Food for Peace

In different administrative and organizational forms, the Food for Peace program of the United States has provided food assistance around the world for more than 50 years. Approximately 3 billion people in 150 countries have benefited directly from U.S. food assistance. The Office of Food for Peace within the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) is the U.S. Government’s largest provider of overseas food assistance. The food assistance programming is funded primarily through the Food for Peace Act. The Office of Food for Peace also receives International Disaster Assistance Funds through the Foreign Assistance Act (FAA) that can be used in emergency settings (more information below).

While U.S. food aid started out in the 1950s as a means to donate surplus U.S. commodities, the U.S. government moved away from this decades ago, and now purchases food from American farmers through a competitive process. The Office of Food for Peace donates food based on an identified need, in close consultation with the host government requesting the assistance.

During the 2010s the program underwent revisions offered by in the Administrations Fiscal Year 2014 budget. These revisions would change the program to provide cash donations rather than American grown and delivered food. On April 24, 2013, USA Maritime Chairman James L. Henry wrote a statement which discussed the efficacy of the program and specifically the importance of the U.S. Merchant Marine in delivering the U.S. food aid to people who are undernourished around the world. Henry cited the fact that USAID's own data actually revealed that the traditional efforts to deliver food as opposed to cash transfers for countries to buy their own food is actually 78 percent cheaper per ton of food. Henry offers that this is a significant fact in the effort to address global hunger.

America's food assistance programs began in 1812 when James Madison sent emergency aid to earthquake victims in Venezuela. As director of the American Relief Administration, Herbert Hoover led a $20 million feeding program in Russia during the 1920s under the Russian Famine Relief Act. In 1949, the United States launched the Marshall Plan, which provided large quantities of food aid commodities to the people of Western Europe. The Marshall Plan helped rejuvenate and unite Europe while laying the foundations for a permanent U.S. food assistance program. Many of the European countries the U.S. Government helped at that time have since become major food exporters and important international donors.

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