Even luxury homes in the Zimbabwean capital Harare were not spared by the raging floods of early 2017, perpetuating hunger in the Southern African nation after El Nino ravaged crops nationwide. Credit: Jeffrey Moyo/IPS

By Jeffrey Moyo
HARARE, Mar 3 2017 (IPS)

Dairai Churu, 53, sits with his chin cupped in his palms next to mounds of rubble from his destroyed makeshift home in the Caledonia informal settlement approximately 30 kilometers east of Harare, thanks to the floods that have inundated Zimbabwe since the end of last year.

Churu’s tragedy seems unending. From 2015 to mid-2016, the El Nino-induced drought also hit him hard, rendering his entire family hungry.“We are homeless, we are hungry. I don’t know what else to say.” -- farmer Dairai Churu

“I farm here. I have always planted maize here. All my crops in 2015 were wiped out by the El Nino heat and this year came the floods, which also suffocated all my maize and it means another drought for me and my family,” Churu told IPS.

Churu, his wife and four children now share a plastic tent which they erected after their makeshift three-room home was destroyed by the floods in February this year.

“We are homeless, we are hungry. I don’t know what else to say,” Churu said.

Zimbabwe has not been spared the severe droughts and floods triggered by one of the strongest El Niño weather events ever recorded in the country’s history, which have left nearly 100 million people in Southern Africa, Asia and Latin America facing food and water shortages and vulnerable to diseases, including the Zika virus, according to UN bodies and international aid agencies.

With drought amidst the floods across many parts of this Southern African nation, the Poverty Reduction Forum Trust (PRFT) has been on record in the media here saying most Zimbabwean urban residents are relying on urban agriculture for sustenance owing to poverty.

PRFT is a civil society organisation that brings together non-governmental organisations, government, the private sector and academics here in Zimbabwe to discuss poverty issues and advocate for pro-poor policies.

Even government has been jittery as floods rocked the entire nation.

“Not all people are going to harvest enough this year. The floods have come with their own effects, drowning crops that many had planted and anticipated bumper harvests. Some greater part of the population here will certainly need food aid as they already face hunger,” a senior government official in Zimbabwe’s Agriculture Ministry told IPS on condition of anonymity for professional reasons.

For the mounting floods here, experts have also piled the blame on the after-effects of the El Nino weather phenomenon.

“El Niño conditions, which are a result of a natural warming of Pacific Ocean waters, lead to droughts, floods and more frequent cyclones across the world every few years. This year’s floods, which are a direct effect of the El Nino weather, are the worst in 35 years and are now even worsening and bearing impacts on farming, health and livelihoods in developing countries like Zimbabwe,” Eldred Nhemachema, a meteorological expert based in the Zimbabwean capital Harare, told IPS.

Consequently, this Southern African nation this year declared a national emergency, as harvests here face devastation from the floods resulting in soaring food prices countrywide, according to the UN World Food Programme.

The UN-WFP has also been on record reporting that Zimbabwe’s staple maize crop of 742,000 tonnes is down 53 percent from 2014-15, according to data from the Southern African Development Community.

The floods have prompted Zimbabwe’s Ministry of Environment, Water and Climate to recommend that a state of disaster be declared in the country’s southern provinces, where one person was killed by the floods while hundreds were marooned by raging rivers that swept away homes and animals.

For instance, this year’s floods in Zimbabwe’s Masvingo Province left 300 pupils marooned at Lundi High School, leaving mostly girls stranded after the Runde River burst its banks and flooded dormitories. About 100 homesteads were also hit by the floods in the country’s Chivi, Bulilima and Mberengwa districts, according to the country’s Civil Protection Unit.

Based on this year’s February update from the country’s Department of Civil Protection, at least 117 people died since the beginning of the rainy season in October last year.

And for many Zimbabweans like Churu, who were earlier hit by the El Nino-induced drought, it is now double trouble.

“We already have no crops surviving thanks to the floods, yet we have had our crops destroyed by El Nino the previous year, and so suffering continues for us, with drought in the midst of floods. It hurts,” Churu said.

Excerpt:

At least one million children in Kenya are in dire need of food aid due to drought. Credit: Miriam Gathigah/IPS

By Miriam Gathigah
NAIROBI, Feb 13 2017 (IPS)

Experts warn that Kenya is in the grip of the worst drought in recent history as government estimates show the number of people who are acutely food insecure has risen to 2.7 million, up from two million in January.

This has necessitated the government to declare the crisis a national disaster as large parts of the country continue to succumb to the ravaging drought.The drought is putting 11 million people in Kenya, Somalia and Ethiopia in urgent need of aid.

At least 11,000 livestock across the country are facing imminent death due to lack of water and pasture, this is according to the National Drought Management Authority.

The drought management authority issued further warnings to the effect that pastoral communities could lose up to 90 percent of their livestock by April.

But children are still the most affected, with official government reports showing that an estimated one million children in 23 of the country’s 47 counties are in dire need of food aid.

“The prevalence of acute malnutrition in Baringo, Mandera, Marsabit and Turkana counties in Northern Kenya where the drought is most severe is estimated at 25 percent,” Mary Naliaka, a pediatrics nurse with the Ministry of Health, told IPS.

“This is alarming because at least 45 percent of deaths among children under five years of age is caused by nutrition related issues.”

Too hungry to play, hundreds of starving children in Tiaty Constituency of Baringo County instead sit by the fire, watching the pot boil, in the hope that it is only a matter of minutes before their next meal.

Unbeknownst to them, the food cooking inside the pot is no ordinary supper. It is actually a toxic combination of wild fruits and tubers mixed with dirty water, as surrounding rivers have all run dry.

Tiaty sits some 297 kilometers from the capital Nairobi and the ongoing dry spell is not a unique scenario.

Neighbouring Elgeyo Marakwet and Turkana County are among the counties spread across this East African nation where food security reports show that thousands are feeling the impact of desertification, climate change and rainfall shortage.

“In most of these counties, mothers are feeding their children wild fruits and tubers. They boil them for at least 12 hours, believing that this will remove the poison they carry,” Hilda Mukui, an agriculturalist and soil conservationist, told IPS.

Teresa Lokwee, a mother of eight children, all of them under the age of 12, who lives in Tiaty, explains that the boiling pot is a symbol of hope. “When our children see that there is something cooking, the hope that they will soon enjoy a meal keeps them going.”

Mukui, who was head of agriculture within the Ministry of Agriculture and worked in most of the affected counties for more than two decades, says that rainfall deficit, shortage of water and unusually high temperatures is the scenario that characterizes 23 out of the 47 counties in Kenya.

The situation is so dire that in Baringo County alone, 10 schools and 19 Early Childhood Development Schools are empty as children join other family members in search of water.

“Sometimes once you leave in the morning to search for water, you return home in the evening,” Lokwee told IPS.

In other affected counties, especially in Western Kenya, communities have resorted to eating insects such as termites which were previously taboo.

Though these unconventional eating habits are a respite for starving households, experts warn that this is a ticking time bomb since the country lacks an insect-inclusive legislation and key regulatory instruments.

In the Kenya Bureau of Standards, which assesses quality and safety of goods and services, insects are labeled as impure and to be avoided.

But if predictions by the Ministry of Water and Irrigation are anything to go by, the worst is yet to come as the country watches the onset of what experts like Mukui call a crisis after the failure of both the long and short rains.

“We are now facing severe effects of desertification because we are cutting down more trees than we can plant,” she explains.

She added that Vision 2030 – the country’s development blueprint – calls for the planting of at least one billion trees before 2030 to combat the effects of climate change, but the campaign has been a non-starter.

Mukui told IPS it is no wonder that at least 10 million people are food insecure, with two million of them facing starvation.

The drought is region-wide. On Feb. 10, the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said the drought is putting 11 million people in Kenya, Somalia and Ethiopia in urgent need of aid.

According to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), which works in countries such as Kenya buckling under the weight of desertification, land degradation and severe drought, the number of people living on degraded agricultural land is on the rise.

Agriculture is the mainstay of the economy, with at least 45 percent of government revenue being derived from this sector.

Mukui says it is consequently alarming that at least 10 million of the estimated 44 million Kenyans live in degraded agricultural areas, accounting for an estimated 40 percent of the country’s rural community.

Other statistics by UNCCD show that though arid and semi-arid lands constitute about 80 percent of the country’s total land mass and are home to at least 35 percent of the country’s population, areas that were once fertile for agriculture are slowly becoming dry and unproductive.

A survey by the Kenya Forest Service has revealed that not only is the country’s forest cover at seven percent, which is less than the ten percent global standard, an estimated 25 percent of the Mau Forest Complex – Kenya’s largest water catchment area – has been lost due to human activity.

Within this context, UNCCD is working with various stakeholders in Kenya to ensure that at least five million hectares of degraded land is restored. According to Executive Secretary Monique Barbut, there is a need to ensure that “in the next decade, the country is not losing more land than what it is restoring.”

“Land issues must become a central focus since land is a resource with the largest untapped opportunities,” she said.

Research has shown that the state of land impacts heavily on the effectiveness of policies to address poverty and hunger.

Restoring forest cover in Kenya is key. Since 1975, official government statistics show that the country has suffered 11 droughts – and the 12th is currently looming.

The cost implications that the country continues to suffer can no longer be ignored. UNCCD estimates that the annual cost of land degradation in Kenya is at least five percent of the country’s Gross Domestic Product. And addressing land degradation can earn the country four dollars for every one dollar spent in land restoration efforts.

Barbut has, however, commended the country’s efforts to address desertification caused by both human activity and the adverse effects of climate change, particularly through practical and sustainable legislation.

Mukui says that UNCCD works through a country-specific National Action Programme which Kenya already has in place. “What we need is better coordination and concerted efforts among the many stakeholders involved, government, communities, donors and the civil society, just to name a few,” she said.

Efforts to enhance the country’s capacity to combat desertification by the UNCCD include providing financial and technical resources to promote management of local natural resources, improving food security and partnering with local communities to build sustainable land use plans.

Excerpt:

Workers in Djibouti Port offloading wheat from a docked ship. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

By James Jeffrey
DJIBOUTI CITY, Aug 15 2016 (IPS)

Bags of wheat speed down multiple conveyor belts to be heaved onto trucks lined up during the middle of a blisteringly hot afternoon beside the busy docks of Djibouti Port.

Once loaded, the trucks set off westward toward Ethiopia carrying food aid to help with its worst drought for decades.“The bottleneck is not because of the port but the inland transportation—there aren’t enough trucks for the aid, the fertilizer and the usual commercial cargo.” -- Aboubaker Omar, Chairman and CEO of Djibouti Ports and Free Zones Authority

With crop failures ranging from 50 to 90 percent in parts of the country, Ethiopia, sub-Saharan Africa’s biggest wheat consumer, was forced to seek international tenders and drastically increase wheat purchases to tackle food shortages effecting at least 10 million people.

This resulted in extra ships coming to the already busy port city of Djibouti, and despite the hive of activity and efforts of multitudes of workers, the ships aren’t being unloaded fast enough. The result: a bottleneck with ships stuck out in the bay unable to berth to unload.

“We received ships carrying aid cargo and carrying fertilizer at the same time, and deciding which to give priority to was a challenge,” says Aboubaker Omar, chairman and CEO of Djibouti Ports and Free Zones Authority (DPFZA). “If you give priority to food aid, which is understandable, then you are going to face a problem with the next crop if you don’t get fertilizer to farmers on time.”

Since mid-June until this month, Ethiopian farmers have been planting crops for the main cropping season that begins in September. At the same time, the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization has been working with the Ethiopian government to help farmers sow their fields and prevent drought-hit areas of the country from falling deeper into hunger and food insecurity.

Spring rains that arrived earlier this year, coupled with ongoing summer rains, should increase the chances of more successful harvests, but that doesn’t reduce the need for food aid now—and into the future, at least for the short term.

“The production cycle is long,” says FAO’s Ethiopia country representative Amadou Allahoury. “The current seeds planted in June and July will only produce in September and October, so therefore the food shortage remains high despite the rain.”

Port workers, including Agaby (right), make the most of what shade is available between trucks being filled with food aid destined to assist with Ethiopia’s ongoing drought. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

As of the middle of July, 12 ships remained at anchorage outside Djibouti Port waiting to unload about 476,750 metric tonnes of wheat—down from 16 ships similarly loaded at the end of June—according to information on the port’s website. At the same time, four ships had managed to dock carrying about 83,000 metric tonnes of wheat, barley and sorghum.

“The bottleneck is not because of the port but the inland transportation—there aren’t enough trucks for the aid, the fertilizer and the usual commercial cargo,” Aboubaker says.

It’s estimated that 1,500 trucks a day leave Djibouti for Ethiopia and that there will be 8,000 a day by 2020 as Ethiopia tries to address the shortage.

But so many additional trucks—an inefficient and environmentally damaging means of transport—might not be needed, Aboubaker says, if customs procedures could be sped up on the Ethiopian side so it doesn’t take current trucks 10 days to complete a 48-hour journey from Djibouti to Addis Ababa to make deliveries.

“There is too much bureaucracy,” Aboubaker says. “We are building and making efficient roads and railways: we are building bridges but there is what you call invisible barriers—this documentation. The Ethiopian government relies too much on customs revenue and so doesn’t want to risk interfering with procedures.”

Ethiopians are not famed for their alacrity when it comes to paperwork and related bureaucratic processes. Drought relief operations have been delayed by regular government assessments of who the neediest are, according to some aid agencies working in Ethiopia.

And even once ships have berthed, there still remains the challenge of unloading them, a process that can take up to 40 days, according to aid agencies assisting with Ethiopia’s drought.

“I honestly don’t know how they do it,” port official Dawit Gebre-ab says of workers toiling away in temperatures around 38 degrees Celsius that with humidity of 52 percent feel more like 43 degrees. “But the ports have to continue.”

The port’s 24-hour system of three eight-hour shifts mitigates some of the travails for those working outside, beyond the salvation of air conditioning—though not entirely.

Scene from Djibouti Port. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

“We feel pain everywhere, for sure,” Agaby says during the hottest afternoon shift, a fluorescent vest tied around his forehead as a sweat rag, standing out of the sun between those trucks being filled with bags of wheat from conveyor belts. “It is a struggle.”

To help get food aid away to where it is needed and relieve pressure on the port, a new 756 km railway running between Djibouti and Ethiopia was brought into service early in November 2015—it still isn’t actually commissioned—with a daily train that can carry about 2,000 tonnes, Aboubaker says. Capacity will increase further once the railway is fully commissioned this September and becomes electrified, allowing five trains to run carrying about 3,500 tonnes each.

Djibouti also has three new ports scheduled to open in the second half of the year—allowing more ships to dock—while the one at Tadjoura will have another railway line going westward to Bahir Dar in Ethiopia. This, Aboubaker explains, should connect with the railway line currently under construction in Ethiopia running south to north to connect the cities of Awash and Mekele, further improving transport and distribution options in Ethiopia.

“Once the trains are running in September we hope to clear the backlog of vessels within three months,” Aboubaker says.

The jam at the port has highlighted for Ethiopia—not that it needs reminding—its dependency on Djibouti. Already about 90 percent of Ethiopia’s trade goes through Djibouti. In 2005 this amounted to two million tonnes and now stands at 11 million tonnes. During the next three years it is set to increase to 15 million tonnes.

Hence Ethiopia has long been looking to diversify its options, strengthening bilateral relations with Somaliland through various Memorandum Of Understandings (MOU) during the past couple of years.

The most recent of these stipulated about 30 percent of Ethiopia’s imports shifting to Berbera Port, which this May saw Dubai-based DP World awarded the concession to manage and expand the underused and underdeveloped port for 30 years, a project valued at about $442 million and which could transform Berbera into another major Horn of Africa trade hub.

But such is Ethiopia’s growth—both in terms of economy and population; its current population of around 100 million is set to reach 130 million by 2025, according to the United Nations—that some say it’s going to need all the ports it can get.

“Ethiopia’s rate of development means Djibouti can’t satisfy demand, and even if Berbera is used, Ethiopia will also need [ports in] Mogadishu and Kismayo in the long run, and Port Sudan,” says Ali Toubeh, a Djiboutian entrepreneur whose container company is based in Djibouti’s free trade zone.

Meanwhile as night descends on Djibouti City, arc lights dotted across the port are turned on, continuing to blaze away as offloading continues and throughout the night loaded Ethiopian trucks set out into the hot darkness.

“El Niño will impact families for a long period as a number of them lost productive assets or jobs,” Amadou says. “They will need time and assistance to recover.”

This story is part of special IPS coverage of World Humanitarian Day on August 19.

Excerpt:

Women are responsible for providing water for their families. Many spend hours travelling to the wells and back home every day, carrying heavy clay pots on their heads. Credit: Irfan Ahmed/IPS

By Irfan Ahmed
MITHI, Pakistan, Jan 16 2015 (IPS)

The main entrance to the Civil Hospital in Mithi, headquarters of the Tharparkar district in Pakistan’s southern Sindh Province, is blocked by a couple of men clad in traditional dress and turbans. They are trying to console a woman who is sobbing so heavily she has to gasp for breath.

She lost her two-year-old son just moments ago and these men, both relations of hers, were the ones to carry the child into the hospital where doctors tried – and failed – to save him.

The death toll hit 650 at the close of 2014, but continues to rise in the New Year as scant food stocks wither away and cattle belonging to herding communities perish under the blistering sun.

Among the dead are three-week-old Ramesh; four-month-old twin girls named Resham and Razia; and the yet-unnamed sons of a couple who are inconsolable after the passing of their newborn children.

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida

A declining economy and a severe drought have raised concerns in Lebanon over food security as the country faces one of its worst refugee crises, resulting from the nearby Syria war, and it is these refugees and impoverished Lebanese border populations that are most vulnerable to this new threat.

A severe drought has put the Lebanese agricultural sector at risk. According to the Meteorological Department at Rafik Hariri International Airport, average rainfall in 2014 is estimated at 470 mm, far below annual averages of 824 mm.

The drought has left farmers squabbling over water. “We could not plant this year and our orchards are drying up, we are only getting six hours of water per week,” says Georges Karam, the mayor of Zabougha, a town located in the Bekfaya area in Lebanon.“Any major domestic or regional security or political disruptions which undermine economic growth and job creation could lead to higher poverty levels and associated food insecurity” – Maurice Saade of the World Bank's Middle East and North Africa Department

The drought has resulted in a substantial decline in agricultural production throughout the country. “The most affected products are fruits and vegetables, the prices of which have increased, thus affecting economic access of the poor and vulnerable populations,”says Maurice Saade, Senior Agriculture Economist at the World Bank’s Middle East and North Africa Department.

According to the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), food security exists when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs. Although most households in Lebanon are considered food secure, lower income households are vulnerable to inflationary trends in food items because they tend to spend a larger share of their disposable income on staples, explains Saade.

Lebanon’s poverty pockets are generally concentrated in the north (Akkar and Dinnyeh), Northern Bekaa (Baalbek and Hermel) and in the south, as well as the slums located south of Beirut. These areas currently host the largest number areas of refugee population, fleeing the nearby Syria war.

According to Clemens Breisinger, senior research fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), Lebanon currently imports about 90 percent of its food needs. “This means meant that the drought’s impact should be limited in term of the food available on the market,” he says.

However, populations residing in Lebanon’s impoverished areas are still at risk, especially those who are not financially supported by relatives (as is the custom in Lebanon) or benefit from state aid or from local charities operating in border areas. Lebanese host populations are most likely the most vulnerable to food insecurity, explains Saade.

According to the UNHCR, there are just over one million Syrian refugees in Lebanon. While the food situation is still manageable thanks to efforts of international donors who maintain food supplies to the population, “these rations are nonetheless always threatened by the lack of donor funding,” Saade stresses. In addition, refugee populations are largely dependent on food aid, because they are essentially comprised of women and children, with little or no access to the job market.

Given that Lebanon depends to a large extent on food imports, mostly from international markets, maintaining food security also depends on the ability of lower income groups to preserve their purchasing power as well as the stability of these external markets.

“This means that any major domestic or regional security or political disruptions which undermine economic growth and job creation could lead to higher poverty levels and associated food insecurity,” says Saade.

In addition any spikes in international food prices, such as those witnessed in 2008, could lead to widespread hunger among vulnerable populations.

Breisinger believes that despite increased awareness of the international community, the factors leading to a new food crisis are still present.Increased demand for food generally, fuel prices, the drop in food reserves, certain government policies as well as the diversion of grain and oilseed crops for biofuel production are elements that put pressure on the food supply chain and can eventually contribute to hunger in certain vulnerable countries.

To avoid such a risk, some countries have implemented specific measures such as building grain reserves. “I am not sure how Lebanon has reacted so far,” says Breisinger.  With little government oversight and widespread corruption, Lebanon’s vulnerability to food insecurity has been compounded by unforgiving weather conditions, a refugee crisis and worsening economic conditions which, if left unattended, could spiral out of control.

Crowley Logistics in Miami, Florida, was one of three USAID shipping and logistics facilities in the nation. It could, in times of emergency humanitarian relief aid, respond with supplies delivered to aircraft at Miami International Airport within two hours. Credit: USDAID/Lance Cheung

By Carey L. Biron
WASHINGTON, Jan 30 2014 (IPS)

U.S. lawmakers are in the final stages of approving reforms to a half-century-old system of providing overseas food assistance that critics say is outdated, inefficient and sometimes harmful to local economies in developing countries.

Development experts and implementers have fought for years for an overhaul. They caution that the new changes, which were approved by the House of Representatives on Wednesday and look set for final approval by next week, are modest.“The farm bill dramatically increases flexible government mechanisms to deliver food assistance to people in some of the world’s most fragile countries.” -- Andrea Koppel

Nonetheless, many are lauding the reforms as an important initial step following an unprecedented public discussion over the past year.

“This agreement demonstrates that there’s actual fire behind the smoke on this issue. We’ve seen lots of people talking but now we’re actually seeing the will to move this forward,” Eric Munoz, senior policy advisor for Oxfam America, a humanitarian group, told IPS.

“We’re really happy with the bill, though we recognise there’s a long way to go still. For now we know that these changes will help more life-saving aid reach hungry people in crisis without costing taxpayers one extra penny.”

The changes come in a massive, five-yearly funding agreement, known as a farm bill, that covers nearly all aspects of U.S. agriculture as well as both domestic and international food aid.

The United States remains the world’s strongest provider of food aid, offering around half of such assistance each year, for both emergency and long-term situations each year.

Yet unlike most other major donors, Washington has for decades required that a substantial portion of this assistance be grown in the country and then shipped abroad, mostly on U.S.-flagged ships. These requirements, known as “monetisation”, have been lucrative for U.S. farmers and shippers, and have made these sectors into powerful foes of changes to the system.

Many other donor countries, meanwhile, have adopted food assistance systems that rely largely on purchasing food near crisis-hit areas. This increase in efficiency is able to stretch aid monies further and impact on more people, while simultaneously offering a tool to strengthen local economies under difficult circumstances.

A landmark study by the Government Accountability Office, an official watchdog, found that “the inefficiency of the monetization process reduced funding available to the U.S. government for development projects by $219 million over a 3-year period.”

Implementers on the ground have been saying this for years.

“We know from our own experience in countries such as Niger, Haiti and Kyrgyzstan that local and regional procurement of food assistance not only saves taxpayers money, but also gets food to those in desperate need weeks if not months faster than if it were shipped from the United States,” Andrea Koppel, vice president of global engagement and policy at Mercy Corps, a humanitarian group, said Wednesday.

“The farm bill dramatically increases flexible government mechanisms to deliver food assistance to people in some of the world’s most fragile countries.”

Unprecedented backing

For the past half-decade the United States has run a pilot programme to study the efficacy of reducing its monetisation practices. The new farm bill will now make that programme permanent while also increasing its funding to around 80 million dollars a year, to be used for local and regional procurement of food commodities.

This reform alone will help USAID, the government’s main foreign aid agency, get food assistance to an estimated 1.8 million additional people for no additional money.

The new reforms will also provide $350 million for longer-term programmes in areas hit by chronic food insecurity, addressing a longstanding concern that U.S. non-emergency food aid funding has often been used as a slush fund for emergency missions. Combined with the shift in monetisation priority, this could be an important change, making more money available in cash that can be used for long-term development programmes.

“The House of Representatives is making strides toward reforming our antiquated food aid programme,” Ruth Messinger, president of American Jewish World Service, an anti-poverty group, said Wednesday, “to ensure that we are not just helping communities around the world with their immediate food needs, but also supporting local producers so they can feed themselves in the years ahead.”

Although the policy-level understanding of the inefficiencies in U.S. food assistance have been known for years, it has taken until now to be able to overcome political resistance to any changes. President George W. Bush first suggested dialling U.S. monetisation back by a quarter in 2008, but the idea went nowhere in Congress.

In his budget proposal last year, President Barack Obama laid out a sweeping vision for reform that would have decreased monetisation by 45 percent. It also would have shifted oversight for U.S. food aid from a Congressional committee focused on agriculture to one on foreign assistance, a change that would bring with it implicit shifts in priority.

While a budget appropriations bill that passed a month ago did not adhere to Obama’s requests, it did include an additional 35 million dollars to offer USAID increased flexibility to either address monetisation or increase its ability to respond to food crises. Advocates saw that move as an important indication that Congress is open to further discussion on food aid reforms.

Several more of the president’s proposals were included in an amendment to the farm bill put forth last year in the House of Representatives, where it received a first-ever vote on broad food aid reform. Although the amendment failed to pass, supporters point out that they received bipartisan support from an unprecedented 203 lawmakers.

One of the sponsors on the bill, Congressman Eliot Engel, supports the scaled-back changes included in the new proposal.

“I am encouraged by the modest reforms included in this conference agreement on international food aid programmes,” he said Wednesday. “This is an important starting point for providing USAID additional flexibility and resources to more effectively combat food insecurities around the world.”

The Senate is expected to vote on the new farm bill by next week, after which President Obama would presumably sign it into law. Thereafter, advocates say they will turn their focus to incremental reforms that could be attained outside of the five-yearly farm bill process.

Particular focus will be placed on the president’s budget for the coming year, expected sometime in the spring.

“We cannot wait five years to have this conversation again,” Oxfam’s Munoz says.

“We’ll continue to push for reform and we think there’s good momentum now. There’s a clear signal that this conversation about reform is moving forward, but we need to make sure this progress is sustained and improved upon.”

Emergency relief supplies flown into the airport are trucked to a nearby warehouse at Tacloban Task Force Headquarters and sorted on Nov. 17, 2013. Credit: Carol Han, OFDA

By Carey L. Biron
WASHINGTON, Nov 18 2013 (IPS)

Even as Washington has mounted a strikingly robust response to the humanitarian crisis in the Philippines, the ongoing effort is highlighting important gaps in the United States’ emergency relief capability – gaps that could start to be addressed through legislative reforms currently under debate in the U.S. Congress.

Shortly after the Nov. 8 landfall of a massive typhoon in the central Philippines, the U.S. government announced that it would be providing an initial 20 million dollars in humanitarian assistance to survivors. A U.S. military aircraft carrier and fleet of supply ships have also moved into the area, offering significant technical capacity for rescuers and humanitarian groups.“The shipping lobby remains staunchly opposed, and they bear a lot of the responsibility for the failure of the movement on reform.” -- Eric Munoz

According to USAID, the government’s main foreign aid arm, half of that 20 million dollars would go to getting food to communities devastated by Typhoon Haiyan (or Yolanda, as it’s known in the Philippines). Yet while an initial 55 metric tonnes of food was to be immediately flown in from the United States, the bulk of this shipment – an additional 1,020 tonnes of rice – isn’t slated to arrive by boat in the Philippines until the first week of December, according to a USAID factsheet.

That’s despite the fact that this rice had been prepositioned in Sri Lanka, specifically to respond to emergencies of this type in Asia. The lag in delivery is the result of a peculiarity in U.S. law, requiring that foreign food aid be grown primarily in the United States and transported primarily on U.S.-flagged ships.

“What’s happening in the Philippines should be a touchstone for members of Congress and the response that USAID has provided, in thinking about what is necessary in addressing natural disasters,” Eric Munoz, a senior policy advisor with Oxfam America, a humanitarian group, told IPS.

“Congress runs the risk of ignoring the fact that good humanitarian response requires different tools than Congress has wanted to give USAID to run operations. Haiyan demonstrates the tools that USAID and aid groups need to run these operations, and this now needs to be taken care of [legislatively].”

For years, advocates have been pushing for changes that would allow for greater flexibility in responding to humanitarian crises by providing cash – which can be provided almost immediately and used for local procurement of food and other supplies – rather than “in kind” provisions, which have to be physically lugged to crisis zones.

Such changes have been stymied by special interests, however, despite government auditors (including here and here) having repeatedly warned that the process is highly inefficient, impacting most negatively on the communities U.S. aid is trying to help.

USAID officials, too, have recognised the need for greater flexibility. According to a USAID fact sheet released Saturday, U.S. funding is now helping the World Food Programme (WFP) to locally procure an additional 10,000 tonnes of rice.

“Of the 10 million dollars the U.S. has provided [for food aid], more than 75 percent was for local and regional procurement,” Munoz says. “This clearly demonstrates that USAID thinks it sensible that the vast majority of current aid go towards local procurement.”

Indeed, USAID has been able to tap a contingency fund to make much of this cash available. Yet doing so will now make a significant dent in that fund for the rest of the fiscal year, which began only last month.

“Because USAID is using this money now to buy locally, it will have far less money to use in Syria,” Timi Gerson, advocacy director at American Jewish World Service (AJWS), a development group, told IPS.

“A similar dynamic took place when the Syria conflict began and USAID was suddenly forced to choose between using these funds for Syria or the Democratic Republic of the Congo, as you couldn’t physically truck food supplies into either country. Once again, the situation in the Philippines is putting in stark relief why reform of this system is necessary.”

Political sea change

After years of mounting criticism of the U.S. system of food aid delivery, this past spring President Barack Obama proposed a full overhaul.

For decades the U.S. Congress has considered food aid policy and funding under multi-year agricultural legislation known as the farm bill. The president’s proposal would have changed this (among multiple other reforms), forcing Congress to consider food aid instead as a foreign aid issue and thus delinking food aid from domestic agricultural interests.

Although receiving significant bipartisan support, the president’s proposal failed to receive the necessary backing. Nonetheless, important scaled-back changes have lived on in a Senate version of the farm bill, and many are optimistic these will now make it into law. (Differences between the Senate and House versions of the farm bill are currently being hammered out in a special committee.)

The Senate bill would make permanent a pilot project started in 2008, funding a tool to facilitate local purchasing at around 350 million dollars. It would also step up USAID’s ability to engage in local procurement by an additional 20 percent.

AJWS’s Gerson says these smaller-bore reforms are important “political statements”.

“Politically, we’ve really seen a sea change,” she says. “In 2008, this issue was so controversial that we couldn’t even get it to a vote. This time we lost by just 10 votes. Policy will take a little while to catch up, but we see these changes now as first steps.”

An important part of the changed political landscape has to do with the groups – particularly the implementing NGOs, the farming and shipping lobbies – that had long opposed tweaks to U.S. food aid policy. Gerson says this “iron triangle has been irrevocably broken”.

Several of the largest global humanitarian NGOs, including CARE and Save the Children, have now decided to support reforms. So too have some of the most prominent voices in the U.S. agriculture sector, including the agribusiness giant Cargill and the National Farmers Union (NFU).

Indeed, these latter two supported President Obama’s ambitious overhaul proposal. “[T]here is, and must continue to be, a clear, continuing role for American agriculture in food aid. However, our modern globalized food system makes the case for greater flexibility in our aid programs,” Roger Johnson, the NFU’s president, wrote in May.

As yet, however, the shipping groups continue to support requirements that half of U.S. food aid be transported on U.S.-flagged ships.

“The shipping lobby remains staunchly opposed,” Oxfam America’s Munoz says, “and they bear a lot of the responsibility for the failure of the movement on reform.”

Food aid from the United States often travels thousands of miles before reaching its final destination. Credit: Ephraim Nsingo/IPS

By Cydney Hargis
WASHINGTON, Jun 12 2013 (IPS)

Lawmakers attempted Wednesday to push along an ongoing effort to modernise U.S. international food aid policy amid mounting bipartisan support for the use of more locally grown food products over the long-standing practise of shipping U.S.-grown commodities.

The Food Aid Reform Act, introduced by House Foreign Affairs Chairman Representative Ed Royce and Africa Subcommittee Ranking Member Representative Karen Bass, would eliminate previous requirements that food assistance be grown in the United States and transported on U.S.-flagged ships. Advocates say the changes would deliver aid up to 14 weeks faster and reach an estimated two to four million more people.

“Increasing flexibility is extremely important in these programmes in order to reach more people and react to individual situations on the ground that require different solutions,” Katie Lee, advocacy and policy coordinator for international development at InterAction, a Washington-based network of U.S.-based NGOs, told IPS.

Implementing partners, too, have lined up behind the proposed changes.

In addition to such projections of increased efficiency, the proposed reforms would significantly decrease transportation costs for the United States. According to Royce, who spoke Wednesday in a conference of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, 50 percent of the U.S. food aid budget is currently spent on shipping costs.

“You have to order the food in the Midwest, it gets put on a ship, it can go 7,000 miles to the other side of the world, put on to trucks, and then moved into the famine or emergency zone,” Andrew Natsios, a professor at Texas A&M University, testified during Wednesday’s discussions. “If the food is bought locally, you can avoid the 7,000-mile food chain.”"Shipment devastated the Haitian rice farmers after the earthquake because we couldn't buy it locally."
-- Andrew Natsios

Throughout Wednesday’s Congressional discussions, experts highlighted the consequences of this food chain, particularly in war zones or emergency situations. According to Natsios, a regular strategy in a civil war is to starve the enemy by blowing up food trucks.

“The Syrian government is trying to starve the opposition into surrender,” he said. “The Sudanese government did the same thing in southern Sudan over the course of 22 years of civil war.”

Advocates add that the proposed reforms would have long-term benefits for both the U.S. and foreign economies.

“The future interest of U.S. agriculture is less in the provision of U.S. food aid and more in developing a thriving economy that can create new consumers for American productions,” said Dan Glickman, executive director of the Aspen Institute Congressional Program, an educational initiative for members of Congress.

The changes would allot a larger percent of the food aid budget as cash spent in local markets, which economists say would significantly stimulate local economies.

“Shipment devastated the Haitian rice farmers after the earthquake because we couldn’t buy it locally,” said Natsios. “But we couldn’t not give them food either, because they needed it.”

U.S. branding

On Monday, the Senate overwhelmingly passed a massive, five-year bill that covers much of U.S. agriculture and food-related policy and known as the Farm Bill. The focus now shifts to the House of Representatives to fashion a similar bill, expected to be voted upon later this month.

For now, the Senate bill would reduce overall spending by about 24 billion dollars over 10 years. But that legislation will have to be reconciled with whatever comes out of the House, where the Farm Bill battles are expected to be far more bitter.

Currently, the Food Aid Reform Act is a separate bill, but many observers assume that it will probably be tied into the House Farm Bill eventually. At the moment, experts project it to have less than a seven percent chance of being enacted on its own.

“We don’t expect this to pass free-standing – it’d be great, but that is probably unlikely,” Blake Selzer, a senior policy advocate at CARE, a humanitarian organisation, told IPS.

Still, many U.S. lawmakers and aid experts are concerned as to how the United States would continue to receive public credit for locally procured assistance – an important consideration in any foreign assistance programme. During Wednesday’s discussion, several House representatives expressed such concerns.

“Nobody is talking about going to a cash-only system – not the White House, not the chairman,” Glickman said, emphasising that under the current proposal, only a portion of the aid budget would go to a cash system and the rest would be U.S. shipped commodities.

“I would not support going to a cash only system, I don’t care what country does it. That would be a mistake.”

Indeed, according to USAID, the U.S. government’s main foreign aid arm, such branding has been important, at least in certain situations. U.S. approval ratings in Indonesia, for instance, are said to have nearly doubled, from 37 to 66 percent, following a large delivery prominently branded as U.S. aid.

Natsios emphasised repeatedly that in emergency situations it is very clear where assistance is coming from. “No one would argue that we should only provide aid if we get credit for it,” he said.

Civil society groups here are praising parts of President Barack Obama’s newly unveiled budget proposal, saying it appears to build on momentum gathered in recent years toward a robust overhaul of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the country’s main foreign aid agency.

Haitians receive U.S.-funded food aid in 2010. Credit: USAID

They point particularly to long-demanded changes to the structuring of the U.S. food aid programme, one of the largest in the world. Under the president’s new proposal, released Wednesday, U.S. food assistance would no longer be sourced from U.S. farmers and then sent abroad but would be purchased in local markets.

Proponents suggest the changes will save significant money for Washington while simultaneously helping to bolster local markets and economies in crisis-hit regions. Advocates say the food aid changes are in line with a broader reforms process under way at USAID.

“Oxfam was very critical of what USAID was doing [in 2008] – we questioned its very existence,” Paul O’Brien, vice-president of policy and advocacy at Oxfam America, a humanitarian group, said at a policy discussion here Thursday. “But we think what we’re seeing [now] is a quiet renaissance.”

Over the past half-decade, a new government initiative, known as USAID Forward, has worked to strengthen links between the agency and local institutions and to forge stronger partnerships between the United States and host countries. Supporters point to the development of Country Development Cooperation Strategies, detailed plans in which the host country lays out goals and unique needs to chart a path forward.

“U.S. policy is changing,” a new Oxfam report, released Thursday, states, “allowing more U.S. government development officials to work more closely with leaders in developing countries, in government, civil society, and the private sector.”

In a survey of 257 non-U.S. government officials in recipient countries, the report found that 83 percent saw the United States today as a better donor than it was five years ago.

According to the report, “Respondents reported that their interactions with the US have improved, allowing them more opportunities to decide how aid is spent and to work together towards mutually-shared results.”

Taking on aid inefficiency

While USAID Forward began as a direct response to criticisms spurred by the dwindling reputation and alleged mishandling of USAID programmes during the first decade of the 2000s, President Obama’s new budget proposal – which has not yet been approved by Congress – seems to draw on these successes in moving towards a more full-scale modernisation of the country’s foreign assistance model.

The budget request spotlights sweeping changes to food assistance in particular, allocating 1.6 billion dollars for the Feed the Future initiative to combat chronic food insecurity and 2.65 billion dollars to the USAID Global Health Programmes.

It would also shift 1.8 billion dollars from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to the State Department, using funds currently allocated for a process known as “monetisation” to instead go toward disaster- and crisis-related food assistance accounts.

Monetisation is the term given to the process by which Washington has traditionally given U.S.-grown grains to local organisations, which can then sell them for cash. Critics say this process is notably inefficient, a finding corroborated by a 2011 report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the U.S. Congress’s main investigative arm.

“The president’s 2014 budget includes reforms to food aid that will enable us to feed an estimated four million more hungry children every year with the same resources,” Rajiv Shah, the head of USAID, said in a major address Wednesday.

That optimism has been mirrored by NGOs and aid modernisation advocates.

“We are encouraged by the administration’s proposal, and believe that if it is implemented correctly and authorised by Congress that it could meet the principles that NGOs have called for,” Mark Lotwis, senior director of public policy at InterAction, a coalition of U.S.-based NGOs, told IPS.

“[Those calls] include keeping the core focus of food assistance on those who have acute hunger needs, increasing the number of people who are helped, and providing the administration with flexibility to meet the needs of people in the field.”

Some key food assistance changes in Obama’s budget request include the use of cash vouchers that broaden the reach of food assistance in disaster areas and the end of inefficient “monetisation”. This process, known for returning little more than half of invested funding, has become synonymous in the NGO community with inefficiency.

“The truth is that for years our practice in food assistance has lagged behind our knowledge,” Shah said Wednesday. “In the last decade, more than 30 different studies … have revealed the inefficiencies of the current system.”

A looming battle in Congress?

Some of these inefficiencies, though, are rooted in agricultural changes internationally, and implicating this sector in the needed reforms constitutes some unique political challenges for these proposals going forward.

For example, shortages in food, instead of the surpluses that once drove farmers to seek out foreign markets, have driven up the costs of doing business with recipient countries by some 200 percent in recent years. That increase has been primarily responsible for monetisation’s increasing inefficiencies and advocates’ calls for reform.

Ending monetisation, which necessarily entails shifting funds away from the Department of Agriculture, has already been met with some resistance in Congress, and is only expected to attract more on its way to a vote.

“American agriculture is one of the few U.S. business sectors to produce a trade surplus,” said a letter signed by 21 senators, including the chairmen of the Agriculture and Agricultural Appropriations Committee. “During this time of economic distress, we should maintain support for the areas of our economy that are growing.”

This conflict, though, is only one incarnation of a problem likely to be seen across different sectors, as groups affiliated with development assistance struggle to adjust their practices and business models to a transformative shift.

Even among NGOs, which have been largely supportive of the USAID reforms, the proposals are prompting a discussion about changing core practices in order to adapt.

“With [USAID Forward] we got the kind of leadership we need, but I think it’s now on us,” O’Brien from Oxfam said Thursday.

“Some of us are going to evolve and some of us are going to resist. But frankly, I’d be worried if you think that the way you used to do business is a viable business model for the next 10 years.”

By Ish Mafundikwa
Harare, Apr 3 2013 (IPS)

The Beitbridge area in southern Zimbabwe was hit by serious flooding earlier this year. Those affected are still trying to get back on their feet.

Advocacy groups working on global hunger and poverty are hailing rumoured proposals that would change the way the United States distributes its international food aid.

A child receives food aid in Ghana from FMSC Distribution Partner – Health and Humanitarian Aid Foundation. Credit: FMSC/cc by 2.0

The news comes just as President Barack Obama is finalising his highly anticipated national budget proposal for fiscal year 2014, the most specific indicator yet of the president’s policy vision as he starts his second term in office.

Meanwhile, sweeping budget cuts are set to go into effect on Friday, without action from the U.S. Congress. These automatic reductions, thought to make up three to eight percent of most federal budgets, would have particularly inordinate ramifications for foreign aid, development and global health programmes.

Yet the rumoured changes in food aid appear to be in line with reforms that advocates have urged for decades, aimed at increasing efficiency and halting market distortions brought about by the arrival of cheap U.S. grains. The United States is the world’s largest provider of food aid, meant to function as a stopgap measure of last resort.

“What we’re hearing is that instead of cuts, the president could be proposing a shift to local or regional procurement of U.S. food aid, rather than the ‘in kind’ giving we’ve done for years – which would be terrific news,” Karen Hansen-Kuhn, international programmes director with the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP), a think tank, told IPS.

“That would be a common sense move, and it would be about 50 years overdue. Purchasing this food locally would be a far more efficient use of food aid, while it would also benefit small-scale farmers in the community or region.”

IATP, together with 11 other humanitarian and advocacy organisations, on Tuesday released a statement welcoming unofficial reports of these proposed changes. They also called on President Obama’s administration to “include a bold reform proposal that builds upon the United States’ historic leadership as the world’s most generous donor of food aid.”

The joint statement is not calling for an outright end to in-kind food aid, but rather for greater flexibility in how the programmes operate.

According to several of these groups, it appears that the administration will propose shifting responsibility for food aid programmes from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to USAID, the country’s central foreign aid agency. (Neither the USDA nor the White House have publicly discussed these details.)

The administration is also reportedly considering ending the practice of food aid “monetisation”, a process by which Washington gives U.S.-grown grains to local organisations, which can then sell them for cash. Critics say this process is notably inefficient, a finding corroborated by a 2011 report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the U.S Congress’s main investigative arm.

Over the past half-century, the United States has become the world’s largest food aid donor. Last year, the Congress appropriated some 2.5 billion dollars for such programmes, including nearly 1.5 billion dollars for the largest, called Food for Peace.

When it was established in 1954, Food for Peace was able to tap into the United States’ massive grain reserves, redistributing these to the needy around the world even while offering some financial fillip for U.S. farmers and shippers (the programme was also aimed at countering communism). Among other requirements, 75 percent of U.S. food aid must still be transported on U.S.-flagged ships.

And yet, the United States’ grain reserves were largely discontinued in the late 1990s, and critics say that, for the most part, the purchases do not amount to enough to actually sway U.S. agricultural prices in favour of farmers.

Today, the United States is the only major donor country that continues to send actual food items to humanitarian crisis spots, rather than offering money with which to procure locally produced grains and other products.

Critics say the practice increases aid prices by 50 percent for the U.S. government. Amidst ongoing and highly polarised budget negotiations here in Washington, advocates are now hoping that such efficiencies will be widely welcomed by lawmakers.

Missing a third

The idea of local procurement is not new. President George W. Bush proposed changes that would have allowed for a quarter of U.S. food aid to be locally procured, while leaders of USAID have also come out forcefully in favour of such changes.

Beyond a small pilot project on local procurement, however, no major reforms have been adopted. (Recent reports on the feasibility of that pilot programme were positive, available here and here.)

While this inertia can in part be attributed to lobbying on behalf of certain farming and transport interests, Hansen-Kuhn suggest that “many today are concerned that if we tinker with the current system, then support for funding levels more generally will go away.”

Yet many advocates are increasingly urging that the debate over food aid – or any foreign aid – be concerned less with dollar figures than with the number of beneficiaries reached.

According to some estimates, if the United States were to switch completely to local procurement for its food aid, “it would be able to reach 17 million more people – so we’re only getting to about two-thirds of the people we could be,” Timi Gerson, with American Jewish World Service, an advocacy organisation, told IPS.

“So what I’m looking to see from the administration is their math: How many beneficiaries are they going to reach, and could they reach as many or more because they are using funding more efficiently? Ultimately, this is not just about money but also about what that money is doing.”

Beyond arguments over lower costs for donors and higher response speeds for crisis-hit communities, reforms in favour of local procurement could have an important long-term impact.

“One of the things we are hopeful for is that any new reforms, by providing cash, would be able to empower local economies,” Blake Selzer, a senior policy advocate at Care, a relief agency, told IPS.

For decades, Care has implemented U.S. food aid and other development programmes, among others. In 2006, it unilaterally decided that it would massively scale back its use of aid monetisation.

“Today we’re at a point where this is about reaching as many people with less money, or reaching more people with same amount of money,” Selzer continues.

“But at the same time, local procurement could go a long way towards empowering these communities and building long-term economies – so they don’t have to rely on international assistance and, rather, can develop their own markets and assistance programmes.”