Publications (4)1.97 Total impact
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Article: Market information and food insecurity response analysis
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ABSTRACT: Food aid is no longer the only, or even the dominant, response to widespread food insecurity. Donors, governments, NGOs and recipient communities exhibit rapidly growing interest in and experimentation with cash-based alternatives, both in the form of direct cash distribution to food insecure persons, and of local or regional purchase of food using cash provided to operational agencies by donors. But humanitarian assistance and development communities lack a systematic, field-tested framework for choosing among food- and/or cash-based responses to food insecurity. This paper outlines the rationale for “response analysis” and introduces a new, field-tested, systematic approach to this emergent activity. The Market Information and Food Insecurity Response Analysis (MIFIRA) framework provides a logically sequenced set of questions, and corresponding analytical tools to help operational agencies anticipate the likely impact of alternative (food- and/or cash-based) responses and thereby identify the response that best fits a given food insecurity context.Food Security 04/2012; 1(2):151-168. · 1.97 Impact Factor -
Article: They Profit While the Hungry Die
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ABSTRACT: Congress nonetheless blocked the overdue reform. Why? The Iron Triangle – the nickname given the coalition of big agribusinesses, shipping companies and nongovernmental development and relief organizations, or NGOs, that lobbies for food aid. Big agribusinesses and shippers earn above-market profits from selling food aid and transoceanic shipping services to the government. They don't want to sacrifice those windfalls, not even to save lives.As reported by the New York Times, the food delivered by NGOs and the U.N.'s World Food Program last year cost only 40% of the U.S. food-aid budget. The rest was pocketed by suppliers. The NGOs provide big agribusinesses and shippers with political cover, putting an appealing humanitarian face on private profits, because they fear the bad deal they get – less than half the resources intended for the disaster-affected populations they serve – is the best they can muster in the current political environment.THE IRON TRIANGLE prevails by hiding behind myths. One of the biggest is that food aid helps American farmers by supporting farm prices. Yet there is precious little evidence of this, with the possible exception of a couple of niche products such as lentils and raisins. The $654 million spent on food-aid commodities last year is a drop in the ocean of the nearly $1-trillion U.S. food economy. This food aid is a smaller share of the food economy than a family of seven's grocery bill is of food sales in a town of 10,000 people. Farmers don't benefit; only a few big agribusinesses and shippers do.PSN: Foreign Aid (Topic). 05/2011; -
Article: Towards a global food aid compact
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ABSTRACT: Existing international mechanisms governing food aid are dysfunctional and outdated. A reasonably straightforward alternative could readily rectify the problem of an ineffective global food aid governance system. In this paper, we outline the basic design of such a Global Food Aid Compact.Food Policy. -
Article: PL480 Food Aid: We Can Do Better
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ABSTRACT: Fifty years ago, President Eisenhower signed the Agricultural Trade Development and Assistance Act of 1954 into law as US Public Law 480. This article addresses how food aid can become a more effective tool for reducing poverty and hunger and reducing costs without sacrificing any benefits to US agriculture.Choices. 19(3).
