Rethinking U.S. Food Aid Policy and Resource Rights
Current U.S. food aid policy makes responding to wide-spread hunger like the current conditions in Niger an opportunity for the U.S. agricultural industry to gain new markets.
A recent study by a Grassroots International Resource Rights Advisor, Kathleen McAfee, and Sophia Murphy of the Institute for Agricultural and Trade Policy (IATP), shows two distinct changes to the way U.S. food aid operates that could focus aid on saving lives rather than boosting sales for the U.S. agricultural industry.
They are: 1) provide cash, not U.S. produced food, to the U.N. World Food Programme and 2) support the World Food Programme'?s effort to buy food from regions adjacent to affected areas by not inundating local markets with U.S. food sales.