The Idaho Wheat Commission

Boise, ID – America's food assistance programs, began in 1812 during the administration of President James Madison, are under attack in the WTO negotiations. The way the international dispute is resolved will impact Idaho’s wheat growers. Blaine Jacobson, Idaho Wheat Commission Executive Director and member of the U.S. Wheat Food Aid Committee recently returned from Washington, D.C. where he helped educate lawmakers on Food Aid and lobbied to continue the important agricultural program.

United States Food Aid programs have a long heritage. President Madison sent emergency aid to earthquake victims in Venezuela. Herbert Hoover led a huge feeding program in Russia during the 1920's, in addition to famine relief programs during World War I and World War II in Europe. In 1949, the United States launched the Marshall Plan, which brought tons of food to the people of Western Europe, and planted the seeds for a rejuvenated U.S. food aid program. Many European countries we helped at that time have long since become major food exporters and important international donors.

On 10 July 1954, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the Agricultural Trade Development Assistance Act, or Public Law 480, into law. The purpose of the legislation, the President said, was to "lay the basis for a permanent expansion of our exports of agricultural products with lasting benefits to ourselves and peoples of other lands."

Hopefully, future food aid donations will continue to provide food, despite EU and Australian attempts -- through WTO negotiations -- to prohibit U.S. donations of food. Last year's wheat donations, which are under attack by commercial competitors in the EU and Australia, represent only 3 percent of the total U.S. wheat production, but even that tiny amount is too much for competitors who want to see the U.S. food aid program transformed into a cash outlay.

“Wheat has played a pivotal role in U.S. food aid for more than 50 years,” said Blaine Jacobson, Executive Director of the Idaho Wheat Commission. “Food aid is often the only tangible contact local people have with the United States. With the media telling those people to hate the US, it is important that they see concrete evidence of the goodwill of our people in highly nutritionally wheat foods identified as being given by the US.”

Jacobson, who currently serves as a committee member of the US Wheat Food Aid Committee, recently met with the House Agriculture Committee, Senate Agriculture Committee, USDA, Foreign Agriculture Service and the Department of State to discuss the proposal that gives USAID new authority to use up to 25 percent of Title II funding to purchase commodities in locations closer to where they are needed. The US Wheat Food Aid Working Group noted that the authority could divert up to $305 million from the current U.S. food aid program, placing those funds into a new initiative where U.S. purchasing could very likely favor foreign sourced commodities over U.S.

USAID currently has Title II Food for Peace programs in 32 countries, but humanitarian organizations have been warned that programs in 17 countries will be eliminated. There have been some private suggestions that one of the factors in deciding which countries to cut, in addition to rating the calorie needs of the hungry, could be whether the country's government has sided with the Europeans in their calls (during World Trade Organization negotiations) to change U.S. food aid to cash payments. Countries should not be sent food from programs they oppose, the people who support cuts argue.

It probably isn’t surprising that Europe, led by France and Switzerland, would try to gut America’s food aid programs. The World Trade Organization is currently negotiating new international trading rules, and the European Union is demanding that the United States dismantle current programs and turn food aid into cash aid.

“One might see an ulterior motive for the EU’s demand, said Jacobson. “For instance, last year the U.S. provided almost a million tons of U.S. wheat to African countries. Do the French suggest that Africans don’t deserve bread? Or, in their “cash only” demands, do they foresee African rulers taking American cash and buying French wheat instead? The US Wheat Food Aid Working Group is trying to prevent American tax dollars paying for French wheat while American wheat farmers are locked out of donational programs.”

The crippling of food aid hurts America just as much as it harms the millions of people around the world who know only hunger. Since President Eisenhower provided the first food aid shipments of wheat to a starving India, U.S. what has been a vital and visible demonstration of America’s generosity.