Increasing Food Aid: Prospects For The 1990s

When carefully targeted, food aid stabilizes domestic supplies in food-insecure countries and alleviates hunger. Conflicting objectives have marked food aid since the 1950s: humanitarian relief, surplus disposal and expansion of export markets, support of foreign policy, and overseas economic development. In recent years, world-wide food aid has fluctuated between 10 and 13 million tons, over half provided by the US. At least a doubling or more of food aid in the 1990s is justified and even current allocations can be made more effective if addressed to the needs of the hungry. Prospects for enhanced food aid, however, appear dim unless broad public support can be mobilized or current objectives change in the context of realigning economic relations among states