The world is grappling with an unprecedented hunger crisis exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, an inflation crisis, the ongoing turmoil between Russia and Ukraine, a war in Israel, and extreme weather. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, of which we both served as ambassadors from 2002-2006 and 2019-2021, respectively, as many as 783 million people are facing hunger globally.
Let us be clear – this is an emergency, and we have an answer.
The American Farmers Feed the World Act, legislation introduced by Representatives Tracey Mann (R-KS), John Garamendi (D-CA), Rick Crawford (R-AR), and Jimmy Panetta (D-CA) in the U.S. House of Representatives and Senators Mike Braun (R-IN) and John Tester (D-MT) in the U.S. Senate, would renew the role of American agriculture in the fight against global hunger to immediately feed more people without spending any new taxpayer dollars.
This is not a new concept – utilizing American-grown commodities is an efficient, effective, and vital resource in our nation’s humanitarian tool kit. It dates to the 1950s when Kansas farmer Peter O’Brien voiced an idea at his county Farm Bureau meeting that America should share its food surplus with those facing famine overseas. In 1954, President Dwight D. Eisenhower made that idea a reality and signed Public Law (P.L.) 480, the Agricultural Trade Development and Assistance Act, which aimed to decrease food surpluses, create new markets for agricultural products, and deliver American commodities on American vessels to a very hungry world.
Since then, the scope of the program, now known as Food for Peace Title II, has undergone significant changes due in part to efforts to replace the delivery of American commodities with fungible assistance like cash transfers and through the procurement of commodities from America’s agricultural competitors. Cash-based assistance in programs like Food for Peace can aid our competitors, cause local price hikes, put aid at a higher risk of getting into the hands of bad actors, and deprive Americans of production, jobs, and a spirit of goodwill. This dramatic shift away from commodities in favor of cash deviates from the intent to engage American farmers, millers, shippers, and dockworkers who originally championed this bipartisan legislation 69 years ago.
Today’s American Farmers Feed the World Act would preserve 50% of the Food for Peace budget for buying American commodities and shipping them overseas, prohibit market-based assistance in lieu of American commodities, and require that the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) be more transparent in its reporting. It would also expedite the release of American-grown commodities in times of emergency. That is why agricultural producers and more than 60 organizations up and down the supply chain support today’s much-needed reforms found in the American Farmers Feed the World Act.
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