In Africa today, there is a great disruption in the wheat supply, specifically in Somalia. This disruption in food quantities is due to the effects of the Russia-Ukraine war that is currently taking place. Both Russia and Ukraine are leading producers of wheat. Developed countries like Russia and Ukraine export large quantities of crops to drought-ridden countries like Somalia. Somalia as well as other regions in Africa rely heavily on the food exports that they’re sent. Eastern Africa receives about 90% of its imported wheat from Russia and Ukraine. Somalia and other African countries are now experiencing an emergency because they rely solely on imports and are unable to grow their own food. This case illustrates and will be bolstered by the analysis below that farm aid, rather than food aid programs, is a more suitable solution for long-term food insecurity.
At the broadest level, the question of whether international food aid programs truly are effective and efficient is widely discussed and debated making it a complex issue. In order to arrive at a consensus, one must look at and weigh the positive and negative impacts of international food aid programs on not only the donor countries and the recipients but the environment as well. In this scenario, the donors are developed countries like the United States, Germany, and the United Kingdom. The recipients of the food aid are less developed countries like Ethiopia, Jordan, and Afghanistan. This discussion will review the pros and cons of the effects on the environment globally, and also, the political and economic situation as it affects countries receiving food aid.
Looking first through an environmental lens, food aid programs are a huge contributor to global warming. Plastic bottles, cardboard boxes, aluminum wrappers, and polypropylene bags are all common materials used to package foods. Many of these harmful materials are shipped across seas from developed countries to developing countries suffering from famine (Lieu, LT Van. n.d.). The countries receiving food aid do not often have recycling infrastructure available, so the waste produced from the packaging is habitually burned or thrown in a landfill. These materials, in turn, release toxic gasses into the atmosphere, creating a threat to human and animal health as well as vegetation.
Not only is a build-up of environmental waste an issue in less developed countries, but there is also mounting political tension in countries receiving the food aid from the United States and other developed countries. Food aid simply travels to the area in need, and there is no set of rules that divides the food evenly among the famished individuals. This creates tension among communities, forming a divide between those who receive aid and those who continue to go hungry. Rival factions arise and battle for the limited quantity of food. Naturally, the group best equipped with weapons often wins. This tension creates civil unrest, which could, in turn, lead to a civil war if the situation escalates. Nancy Qian, an assistant economic professor at Yale, notes that “Food aid simply becomes another resource to fight over” (Gami, 2012). This is why food aid must be a long-lasting, sustainable solution rather than a simple, short-term collection of donations.
In addition to environmental and political concerns that arise from foreign food aid programs in underdeveloped countries, there are economic consequences as well. Qian and her partner Nathan Nuun, an economics professor at Harvard, co-wrote a paper on the complications of international food aid programs. After analyzing 35 years of data about food aid to 134 different developing countries, Qian and Nuun reported that “volumes of American food aid from year to year were affected more by domestic supply levels than global demand for aid” (Gami, 2012). The paper continued to read that “The U.S. Department of Agriculture, in conjunction with the U.S. Agency of International Development, purchases surplus grain to stabilize prices in the domestic market. This extra stock is then donated to developing countries” (Gami, 2012). This suggests that international food aid programs are often more responsive to the economic demands inside donor countries than to those which affect the recipients.
While there are not an abundance of food aid programs that adopt a farm aid model, there are a few notable ones. For example, the Food For Peace program succeeded because it was able to effectively reach those in need through the use of partnerships with NGOs (Non-Governmental Organizations) and domestic governments. One example of this is Food For Peace’s partnership with World Vision in Haiti. Together, they were able to provide “26,000 food-insecure individuals in the North-East and Central departments with conditional food and seed vouchers in return for their participation in communal asset creation and rehabilitation activities” (Climate Risks, n.d.). Another 86,000 food insecure people in Haiti were supported by Food For Peace’s partnership with CARE, another NGO designed to help those who are food insecure (Climate Risks, n.d.). These programs are able to help food insecure people while also bringing about economic benefits by training locals to farm their own crops and to use more efficient and effective crops and farming methods.
In addition, genetically modified crops have the potential to help alleviate hunger, but there are some real challenges associated with them. The benefits of genetically modified or engineered crops include, pest resistance, and increased crop yield, which can, in turn, offset greenhouse gas emissions, drive down food prices, and increase farmers’ profits. The problem is, however, that people are often wary of GMOs and do not always accept them, pesticide-resistant pests are developing and non-GMO crops are being contaminated with genetically-modified rice.
An example of a poorly-executed and accepted genetically modified product was golden rice, a strain of rice designed to contain significantly higher levels of Beta-Carotene than standard rice. It was intended to provide more nutrition to those in need, by increasing their intake of a vitamin of which they were in short supply. This product, however, failed for two reasons. First, Golden Rice did not look as people were used to, and as such, they were suspicious of it and hesitant to try it (Berman et al., 2013). Second, the rice did not contain significantly higher quantities of Beta-Carotene than unmodified breeds of rice because those levels degrade through storage, so when an individual eats a plate of the rice, there is far less Beta-Carotene in it than when the rice was harvested (Wilson & Latham, 2018). An effective program needs to combine teaching about GMOs with sustainable local farming. Golden rice failed because it was not combined with teaching farmers about how to effectively use GMOs. For a GMO to succeed, it must be trusted by and explained to local farmers. Only by building a global community of trained farmers can we eliminate food insecurity at the source.
One could attempt to look past the environmental, political, and economic issues that come with foreign food aid programs and claim that food aid does its job by feeding starved communities. However, traditional food aid programs do not look to be a viable long-term solution. Paul Macek, a food aid expert from the humanitarian organization, World Vision said “Food aid programs are flawed because they create a dependency on external goodwill.” He followed this by explaining that “The root of this dependency was the inability of food aid to generate long-term agricultural development” (Gami 2012). Macek later proposed a solution to food insecurity in Africa. He argued that instead of shipping physical food or money to less developed countries, industrialized countries should teach farming techniques that would enable underdeveloped countries to achieve food self-sufficiency. It is important to note that this would be a long-term solution and not a solution for emergency situations. In case of an emergency, for example, a drought is present in a less developed country, food aid programs would remain the best option. If countries continually rely on food aid programs to provide for their long-term needs, they will have little incentive, resources, or knowledge on how to invest in local agricultural reform. Long-term solutions to fighting world hunger will require donor countries to explore using farm aid as an alternative to food aid.