PL480 Food Aid: We Can Do Better

©1999–2004 CHOICES. All rights reserved. Articles may be reproduced or electronically distributed as long as attribution to Choices and the American Agricultural Economics Association is maintained. Choices subscriptions are free and can be obtained through http://www.choicesmagazine.org. Fifty years ago, President Eisenhower signed the Agricultural Trade Development and Assistance Act of 1954 into law as US Public Law 480, commonly known as PL480. Global food aid programs, the largest of which is PL480, have brought together governments, businesses, multilateral institutions such as the World Food Programme (WFP), and American private voluntary organizations (PVOs) in a valuable public-private partnership intended to reduce hunger and suffering around the world. Over the past half century, PL480 programs alone have contributed more than 340 million metric tons of food aid to save and improve the lives of hundreds of millions of poor and hungry people around the world. At least 30 different nations—two thirds of them in sub-Saharan Africa—currently lack food supplies sufficient to meet basic minimum foodconsumption standards for their whole population. When food availability from local production and commercial imports is insufficient—as most commonly occurs in acute emergencies—food aid fills a crucial gap, thereby contributing to economic development and the protection of basic human rights. However, if used inappropriately or managed poorly, food aid can undermine agricultural production, market development, and international trade, thus impeding economic development and human rights. Because it helps substantially some places and causes damage in others, food aid is contentious. Food aid is accused of causing producer disincentives in low-income countries and of disrupting commercial trade, and it is a focal point for disagreement over genetically modified foods in the midst of humanitarian crises. These disagreements largely result from donor-country policies that misuse food aid for purposes for which it is demonstrably ineffective: to support domestic farm prices, to promote commercial agricultural exports, to advance geostrategic aims, and to maintain a viable maritime industry. The futile use of food aid to pursue donor self-interests also causes food aid to underperform its potential to provide food to places where availability is insufficient and markets don’t deliver it reliably and quickly enough to protect human lives. A sensible strategy of reform can meet agricultural and maritime interests, and, by reducing the waste in a system serving too many political masters at once, make food aid a more effective tool for advancing development and humanitarian objectives.