While most of us realize that food aid is not as simple as mom sending that unfinished pork chop to Ethiopia, this article in the International Herald Tribune revealed that there is much more to food aid than meets the eye, at least for me. Read the article yourself to get the story from the horse’s mouth – here’s my take:

Apparently one proposal in the news – and from the Bush administration no less, originally put forward in 2005 – is, instead of shipping US-grown food to countries near crisis, to take 25% of the Food for Peace budget and buy the food in the country itself. Today “[o]nly a little more than a third of U.S. food aid spending actually buys food.

It would seem that if the money which is saved on shipping can be spent on more food, likely at a lower price anyway, this would mean that more people can benefit and local farmers are helped out in the process, perhaps even playing a role in bringing about a longer-term solution.

So what’s the problem? Who wouldn’t be in favor of this?

The shipping industry, for one, and US agribusinesses, for another, according to the article.

An interesting counterargument to the buying locally strategy is that money might still be lost – not to the shipping industry, but through local mismanagement, or that a poorly managed program could drive up food prices. I don’t have a source to cite, but I don’t think I’d be too out of line to point out that direct shipments of foreign food, on their way to the people who need them, have at times been used and abused by those with unsavory motives as well.

I think this is a huge issue, and one about which there are probably multiple angles that I have no idea about; I’m most certainly no authority. My inner cynic is also wondering the context of this proposal from the Bush administration.

In any case, I think it’s a good example of why it’s important to think critically in general, including about things done in the name of goodwill; in most large-scale events, there will be different interests involved, and sometimes or maybe even often, those interests work together in an acceptable way – I don’t have the background to make a conclusive decision as to whether that is the case here or not.

I think this is also a good opportunity to point out a couple of organizations I’ve come across through my Volunteer Logue research which allow individuals to donate funds directly to the cause, without administration costs or other fees involved. One is Gloria’s Change The Truth Fund, which directly benefits a school and orphanage in Uganda (find a link and get the details in this Volunteer Logue post about Gloria’s blog); another is Wildlife Direct, which aims to fund various conservation projects in Africa and currently works in Congo.