Food Aid Priorities
The appropriations process should reassert the goal of alleviating malnourishment as the highest priority for US food aid programs.
Congress should insist on it's mandate that 75% of the budget be used for development programs, rather than holding back funds for potential emergencies:
Multiple year programming, which is the only way to run effective development projects, cannot function when emergencies or potential emergencies siphon off funds that are planned for those projects.
Emergencies should use the Bill Emerson Humanitarian Trust and supplemental appropriations, when necessary, rather than stealing from programs that give people a hand up and prevent those emergencies from occurring.
Consistent programming lowers costs (both commodities and freight) and serves many more beneficiaries.
Development programs use more highly nutritious value-added foods from the US, stimulating the US agricultural and rural economies.
US Food Aid Programs should focus on Nutrition Delivery to HIV/AIDS affected communities:
The President's AIDS initiative cannot succeed in drug interventions when beneficiaries and other AIDS affected people remain seriously undernourished.
Leading charitable organizations with experience in food aid are eager to fully integrate their activities in nutrition delivery with the AIDS initiatives.
The Title II appropriation and other food aid programs of the US Government should be instructed to give priority to development programs that integrate high nutrition food aid and the HIV/AIDS initiatives of the US government and multilateral groups.
The McGovern-Dole International Food for Education and Child Nutrition Program should be funded at a minimum of $150 million and maintained at that level on a consistent basis, without harming other food aid initiatives.
It is highly ineffective to develop multiple-year school lunch programs overseas that are subject to budget cuts in successive years.
Other potential donors are not willing to commit to multi-year funding, if the US commitment is inconsistent, as it has been recently.
Effective programming relies on consistency and budgets that will guarantee that the objectives of getting girl children to school and maintain minimum nutrition standards for them can be counted on.
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