I mentioned the Bush Administration's food aid proposal a few days ago. So what did the Farm Bill -- passed with a veto-proof majority -- do with the issue? According to Reuters:
U.S. lawmakers unveiled a five-year global food aid plan on Thursday, snubbing White House demands for significantly greater flexibility when buying food for the world's poor.
The final House-Senate compromise on the 2008 farm bill, if approved, would spend a mandatory $60 million over four years on a pilot program to test overseas purchases of food aid -- a step away from the traditional reliance on U.S. farmers.
The pilot provides far less, though, than what the Bush administration had asked be freed, up to about $400 million a year based on recent budgets, for purchases abroad.
More here:
Oxfam and other groups have joined the White House in criticizing lawmakers for ignoring an administration request to allow a quarter of U.S. food aid funds for abroad to be used to purchase foreign supplies near crisis areas.
Farm groups have traditionally pushed for food aid designated for foreign locations to come from the United States, which means it often takes too long to get the food to where it's needed most, according to the Agriculture Department.
Instead, congressional negotiators set up a small-scale pilot program that would allow limited local foreign purchases using U.S. aid money and then study how effective that was. They say the idea of such local purchases is untested.
But Schafer says that local buying in foreign locations "would just simply help save lives in some of the most stressed areas in the world." He also criticized a mandate in the bill to reduce the amount of emergency foreign food aid in favor of more money for non-emergency assistance.
