The history of international food aid

International food aid has not only existed for a few decades. In the United States, for example, its history reaches as far back as the early 19^th century when the

“Act for relief of Citizens of Venezuela” was passed by the Congress. Food aid was also provided during and after the First and the Second World War.⁸³ Modern food aid, however, began with the Agricultural Trade Development and Assistance Act, more commonly known as Public Law 480 (PL 480), that was approved by the U.S. Congress in 1954. This law provided a legal framework for U.S. food programmes and originated due to several factors. To name only two motives: the U.S were faced with enormous agricultural surpluses and the government, which was the buyer of last resort in farm price support programmes until the 1980s, had to find a way to dispose of the excess production. Furthermore, spreading communism was a concern and providing food aid to developing countries was seen as a possibility to strengthen the bond between recipient countries and the Western world (Shaw 2001, pp. 29). Thenceforward, the PL 480 also served as a model for other bilateral and multilateral aid programmes.

In the early stages of modern food aid, that is, the 1950s and 1960s, food disbursements were primarily given on a bilateral government-to-government basis and were mainly driven by surplus disposal policies and geopolitical motives (Cathie 1986, pp.6; Clapp 2012, p. 1). Moreover, until the 1960s, U.S. food aid represented such a high share of total food disbursements, that one could actually say it was overall food aid (Shaw and Clay 1993, p. 5). In the 1970s, international food crises became a major issue. While developing countries were faced with food insecurity, volumes of food aid, however, decreased dramatically as a result of the rise in world commodity prices (Cathie 1986, p. 14). But the devastating nutritional situation, particularly in Asia and Africa, increasingly caught the attention of the international community and enhanced international cooperation on food aid matters. Food and hunger crises, especially in Africa, also remained a central issue in the 1980s. However, it was also a period in

83 I will not dwell on the indeed very interesting programmes such as the Marshall Plan, as the history of food aid is not the main focus here.

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which a rethinking and restructuring progress took place (Shaw and Clay 1993, pp. 5.).

Food aid distribution became less donor-driven and more emphasis was put on emergency relief. Moreover, there was a clear shift towards the coordination of food aid issues via multilateral organisations, such as the World Food Programme (WFP) (Clapp 2012, pp. 7, p. 25).⁸⁴ The increasing importance of multilateral food aid also relates to the fact that different restrictions and laws in the various donor countries as well as the increasing complexity of the food aid system⁸⁵ made bilateral transactions less popular (Barrett and Maxwell, p. 56; Shaw and Clay 1993, p. 8). While the United States is still the biggest bilateral donor today, the World Food Programme (WFP) has become the primary international provider of food aid with clear humanitarian motives. The shift from bilateral to multilateral aid came along with a transition from programme to emergency aid as the preferred type of food aid.⁸⁶

In general, food aid can be subdivided into three different types. Programme food aid is given on a bilateral government-to-government basis on soft repayment terms or as a grant for distribution or sale abroad.⁸⁷ Project food aid can be provided by governments, NGOs or other donors for specific projects, for example food for work or school feeding programmes. Relief or emergency food aid is typically given for emergency situations, such as wars or natural disasters (Shaw and Clay 1993).

Programme food aid used to be the most frequent form of food aid, until – with the growing importance of multilateral donors – emergency situations shifted to being the dominant factor for receiving food assistance (Barrett and Maxwell 2005).⁸⁸ Especially the increasing number of large natural disasters during the last years has increased the

84 The World Food Programme (WFP) was created in 1961. It became increasingly important as a channel for international food aid after the mid-1970s. For a comprehensive overview of the WFP history, see Shaw (2001).

85 Since the 1980s, new forms of food aid, such as triangular-relationships evolved, which rendered food aid distribution even more complex.

86 The chance from programme to emergency aid is not to be confused with the change in policy designs that took place for overall development assistance, where programme aid became increasingly important over time.

87 Programme food aid is often in-kind food aid that is either distributed directly or sold in the recipient countries, such that the revenue can be spent on developmental issues.

88 Different types of food aid may have different effects on recipients’ nutritional status, as was analysed in former research, for example by Arndt and Tarp (2012). In this paper, however, the main question is whether food aid in general has beneficial effects for recipients’ well-being and we will therefore not differentiate between the different types in our analysis.

Chapter 5. Does food aid improve child nutrition? An anthropometric assessment of children’s nutritional status in recipient economies.

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perception that food aid should be delivered in a faster and more flexible way. The tsunami in the Indian Ocean in 2004, for example, required quick large-scale food assistance to the affected population. Food aid shipments from donor countries would have been too slow to provide immediate help and, furthermore, would have been dependent on the availability of commodities in the donor country. The increasing awareness of the need for a quick and flexible provision of food encouraged more cash-based responses in emergencies as well as local and regional procurement of food (Lentz et al. 2013). Figure 5.1 shows that the switch from programme food aid as the predominant form of delivery towards emergency food aid took place around the turn of the millennium.

Figure 5.1: Shares of project, programme, and project food aid, 1988-2012

Source: WFP FAIS database. http://www.wfp.org/fais/.

Although the popularity of international food aid donations and the enthusiasm for more flexible solutions increased, the share of food aid with regard to total official development assistance (ODA) decreased over time. While food aid still accounted for a 16% share of total aid flows in the mid-1970s, the share diminished to around 12%

during the 1980s and decreased even further in the subsequent periods, as Figure 5.2 shows.

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Figure 5.2: The development of food aid as share of total ODA over time

Notes: data from DAC 2a data set of the OECD. ODA: Official development assistance.

It is interesting to note that – apart from the fact that food aid to developing countries has always been extremely volatile – there was a sharp decrease in food disbursements since the 1990s. Part of the explanation for this lies in the fact that food aid flows are driven by supply-side influences (Harvey et al. 2010). The sharp drop in food aid in the mid-1970s, for example, can be viewed as a result of the world food crisis of the 1970s and the corresponding tightening of food markets. As food aid programmes were often budgeted in financial terms and not in tons, fluctuations can also be explained with the fluctuation of prices of food. The 1990s were a period of several policy changes with respect to food aid. A large number of donors, including the European Union and Canada, turned their backs on programme aid which also resulted in a sharp decline of the overall food aid flows. Moreover, the U.S. as the major donor of food aid has continuously reduced its overall development assistance, including food aid (Clay and Stokke 2010).

The destination of food assistance was also subject to changes over the decades.

Asia, who was the main recipient of food aid during the 1970s, was gradually replaced by Sub-Saharan Africa as the main beneficiary of food support during the 1980s and early 1990s. At this point in time, Asia was able to increase its cereal production and finance imports commercially, while Sub-Saharan Africa was faced with a gap in food

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production and demand. Large food aid donations were also temporarily provided to the former Soviet countries at the beginning of the 1990s (Maxwell and Barrett 2005; Clay and Stokke 2010).