Is our approach to food aid about to undergo a major transformation? From the NY Times:
The food aid initiative, agreed upon at the Group of 8 summit meeting, is intended to transform traditional aid to poorer countries beyond simply donated produce, grains and meats to assistance building infrastructure and training farmers to grow their own food and get it to market more efficiently.
More on this from Obama's news conference:
we have committed to investing $20 billion in food security — agricultural development programs to help fight world hunger. This is in addition to the emergency humanitarian aid that we provide. And I should just note that going into the meeting we had agreed to $15 billion; we exceeded that mark and obtained an additional $5 billion of hard commitments. We do not view this assistance as an end in itself. We believe that the purpose of aid must be to create the conditions where it's no longer needed — to help people become self-sufficient, provide for their families and lift their standards of living. And that's why I proposed a new approach to this issue — one endorsed by all the leaders here — a coordinated effort to support comprehensive plans created by the countries themselves, with help from multilateral institutions like the World Bank when appropriate, along with significant and sustained financial commitments from our nations.
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There is no reason why Africa cannot be self-sufficient when it comes to food. It has sufficient arable land. What's lacking is the right seeds, the right irrigation, but also the kinds of institutional mechanisms that ensure that a farmer is going to be able to grow crops, get them to market, get a fair price. And so all these things have to be part of a comprehensive plan, and that's what I was trying to underscore during the meeting today.
It sounds like food aid will now be less about giving food to poor countries, and more about helping them grow their own food. Generally speaking, I think this is a good development, although I am curious about the details. Specifically:
-- What percentage of food aid will be devoted to giving food, and what percentage will be for encouraging self-sufficiency in food production?
-- What forms will the self-sufficiency promotion take? Will money now be given to pay for purchases of locally produced food? And what would "local purchases" mean exactly, that is, how "local" does the food have to be? Also, what will the other efforts to help African famers grow their own food look like?
It will be interesting to see how these pledges are implemented.
