Ed Schafer said earlier this month. "But the reality is, we can respond faster, we can respond better, and we can take care of people better in an emergency situation by buying locally."
Officials fought for over a year to get the proposal in the the 2008 farm bill, a giant agriculture law the White House is promising to veto over a host of complaints, including the rejection of the local purchase, or "cash," food aid plan.
Instead, lawmakers chose a much smaller pilot program, worth $60 million over several years, to explore the effects of buying those crops in poor countries.
The debate intensifies as soaring global prices for food and fuel deepen poverty and hunger in poor countries while shrinking the buying power of wealthy nations' aid budgets.
Against that backdrop, Bush's local purchase proposal has garnered growing support from activists, some aid groups, and on editorial pages across the United States.
According to a government watchdog, overhead eats up about 65 percent of money spent on U.S. emergency food aid.
But the shipping coalition, in the statement to Biden as he held a hearing on the global food crisis, disputed that point and pointed to declining aid in Europe as proof that shifting aid budgets to cash might erode overall funding.
More and more donors have been shifting aid toward cash in recent years, while the United Nation's World Food Program is working to procure more food aid in poor countries, hoping to build steady demand for crops and help poor farmers.
The shipping sector is skeptical.
"Local suppliers do not store and allocate their commodities across harvests and, emergencies being what they are, aid agencies do not time their purchases to soften the impact on local markets," the coalition said.
The coalition said proponents of local purchase "promise great things, but little is said about the risk," suggesting donors could fall prey to corrupt officials, unscrupulous traders, or drive up prices in already troubled economies.
Instead, the shippers believe such purchases will benefit countries with already robust farm sectors like South Africa.
They also suggested that, in the case of emergencies, food aid could be diverted from other destinations, and pointed to growing "pre-positioning" of aid stocks in places like Dubai.
"Spending hundreds of millions of U.S. tax dollars on our agriculture competitors is not only bad policy, but bad politics," they said. (Editing by Marguerita Choy)
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