Growing Aid

President Obama pushes the G-8 to help poor nations help themselves.

FOOD PRICES have moderated considerably since a year ago, when a sudden spike in the cost of staples triggered riots from Haiti to Egypt. Yet food security in many poor countries remains precarious; the global economic crisis has pushed 100 million more people into extreme poverty, raising the number worldwide to 1 billion, according to the United Nations. President Obama was right to emphasize the issue at the recently concluded Group of 8 summit in L'Aquila, Italy. U.S. leadership produced a $20 billion, three-year food security commitment from the assembled leaders.

There have been pledges of aid before, not all of them kept. It's not clear how much of the $20 billion promised yesterday is new money and how much a repackaging of previous commitments. For its part, the Obama administration said that the United States would contribute $3.5 billion, of which half would represent new funds. Still, the program is potentially significant in that it would emphasize investment in poor countries' own agricultural production, rather than simply more gifts of grain from the developed world. The Green Revolution of the 1960s and '70s was a boon to the world's ability to feed itself. But years of abundant, cheap food induced complacency about rural development; governments and international aid agencies devoted their resources to other goals. Last year's price spike showed that that imbalance must be corrected, and the Obama administration has not forgotten the lesson.

Even if Congress fully funds the new program and every dollar is spent as intended, more must be done to help poor countries escape the cycle of hunger and aid dependency. The United States must foster markets by allowing relief agencies to spend U.S. aid money on food grown in poor regions abroad, not just in America. President George W. Bush recommended such a reform, only to be shot down by the farm lobby and its allies on Capitol Hill. And the developed world must open its markets to products from the developing world. The moribund Doha round of free-trade talks must be revived, as the G-8 leaders also promised this week. After all, the Doha round was inaugurated eight years ago as the "development round" precisely because its goal was to eliminate poverty through trade, not aid. That objective remains unfulfilled and no less urgent.