ASA strongly supports all U.S. food assistance programs. ASA firmly believes that American farmers play a significant role in alleviating world hunger, and that food aid should not be replaced by cash donations.

ASA supports USAID Title II funding at the current minimum of $1.2 billion, and opposes reductions in development food aid to offset shortfalls in emergency funding.

ASA also opposes shifting funds from U.S. food assistance to a disaster relief program, which would procure non-U.S. food or non-food items. Other USAID funds should be used to cover non-food emergency aid, such as water, shelter, and reconstruction.

WTO: Various members of the WTO are challenging the U.S. food assistance system. They claim that recipient countries would prefer direct cash to procure food locally rather than receive U.S. food. However, many of these countries already receive large amounts of cash assistance, which typically disappears into corrupt government officials’ pockets. Furthermore, the United States will never be able to appropriate enough funds that will allow for purchases of food needed to prevent starvation each year. The food assistance mechanism needs to be swift and transparent, and should not be subjected to a project-by-project approval at the WTO. If any additional monitoring disciplines are needed, those should be conducted through the bodies most familiar with food assistance, such as the Food Aid Convention, as opposed to the WTO staff in Geneva.

Food Aid Budget: The U.S. budget for food aid has been shrinking for last three years. In 2005, $650 million was diverted from development food aid funds to emergency funds, and has never been replenished. Emergency needs are increasing every years and yet no additional money is forthcoming. The President’s FY06 budget proposes to divert yet another $300 million away from Title II food assistance funding. The money will go into a newly created disaster relief fund which will procure LOCALLY, i.e. it will not purchase U.S. commodities, and there will be no mandate to spend any of it on food items. In the meantime, no replenishment is offered to Title II programs, In fact, the budget request will only provide funding for 1,700,000 metric tons of food aid versus the legal mandatory minimum of 2,500,000 metric tons. It seeks only $885,000,000 appropriations for PL 480 Title II, a $300,000,000 cut from the FY05 budget request.