DE SAM LAZARO: More importantly, Pomeroy says he fears any changes could jeopardize fragile congressional support for what remains the world’s largest food aid program, even though it accounts for just $1.2 billion of the $280 billion U.S. farm program.
Rep. POMEROY: One of the things about the structure of our program is that it’s been able to sustain congressional support through all kinds of political circumstances. Even in the years I’ve been in Congress, I’ve seen very different environments relative to the receptivity of members of Congress to supporting foreign aid.
Ms. MCGROARTY: So for purchasing we want to be targeting associations. I mean, it’s impossible for us to deal individually with each farmer and each farm.
DE SAM LAZARO: World Food Program officials say they make local purchases carefully. They reject criticism that this causes prices to rise. But they’re not about to reject Food for Peace donations.
Mr. SCALPELLI: I am asked this question quite a bit, and I’m not going to bite the hand that helps feed essentially a million Malawians today, and the United States government is indeed the number one largest donor to Malawi still.
DE SAM LAZARO: Other food aid agencies, unlike CARE, say they must continue to monetize their U.S. donations.
(to Nick Ford): Would you not prefer just straight cash assistance?
NICK FORD (Catholic Relief Services): Absolutely, and that’s going to be a much more efficient use of the American taxpayers’ money. We still have a service to provide the target communities for our development activities. Monetization provides resources that do address the root causes of hunger and poverty in these countries.
I disagree with cash donations of any kind. In the past such an arrangement always collected a group of sticky fingers. In our local newspaper the Malawai dictatorship has already been accused of grabbing food donations and stamping the packages with their name. Being a suspicious character, I can imagine what they would do with cash donations.
OK so let me be sure I’ve got this right. Monetization means give us the cash not the produce. We’ll just go out and buy the non existant Malawian surplus crops to feed the Malawian poor. Oh, and screw the American Farmers of course. Someone forget to take his meds or what?
I don’t think I like the sounds of this new liberation theology any better than the old one.
My teammates and I here in W. Africa oversaw a USAID food aid program under Food for Peace for 20 years (1987 – 2007). For a time, near the end of that 20 year period, I believe our small Christian NGO was the only NGO Food For Peace worked with that was doing 100% direct distribution of food aid and not monetizing ANY food to provide cash for other programs. We could afford to do so because we have extremely low overhead costs since all of our expat staff are volunteers and raise their own support, receiving no salary from our NGO and we had other foundations and organizations supporting programs for which we required cash.
It wasn’t that way (i.e. the huge emphasis and preference for monetization or cash) when we started. Back then, food aid was to help the hungry. It was fascinating, and yet disturbing to watch food aid politics evolve over the past 15 years or so (I’ve been directly involved in our NGO since 1991). Finally the bureaucracy and the administrative overload became too heavy and we decided to pull out of food aid business and switch our focus to training and capacity building and community development. We’re now doing literacy projects with women, remedial tutoring with school children, community nutrition monitoring and health education, some garden projects as income-generating activities, etc.
It’s a huge shift, but I couldn’t be happier. The food aid project had been so exhausting by the end, and the workload meant that I and others had little time for other priorities (discipling local believers, etc.) that brought us here. But still… the shift comes at a hard time with food prices in this country rising alarmingly. (Most of the grain here is imported.) Every day now I am stopped in the streets by at least one family (and usually several families) who used to have their malnourished children enrolled in our feeding program. They keep asking when there might be food again. We had hoped that the World Food Program of the U.N. might be able to cover most of the need for food assistance when our program shut down. The economy here had been growing and malnutrition rates in general were dropping. It seemed safe to assume in 2005 when we began to plan to close out our program that a large “safety net” program like ours was no longer needed. But now we are seeing very worrying pockets of increased malnutrition. My own neighbors (I live by choice in one of the poorest sections of town and share a 5 room compound with two local families) are most of the time only able to afford one meal a day unless I help them. I’m wondering if I might soon be back in the food aid business and praying to the Lord for wisdom in knowing how our team might best reach out to those caught in a terrible vise by the rising prices of basic food staples here… All of us Christians working overseas and involved in food aid and development programs really need prayer these days for wisdom and adequate resources to reach those who are suffering from these dramatic price rises.
Teddy Mak, a quick clarification. Monetization is not exactly what you have described. Instead, at least under USAID Food for Peace Title II programs (i.e. where USAID is working with a US NGO running development projects in a poor country), Monetization means that USAID sends bulk grain to a country. Usually wheat or corn. The NGO then sells that to the highest bidder (usually a local business or milling company that then turns the wheat into flour for bread, etc.).
The NGO then uses the cash to run development programs (building wells, schools, running literacy classes, setting up health clinics.), while also typically receiving some other commodities (Corn-Soy Cereal Blend, Lentils, Vegetable Oil, etc.) which are given out as food aid in some of their projects. (Generally USAID has demanded that NGOs must use 25% of their commodities as food aid and can monetize up to 75%)
Thus, the available grain in country DOES increase. But the grain that is monetized is usually controlled by cartels or large business interests and the food aid coming into the country thus not generally benefit the poorest of the poor. One of the big reasons why our NGO staunchly refused to get involved in monetization over our 20 year food aid project.
Some NGOs do put monetization funds to excellent use and the grain brought in can help stabilize prices in some instances, but I fear that is not always the case…