What Happens When America Runs Out of Leftovers
Weisbrod, David
What Happens When Amexica Runs Out of Leftovers by David Weisbrod When Benjamin Franklin walked the streets of Philadelphia delivering little lectures on self-improvement to urchins...
...Ten years ago USDA disposed of much more food under PL 480 than the giant agricultural companies managed to sell abroad...
...As long as the American “farm problem” was surplus rather than shortage, PL 480 seemed a model foreign aid program, since no one suffered and everyone gained...
...Several chefs of state have made gentle protests to President Nixon, but most of the affected countries, aware of the distorted priorities of American aid, have registered neither surprise nor complaint...
...Obviously,” said a NSC source, “there are quite a number of countries where food shortages become a matter of riots in the streets, a matter of political rise and fall...
...Laurel Meade, the Department’s Food for Peace specialist, recently gave Congress a report which made PL 480 appear to be part of an enormous “Buy America’’ strategy : By putting these commodities into these countries through PL 480 we teach those pcople how to deal with our American trade...
...Yef as long as food prices resemble the gold market, Food for Peace will remain vulnerable to even more drastic cuts...
...The sooner we can get this out of our system, the better...
...What Happens When Amexica Runs Out of Leftovers by David Weisbrod When Benjamin Franklin walked the streets of Philadelphia delivering little lectures on self-improvement to urchins particularly notable for their wretchedness, he gave us an important lesson in practical charity...
...Recently, these Food for Peace funds have been used to buy military clothing in Vietnam, to pay military costs in Korea, and to provide combat pay allowances in Cambodia, While some of these projects, like disaster relief, may be beneficial to the host country, many foreign governments are wary of large quantities of their currency coming under American control...
...we may need’ to trade dollars to save lives...
...India’s decision arose from two sources...
...The answer not only reveals one of the most important weaknesses of the Food for Peace program, but also illustrates the fears-fear of indenture, fear of lost initiative-that any aid relationship creates in the recipient...
...Over the last two decades our farm subsidy programs have idled 50 million of the nation’s 350 million acres of cropland...
...But right now, and at other times of shortage, special arrangements may be necessary...
...Particularly disturbed by a reported powdered milk shortage which he said would seriously affect the refugee program, Mann described the Food for Peace cutback as, “a shocking realization at a rather late date in the planning process with what could be serious consequences...
...Crises like these create the opportunity for dramatic television footage of American helicopters dropping sacks of grain to villagers isolated by monsoon or enfeebled by drought...
...In December, 1972,” said the Bolivian Economic Minister, “we signed in La Paz an agreement for 100,000 tons of wheat: 48,000 tons were to be shipped by June 30, and the remaining 52,000’tons were to be shipped in the second part of the year...
...More recently, the U. S. has rushed emergency aid to countries like Bangladesh, Nicaragua, and Peru...
...With one third of all U. S. development assistance consisting of agricultural products, PL 480 remains one of the most important international resource transfers undertaken by the American government...
...It has also created a certain psychosis among us about the way U. S. administrators give their bounty .” While there are some justifications for India’s complaints, this sort of heavy-handed meddling is not necessarily an inherent part of the Food for Peace program...
...But as we move into a period where U. S. agricultural products are in greater demand, the NSC has become involved in the process of determining who gets what...
...Even more striking is the attitude of the Department of Agriculture (USDA), which looks at PL 480 as just another weapon in the fight against the farm surplus, equivalent in importance to peanut-subsidy payments and the school lunch program...
...And obviously, countries like Indonesia with 100 million people are more important than countries like Upper Volta...
...This humanitarianism is best displayed during the periodic famines and other natural catastrophes which afflict so much of the world...
...Yet the apparent simplicity of the program’s something-for-nothing appeal con~~~```~``~````~```~``` food exports until sufficient supply is beexports until sufficient supply is on on hand in the United States to meet domestic needs...
...I think the result was a good one...
...There’s also the allegation that a lot of American students and professors financed by PL 480 are CIA agents...
...The criteria determining which countries receive food aid for national security reasons are vague, but two factors seem to weigh most heavily: the size of the country and the degree to which food shortages could produce political instability...
...And the taxpayer, always made uncomfortable by the image of rotting surplus food, could derive some satisfaction from seeing our farm program finally being put to some good use...
...In the end, if the world-wide food shortages persist, how we harness our phenomenal food-growing capacity may be one of the most important decisions we make...
...Even now, while facing a famine more serious than any except in Northern Africa, India is depleting its meager foreign currency reserves to buy food at commercial rates rather than turning to the U. S. for concessional sales...
...If these efforts have not made local Food for Peace representatives into deities in the host countries, they have at least won for the program an aura of saintliness otherwise absent in our foreign activities...
...with the clasped-hands emblem that adorns the sacks of wheat and tubs of vegetable oil the U. S. sells at cut-rate, or “concessional,” prices to developing countries...
...The food eventually got to the peasants, but the delays and constant necessity for hat-in-hand appeals to the U. S. angered the Indian administrators...
...James Johnson, a freshman member of the House Agriculture Committee, to wonder aloud, “Is it not true when you look down the figures-Korea gets $207 million, Vietnam $96 million, Cambodia $36 million-is it not true that this is not really a program that is designed to feed hungry children, starving children, as much as a foreign aid program that is in conjunction with our military aid...
...Although the rules were changed last year to require repayment in dollars, the U. s. had already built up enormous surpluses of exotic currencies like rupees and cedis...
...We have great difficulty with the foreign aid program,” Senator Hubert Humphrey, chairman of the Foreign Agricultural Policy subcommittee, has said, “but [against] PL 480 we only get three or six votes...
...This year a fairly substantial proportion of PL 480 falls into the NSC interest...
...Even in Laos, where American aid programs, protected by military priorities, are relatively sacrosanct, those parts of the Food for Peace program which do not contribute to the war against communism are in serious jeopardy...
...But instead of a purchase authorization for 48,000 tons, the Department of Agriculture gave us one for only 29,100 tons...
...India, for example, announced in 1971-five years after American food had rescued it from a terrifying farnine-that it would not buy on credit from the Food for Peace program...
...This tripartite appeal made PL 480 one of the least controversial programs passed by Congress each year...
...Of course, when cuts in the program are necessary, they involve only the humanitarian projects-those not protected by a “presidential priority...
...And a study prepared for Senator William Proxmire’s Joint Economic Committee has recommended that PL 480 credits be limited if domestic meat production does not increase...
...They have been joined by voluntary agencies such as CARE, Hadassah, Lutheran World Relief, and Church World Service...
...Shipping the excess food abroad was one convenient way to deal with the farm problem...
...Now the ratio has been reversed, and the Agriculture Department is pleased...
...Bolivia is one country, however, where embassy officials were willing to openly discuss the reductions...
...Last April 7, AID’S Laos mission director, Charles Mann, relayed his concern in a cable to senior AID officials...
...Despite its track record, PL 480 is far from a government-sponsored Red Cross...
...Some of the official silence may be due to fears that any comment might be misinterpreted and provoke the unpredictable U. S. government into cutting off the aid a1 t oge ther...
...The farm lobby raved about it and both the liberal and conservative politicians saw their own angles in the program...
...Our country has made commitments and plans based on the original agreement, and now we find suddenly that we aren’t going to get what we’ve been expecting...
...It has fostered self-sufficiency...
...And if Franklin were alive today, he would probably be working as a lobbyist for the Food for Peace program, America’s answer to the old dilemma of how to look good while actually doing good...
...Of this, $300 million is for “supporting assistance” to just seven countriesCambodia, Israel, Jordan, Laos, Malta, Thailand, and, of course, South Vietnam...
...No Threat From Upper Volta Such selective reductions in PL 480 operations highlight what may be the program’s most serious shortcomingthe use of food as a cold war weapon.’ For years, substantial portions of Food for Peace allotments have been earmarked by the National Security Council (NSC) for countries which were deemed pivotal for American security interests...
...It’s not only the embarrassment of a country that’s 70 percent peasant not being able to feed itself,” said an Indian diplomat...
...As long as food production here is bountiful, an excess will be available...
...The genius of our Food for Peace program is its potential to meet with almost exquisite symmetry some of the needs of both the relatively wealthy farmers in America and the poor peasants abroad...
...In 1966 Lyndon Johnson gave India a taste of the same welfare paternalism that many beneficiaries of Great Society domestic poverty programs came to resent...
...It’s really a problem...
...In fact, the origins of Food for Peace had far less to do with the peasants of India than with those of Iowa and Texas...
...Why...
...Farmers would have a reason to keep busy producing food instead of just collecting subsidies for holding land out of production...
...We teach them our methods of trading...
...As India watched the U. S. accumulate its present $3 12-million hoard of rupees, it began to criticize PL 480 as an unendurable interference in India’s domestic affairs...
...Although the NSC declines to produce figures, other government sources say that in the coming fiscal year $696 million of the $830 million allocated for the program’s Title I , or “credit,” sales falls into a special “presidential priority” category...
...But the suspicion that next year the harvest may be bountiful along the Volga has inspired a horde of American farm groupsranging from the American Soybean Association to the Poultry and Egg Institute of America to the California Cling Peach Advisory Board-to lobby for a four-year extension of PL 480...
...Pursuing what he called a “short-tether” policy, Johnson released food shipments in tiny driblets, demanding each time some modification in Indian agricultural policy...
...Since the program’s creation in 1954, some $2 1 -billion worth of food-mainly grains, dairy products, oils, and even some tobaccohas been shipped from America’s stockpiles to the hungry natibns of the world...
...Instead of dismissing the program because it has become commercially inconvenient or because we resent the cold war overtures, we should re-think the program to preserve its most useful features while removing the needless irritants...
...Although financing was part of the problem, another, older wound to her national pride also weighed in India’s decision...
...There were apparent benefits for all...
...Normally,” explained a NSC staff member, “there are adequate PL 480 resources to go around...
...In this year of the Great Meat Panic, it is hard to recall that until recently the Secretary of Agriculture’s biggest worry was how to keep America’s farmers from producing more food than the nation’s grain elevators could store...
...If the American farm lobbies could count on annual Russian crop failures, they would have no further use for Food for Peace...
...India’s Embarrassment Not all countries have been as heartbroken as the Bolivians to see the shipments reduced...
...It is better to do good on a main street at high noon than in some back alley at midnight, and it is easier to give away something in abundant supply-like advice or Poor Richard’s Almnackthan to part with goods more precious to the giver...
...The first of the great emergency projects was Lyndon Johnson’s attempt in the midsixties to save India from famine...
...As one of the results of that effort, Congress amended the Food for Peace Act in 1966, adding an explicit commitment “to combat hunger and malnutrition and to encourage economic development in the developing countries...
...These currency caches are usually turned over to U. S. agencies abroad, where they are used to finance programs ranging from building military housing to buying foreign publications for the Library of Congress...
...if necessary, we could easily expand output...
...We get them accustomed to using our commodlties and gradually, as thelr econonuc capabdity improves, they shift over to a commercial basis...
...If the Good Samaritan had adopted t h s philosophy, he probably would have hired a PR man and waited for the news photographers to arrive before he did his stuff...
...This emphasis on security assistance has prodded Rep...
...Agency for International Development (AID) officials are be ginning to find their work difficult because of the anticipated cuts in PL 480...
...Around the world, Food for Peace-frequently identified as “PL . 480,” its legal name-is associated David Weisbrod is a former Peace Corps volunteer to Nepal...
...The government could play Lady Bountiful to the countries of the Third World, using cheap food as one more weapon in the world-wide struggle for hearts and minds of men...
...One was PL 480’s “credit” system, under which recipient countries borrowed money for the food shipments and repaid it in local currencies...
...More than anything else, it was President Johnson’s deliberately tough stance that is responsible for the attitude we now have,” said a high-level official at the Indian embassy, explaining his country’s refusal to participate in the concessional sales program...
Vol. 5 • July 1973 • No. 5
