Is US food aid actually helpful?

Lora Iannotti, a nutrition and public health researcher at the Washington University in St. Louis, [...], who has worked in Haiti for decades, says [there are persistent problems with U.S. food aid. "It's this facade of doing good," she says, while also serving a less altruistic goal: Putting cash into the pockets of U.S. farmers by buying their grain and shipping it abroad.

Organizations in Haiti had previously questioned the wisdom of shipping U.S.-grown food there. They said the country had limited capacity to store imported grain, and feared the imports would actually discourage local food production. They'd proposed using locally grown food instead, but this isn't allowed under the rules that govern U.S. food aid for "non-emergency" situations, such as in Haiti.

In addition, Iannotti says, the U.S. often sends commodities that American farmers want to sell, not foods that Haitians need most.

[...]

Those criticisms lie at the heart of a fresh debate on Capitol Hill over the rules governing America's international food aid programs, which spent roughly $6 billion last year. Congress is about to rewrite some of those rules, as it does every five years when renewing a law called the Farm Bill.

[...]

The U.S. Agency for International Development has begun buying food in foreign markets, close to where it is needed. It also distributes aid in the form of cash and vouchers, which people can use to buy food in local markets.

These "market-based" pathways can deliver food more quickly and often more cheaply. About 60% of U.S. international food aid is now handled this way. Yet "non-emergency" aid, such as in Haiti, still has to be delivered in the form of commodities that are grown by American farmers.

  NPR

Farmer welfare.

Much of it, by law, also has to be shipped on vessels that are registered in the U.S. and owned by U.S. companies. There's a limited supply of such ships, and a USAID official told Congress last year that this adds about 25% to the cost of shipping.

The Biden Administration, supported by some aid organizations, is now asking Congress to drop some of these restrictions on non-emergency aid.

American farm groups and shipping companies, however, are fighting back.

[...]

Dozens of groups, including the American Farm Bureau Federation and the National Association of Wheat Growers, are backing a new bill in Congress called the American Farmers Feed the World Act. The proposal would prevent Food for Peace from using any of its roughly $2 billion budget to buy food abroad or distribute cash and vouchers. The bill also would shift control of some parts of Food for Peace from USAID to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

[...]

In a statement to NPR, USAID said that these proposed provisions would "severely limit emergency programs" and reduce the agency's ability to make sure that aid actually reaches the most vulnerable. But in a nod to the political influence of U.S. farm groups, the agency also said that it intends to "keep U.S. commodities at the center of these programs."

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.