Food for the World

The United States could give more aid to more people for the same cost, if Congress would allow it.

THE UNITED States is, by far, the largest donor of food in the world. But the U.S. Agency for International Development might feed many more people if it didn't have to comply with several troublesome congressional mandates.

USAID must buy only American-grown foodstuffs and cover the cost of transporting them abroad. Even worse, three-quarters of food aid must be transported by American carriers. This arrangement is great for some domestic agricultural and shipping firms but is grossly inefficient for almost everyone else involved, including the American taxpayer. In a report released this month, the Government Accountability Office calculated that only about 35 percent of USAID's food-aid expenditures actually go to purchasing food. It also takes an average of four to six months for the food to travel from American farms to needy foreign communities. The process is far too cumbersome to respond rapidly to large-scale humanitarian emergencies.

To address these deficiencies, President Bush has proposed giving USAID the authority to disburse up to a quarter of its Food for Peace budget to buy staples from foreign producers close to food emergencies. Mr. Bush's proposal would allow USAID to respond more nimbly to famines and other disasters and enhance the program's efficiency. The agency has calculated that it could save tens of thousands of lives during crises if the measure passed. If in some instances local purchasing would not result in lives and money saved or might negatively distort certain foreign markets, USAID could simply choose not to exercise its authority to make purchases locally.

If this reform sounds like a no-brainer, it is. It's been embraced not just by the Bush administration but by former president Bill Clinton and liberal Democrats such as Massachusetts Rep. Barney Frank. Catholic Relief Services has endorsed the plan. Yet Congress has rejected it twice.

One way being studied on Capitol Hill to get around this opposition is to establish a pilot program to test the effectiveness of local food purchasing. Such a program might gauge the efficiency of local purchasing in times of emergency and for long-term food-aid programs in a range of regions and under different conditions. Also, critically, it is more likely to win congressional votes.

Mr. Bush's proposal is better. It is clear enough that the system's limited markets and slow procedures deeply undercut its mission of feeding the desperately hungry, a mission that Americans should support regardless of where the food comes from and who transports it. Still, it would be better for Congress to approve a pilot program than to do nothing.