Kenyan Farmers’ Fate Caught Up In U.S. Aid Rules

As the United States Congress debates an omnibus farm bill, it is considering a small change that advocates say could make a big difference to the world’s hungriest people: allowing the federal government to buy some food in Africa to feed the famished, rather than shipping it all overseas from America (hat tip: BlackElectorate.com). The Bush administration, with odd-bedfellows support from liberal Democrats, has called for allowing the purchase of some food in poor countries to quicken responses to emergencies.

Kenyan families participating in an American-financed irrigation project from 2002 to 2006 were promised payment in corn for clearing the land and digging canals. The Kenyan government objected to the importation of American corn because the country was awash in a bumper harvest that had caused corn prices to plunge. The result: American officials, prohibited by law from buying the corn locally, could not deliver it. As the impoverished families waited in vain for sustenance from the American heartland, malnutrition among the youngest children worsened and five people died of hunger-related causes. Through sheer grit, the 2,000 families finished the irrigation system last year and are successfully farming. But long-term projects to help Africa’s rural poor feed themselves are chronically underfinanced, charities say.

Across Africa, the United States is more likely to give people a fish — caught in America — that feeds them for a day than to teach them to fish for themselves. Since last year, the U.S. has donated $136 million worth of American food to Kenya, but spent $36 million on agricultural projects to help Kenyan farmers grow and earn more.

The families’ sacrifices also illustrate the risks of an American food aid system that is designed to benefit domestic agribusiness and shipping interests and enmeshed in an intricate framework of farm subsidies. Members of Congress who favor the current system say the support of influential commercial groups is needed to sustain political support for food aid. They warn that ill-timed purchases of food in Africa in times of scarcity could send food prices higher, harming poor consumers. But critics in Congress contend that the United States could feed far more people more quickly if it could buy surplus food in Africa. It might also help boost the incomes of African farmers, by providing a market for their crops.

My response: The best thing that the American government can do for Kenyan farmers - and us American. consumers - is to eliminate the agricultural subsidies to American farmers. Much of it is merely corporate welfare anyway. That, rather than government foreign aid, will have long-term benefits, puts Africa and the U.S. on more equal footing as trade partners, and thus does not require the U.S. to have to purchase food in Africa to combat hunger in the first place. However, such a move is politically highly unlikely to happen.