Food aid
When food aid is defined as the delivery of food in crisis areas as part of humanitarian assistance . It is a significant variant of the goods assistance. Food aid is often sent to disaster areas or, over a longer period of time, mostly from industrialized countries to developing countries to combat world hunger .
While in the past food surpluses were exported from the donor countries, many donors have now started to buy the food they need on local markets in the neighboring countries of the region in order to strengthen the local economy.
criticism
Food aid often competes with local agriculture - which is also present in crisis areas and their surroundings - and leads to a lowering of market prices for local farmers. Agriculture becomes unprofitable for them, they reduce their production or stop it altogether. This can make an area even more permanently dependent on food supplies from outside, such as in the case of Egypt .
The selection of the beneficiaries of the food aid (targeting) is based on delivering the aid to those most in need. However, ensuring this is often difficult and it is usually unavoidable that some of the food on sale ends up in local markets. The delivery of food aid in dictatorships is particularly problematic; they can take possession of the food, distribute it to politically acceptable groups or sell it in order to obtain foreign currency for the military budget , for example. In war zones, warring parties can appropriate the food.
It was also criticized that food aid is primarily a means for some donors such as the USA and EU countries to get rid of their own food surpluses cheaply. The aid primarily serves the donors, while little consideration is given to the needs and eating habits of the recipients. In 2002, African Zambia caused a stir when it refused US food aid made from genetically modified corn.
Attempts are made to counter the criticism by increasingly buying food aid locally and regionally. Newer, increasingly widespread methods of targeting are school meals - which, in addition to directly caring for children in need, are also intended to encourage school attendance - or food-for-work programs , which also serve to expand the infrastructure.
2004 put EuronAid the World Food Program (WFP), a pilot study using the example of Sudan ago, which showed that food aid ( "Local and regional procurement"; LRP) by then hardly long-term impact ignited and caused the WFP that this food aid scientifically examined thoroughly.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Walker and Boxall, 2004
- ↑ Wil Hout: EU development policy and poverty reduction: enhancing effectiveness. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., 2007, ISBN 978-0-7546-4895-6 , pp. 85-87.