Points of View
Food aid
When famine strikes a country, who is to blame? Is famine a natural disaster, an act of God that we can only wonder at and respond to with emergency food aid? Or does it have more in common with drug-smuggling or electoral corruption, something that is within our power to prevent if we have the will to? A recent report from USAID, based on findings in Ethiopia, suggests that famine is not an accident, and ironically, that the emphasis placed by donors and governments on food aid compromises efforts that could prevent food crises and famines occurring. Points of View offers opinions on the impetus for food aid, and on alternative responses for areas that face near-permanent food insecurity. Many of the comments were given by participants at a recent conference for Rural Livelihoods advisors, working under the UK Department for International Development (DFID).
A convenient response for north and south?
"I think the really disappointing thing here is that we are having
the same debate using the same words as we were twenty years ago. Twenty
years ago the issue was that food aid needed to be reduced, it needed
to be given for a shorter period of time as possible and that we needed
greater and better targeting. Those issues still exist today. And I think
we've got to tackle the problem at heart, which is that food aid exists
because developed countries produce food that is surplus to their own
requirements and have to find ways of removing it by dumping it in third
world countries. Until we deal with that problem it's pretty meaningless
having a debate at the margins of the issue."
Tim Foy, DFID
"The United States may be the world's largest donor of food, but
its donations are often designed as a backhanded subsidy for American
farmers. Instead of dumping American cereal surpluses on hungry countries,
America should buy local grain and distribute that, thus stimulating agriculture
where it is most needed."
The Economist, July 5th 2003
"My feeling is that it is a rather comfortable situation for many
countries, I think about Ethiopia in particular which has taken up a third
of all commissioned food aid year by year for more than thirty years or
even forty years. And it is a very comfortable situation to know that
you have a number of faithful donors who are always there for you, who
take care of your emergency problems...It keeps you away from making your
own crisis prevention, your preparation for disaster and so on. I think
it is a comfortable situation to have donors doing that for you."
Uwe Werblow, Head of Environment and Rural Development Unit, European
Commission, Brussels
When is food aid necessary?
"Food assistance is particularly valuable when hunger is identified as
the main constraint on the capacity of communities and families to take
advantage of development opportunities. Food aid is well suited to programmes
that target the poorest of the poor, who spend a disproportionately high
portion of their incomes on food needs. Food is also more likely than
other forms of direct assistance to be controlled by women within the
household and then to be used to feed hungry children. Child malnutrition
remains a fundamental impediment to long-term development."
James Morris, Executive Director, World Food Programme - IFPRI Forum,
June 2003
"Food aid definitely has a role in dealing with a crisis where for
example you've had a crop failure due to some problem with the weather
of that particular season and you've used up whatever strategic grain
reserves you have. There really isn't any other alternative but to get
in very quickly some food aid. But in the longer term I think there is
a good argument to say that this is an admission of failure."
Harry Potter, Rural Livelihoods Advisor, DFID-Malawi
"I think first of all that food aid, the provision of food to extremely
poor households in Bangladesh is still relevant. I think that in the context
of Bangladesh where food insecurity and specifically malnutrition amongst
women and children is very high and instances of maternal mortality and
child stunting are amongst the highest in the world. Providing food, the
provision of programmes that provide food to those people is extremely
relevant and will remain relevant for a long period of time."
Tim Robertson, Fisheries Advisor, DFID-Bangladesh
Damaging and distracting?
"The problem of all the donors and also the capacity within the NGOs,
is to actually respond to an emergency and at the same time do the longer
term work. So what tends to happen is that people stop their long term
development work in order to respond to an emergency...Once the emergency
is over there are a lot of problems and expense putting back into place
your long term food security strategies and programmes."
Tim Waites, Food Security Advisor, European Commission, Ethiopia
"There's a need to enable poor countries to take advantage of their competitive
strengths, to participate in the global trading system and to use those
strengths to trade their way out of poverty. So it's important that food
aid is not used as a mechanism to deflect attention from the real underlying
problems - the unjust trade rules that underpin the agricultural trade
regimes."
Mills Soko, University of Warwick, UK
"Leading humanitarian agencies in Ethiopia theorize famine as the
outcome of food shortages leading to starvation. Termed a 'food first
bias', this has been the prevailing model of famine theory in Ethiopia
since the 1970s... However, the sources of disasters are more often related
to social, economic, political and environmental processes than the vagaries
of nature. The prevailing narrative of Food Availability Decline (FAD)
(e.g. 'drought leading to crop failure leading to starvation') does not
reflect this diversity. As a result other dynamics of crises that are
leading to famine-related destitution, malnutrition, morbidity, and mortality
are routinely overshadowed, under analyzed and inadequately managed in
Ethiopia."
From the Executive Summary of Risk and vulnerability in Ethiopia: A report
for USAID, June 2003
"Food aid must be provided in ways that link to long-term development
such as through food for work (for example water harvesting), and community
managed distribution. Introduction of imported grain into the market should
be mindful of potential price disruption and local purchase should be
encouraged where timely delivery can be assured."
Oxfam briefing note, Ethiopia: averting the crisis, Feb. 2003
Alternatives to food aid - cash, fodder or farming inputs
"There is a need for other interventions apart from food, such as
in the health sector and the water sector. A lot of people who are malnourished
are dying because they are drinking infected water and they don't have
access to health systems...A better response in dryland pastoral areas than
food aid would be to actually give fodder to cattle, and then people can
live off the milk, and after the emergency they will still have their
stocks, and they will be able to recover quickly...For longer term, safety
net programmes, cash for work gives people more choices, is more empowering,
and people will spend some of that money on food, some of it on clothing,
some of it on improving their house for example. It is giving people out-of-season,
when they are not working on farms, another way of being able to get their
food throughout the year."
Tim Waites, Food Security Advisor, European Commission, Ethiopia
"There is an ongoing debate about cash versus food. And my view
is that in those cases where you are trying to target poor women the provision
of food is a much more effective way of providing resources to those people
because in the cultural, social context of Bangladesh, men will take the
cash and often spend it on things that are not relevant to either women
or young girl children."
Tim Robertson, Fisheries Advisor, DFID-Bangladesh
"We do have now quite a lot of experience of providing inputs rather than
food. The inputs for production, seeds and fertilisers are much cheaper
to provide than food aid. They are a much more cost effective way of delivering
support. Maybe the costs of production for a ton of food by food aid will
be five or six times what it would cost through giving support to inputs.
And therefore you can help five or six times as many people with the same
amount of money."
Harry Potter, Rural Livelihoods Advisor, DFID-Malawi
"The World Food Programme recognises the scepticism in some quarters
of the value of food aid, particularly in non-emergency situations...If
people take the time to look at the facts on the impact of food in effectively
targeted and well-designed programmes - such as school feeding, mother-child
health and feeding programmes, food for training for women - they will
recognise that food aid has an important role to play in helping us achieve
the Millennium Development Goals."
James Morris, Executive Director, World Food Programme, in IFPRI Forum,
June 2003
What's to be done?
"We hope that we can get the World Trade Organisation to define
something as 'genuine' food aid. Food aid that is really required to avoid
people starving, people dying, coming in for emergencies, a bridge to
the next harvest, really what most of the donors understand as being the
use for food aid. And make this kind of food aid excepted and not come
under WTO rules. But anything else should come under WTO rules and clearly
this would be very important in our relations with the US who are the
major food aid provider and who have problems with seeing the WTO regulating
or making efforts to discipline the use of food aid."
Uwe Werblow, Head of Environment and Rural Development Unit, European
Commission, Brussels
"I think food aid is very important in terms of relieving poverty
and destitution in the poor countries but food aid is not the solution.
There is a need to recognise that food aid is there to alleviate suffering
but it does not eradicate it. So that is why it is important that long
term sustainable solutions are found to the problem of poverty and deprivation
in poor countries."
Mills Soko, University of Warwick, UK
"A focus on the resilience and vulnerability of livelihoods systems
is needed to improve the effectiveness of emergency preparedness, response
and development strategies. Food aid alone has not been - and cannot be
- sufficient for combating the multi-faceted nature of the current emergency.
Where the simultaneous collapses of livelihoods systems have led to losses
of lives and distressing suffering, only multiple strategies of humanitarian
and development interventions will address adequately such a complex web
of vulnerabilities."
From the Executive Summary of Risk and vulnerability in Ethiopia: A
report for USAID, June 2003
"Different donors have different ways they can respond that other
donors don't have. So I think there needs to be much better co-ordination
within the community. For example, USAID can deliver wheat very quickly
into a country, so USAID can deal more with the food aid side of the response,
whereas DFID for example could do water and health interventions and the
European Commission could work more along cash responses, and supplementary
feeding. So I think that there is a case very much for donors, with government,
with the UN, to actually recognise where their strengths are in the emergency
response, and to respond in that way...What you would end up with is an
emergency response which is broader in nature, and addressing hopefully
the short term needs, but also looking into rehabilitation and the longer
term food security programmes."
Tim Waites, Food Security Advisor, European Commission, Ethiopia
