U.S. must step up food-aid funding - report
Source: Reuters
WASHINGTON, Feb 12 (Reuters) - The United States, the world's largest donor of food aid, needs to budget more than its proposed $1.2 billion a year to fight hunger effectively around the world, an anti-hunger coalition recommended on Monday. "International food aid has, without a doubt, both reduced the chronic food gap in sub-Saharan Africa and mitigated the impact of crises," the Partnership to Cut Hunger and Poverty in Africa, a Washington advocacy group, said in a report. But more funds are needed to intervene in acute food emergencies, as well as to allay protracted hunger and nutrition problems, the group added. The Partnership includes advisers from U.S. government, academia, charity organizations that deliver food aid, commodity firms, and the World Bank. The future of U.S. food aid is already a hot topic in Washington as Congress prepares to overhaul legislation that will set farm and food-aid policy for the next five years. In its proposed budget for fiscal 2008, the Bush administration requested $1.2 billion on emergency "Food for Peace" aid, about $80 million more than 2006. Often, the government requests supplemental funding for food aid, separate from the regular budget, bringing the annual total to just under $2 billion a year from fiscal 2001 to fiscal 2005, the Partnership said. The administration's budget request prompted clamoring by aid groups who say more money is needed to grapple with crises in poor or violence-swept places like Sudan. The administration is also pushing to allow up to 25 percent of emergency "Food for Peace" aid to be bought in the country or region where a food crisis occurs, instead of requiring that U.S. companies ship U.S. crops to famine areas. Loosening procurement rules would, the government argues, enable officials to bring aid to people in need more quickly. In its report, the Partnership to Cut Hunger applauded the United States, which now supplies over half of the world food aid, for its historic leadership. Since 1946, U.S. food aid loans or grants totaled more than $73 billion. But the partnership called on Washington to do more to eradicate the entrenched conditions that can cause food shortages, using aid to boost farm output and support health, education and job creation in vulnerable countries. The Partnership has a cautious take on the proposal to loosen procurement rules, suggesting that a $10 million pilot program could vet proposed changes and track their impact on food prices and nutrition in vulnerable nations.
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