Why In the World Is the U.S. Department of Agriculture Providing International Food Aid?

Ever since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, the rate of extreme poverty began to decline. There was a considerable decline starting in the 1990s. Although there was a corresponding decline in hunger, global hunger remains a scourge on this planet. Reporting from the United Nations' Food and Agricultural Organization finds that about 9.2 percent of the planet (or 735.1 million) face undernourishment. Global hunger had been declining, started to creep up in the mid-2010s, and shot up during the pandemic because of the increased food prices and lockdowns causing greater economic insecurity. 

Sadly, global food insecurity is nothing new. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has formally been trying to fight global hunger since it started the food assistance program Food for Peace in 1954. This was followed in 1984 by the Food for Progress program with the goal to strengthen the agricultural sector, as well as a program that donates food to schoolchildren: McGovern-Dole. Since these three programs cost the U.S. taxpayers over $2 billion, I have to wonder how effective these programs really are. After all, the USDA is responsible for food stamps that very well might make recipients more unhealthy, subsidized school lunches that do not help improve child nutrition, and WIC vouchers that contributed to the infant formula shortage of 2022. A report released from the libertarian Cato Institute last month shows that USDA does not fare better with its international food aid programs. Here are some findings from the report:

• U.S. farm product donations undercut local farmers, which undermines the ability to feed poor countries and sustain long-term market development. 
• An increase to food aid can increase the incidence and duration of civil conflicts because "food aid is regularly transported across vast geographic territories [and] is a particularly attractive target for armed factions."
• U.S. food aid shipments typically take four to six months, which can open the shipments to greater incidence of theft, infestation, and storage. 
• Congress mandates that these food shipments need to be shipped on U.S.-flagged vessels, which can  increase shipping costs by up to threefold. 
• The monetization process used by USDA means losing 30 percent of taxpayer funds compared to paying for aid projects with cash. Direct cash transfers would do more than in-kind food transfers.
• The USDA international food aid projects have redundancies with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), thereby wasting more money. 

The U.S. government's program has bureaucratic overlap, stifling cargo requirements, and has such costs as exacerbating conflict and undermining agricultural markets. It makes me wonder why in the world the USDA is in charge of providing international food aid in the first place. As I brought up in 2016, trade liberalization does a better job at fighting poverty than foreign aid. The Cato Institute provides a few suggestions, including strengthening property rights, rule of law, opening markets, removing entrepreneurial barriers, and creating stable currencies. By implementing deregulation and trade liberalization, countries can improve their economy and reduce hunger without foreign intervention.