American foreign food aid has more or less been the same over the last 60 years, with the U.S. supplying countries with homegrown food.
A new foreign food aid proposal is looking to change that.
Instead of shipping food to foreign countries, the new proposal is looking to help sell local foods. The proposal also states that food will be delivered to needy people 11 to 14 weeks earlier than usual.
The new proposal will also help local businesses strengthen their markets as the U.S. will help them sell their goods.
Although the new system may seem appealing, many people working in agribusiness and shipping find the new proposal very troublesome, as they have been the ones largely responsible for growing and delivering food and much of their funding will be cut.
But the debate is no longer just a theory according to The Washington Post. In countries such as Syria, delivering commodities is largely impossible.
"To get anything into opposition-controlled areas you are shot at by helicopter gunships," said the Administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, Rajiv Shah.
Congress also granted George W. Bush some leniency when it came to foreign assistance during his presidency.
Additional flexibility is needed in getting food to dangerous and problematic countries such as Syria or Somalia. Not only does the U.S. need to ship food, they need to be able to buy and resell local foods.
"Commodity aid is useful," said Roger Thurow, an agriculture fellow at the ONE campaign. "When there is such a broad hunger crisis that there isn't enough local food to be purchased for aid. Also, it helps at the outset of emergencies, when food aid is prepositioned and can move quickly into the hunger zones."
Thurow pointed out that sending supplies "is counterproductive when there is surplus food available locally."
He points to a recent situation in Ethiopia, where a famine was caused in 2003 after two years of stability when U.S. food aid began appearing in the markets. People simply stopped buying Ethiopian crops and many fully loaded warehouses were left untouched.
"Why wasn't the U.S. aid flexible enough?" Thurow asked, "to buy up the Ethiopian food along with sending U.S.-grown food?"
Due to these problems, the current administration has felt the need for change and offered up its' recent proposal, which will save 25 to 50 percent on foreign aid.
