An opinion piece in the Guardian Weekly argues that it’s time Western donors regard food and nutrition as equally important elements to fighting AIDS and other illnesses as the drugs themselves.  

Some excerpts below, the full piece is here.

I wish that all the Aids experts and politicians who gathered in Mexico City last week could have been with me two years ago when I met a young man in a nameless, dusty village in Malawi. It was easily the most memorable encounter of my life – royalty, heads of state, and celebrities included. The man was in his mid-30s and badly emaciated. His eyes were pink at the edges and I remember thinking they were somehow on fire with rage.

But there was really no anger in him – just exhaustion, anguish, confusion. After gently pushing ahead of the others in the crowd, he asked: “Why are you keeping me alive? Why give me these Aids medicines? I am too hungry and weak to work and care for my family. Why torture me this way?”

Tens of billions of dollars have been pledged to combat the disease, yet donor countries have largely overlooked the role of nutrition, somehow managing to ignore both the scientists and the beneficiaries. The donors have been asked for help often enough and there are UN and NGO projects out there to fund, but they are not getting the cash they need to provide good, nutritious food to increasingly desperate people like the man I met in Malawi.

As food prices soar worldwide, poor families are already substituting less nutritious foods for higher-priced meat, fish, eggs and vegetables. For people who are already sick this can have drastic health consequences. The poorest families are being forced to choose between food and medicine for loved ones.

If we do not do a better job of helping poor HIV-affected families today, what chance will the next generation have for health and prosperity? It is time to change the way we help. Drugs alone are not a solution for Aids or TB. What doctor would admit patients to a hospital, give them the most advanced medications – and then leave them to starve

The United States has recently given $91 million in emergency food funds and $21 million in humanitarian aid to Ethiopia, one of the countries hardest hit by the food crisis.

From AllAfrica.com:

According to press statement from the US embassy in Addis Ababa , the donation was in response to Ethiopian government’s revised June 2008 Humanitarian Requirement Report.

This new donation coupled with last month’s announcement of $80 million in emergency assistance brings the total US assistance in response to the drought to [nearly] $200.

“The donations have come in response to continuing humanitarian needs in Ethiopia, where poor end erratic rainfall distribution, high food prices, ongoing conflict, arid limited humanitarian access have negatively impacted food, water, and pasture availability, resulting in increased malnutrition rates, food and water shortage, and heavy loss of livestock,” the statement said.

A majority of the funds will be divided between non-governmental organizations already performing on-the-ground relief work, such as UNICEF and the International Rescue Committee. Through their work, the funds are expected to help over 1 million people, including over 50,000 malnourished children.

-Betsy Avila

The L.A. Times ran an op-ed yesterday suggesting the U.S. use the world food crisis as an opportunity to reshape U.S. agricultural policy, foreign aid programs and image abroad.

Some excerpts:

“In 1948, a first lieutenant in the Air Force named Gail Halvorsen began dropping candy bars attached to tiny handkerchief parachutes to the hungry children of Berlin. Many had never tasted chocolate before. The kindness of the “Candy Bomber” came to symbolize the spirit of American humanitarianism…

The global food crisis offers the United States a fresh opportunity to show the world its humanitarian mettle. In 2007, with prices soaring, the volume of food donated by rich countries to hungry ones actually shrank 15% to the lowest levels in nearly five decades, according to the United Nations….

So the U.S. will be asked to do more — and it should. The question is whether it can turn this crisis into an opportunity to remake the agricultural and aid policies that have racked up a 50-year record of expensive failure…

The big thinkers in both presidential campaigns should be mapping out more thoughtful responses to the global food challenge. That means crafting plans both to help the hungry and to improve perceptions of the United States in strategic and suffering areas.”

Read the full piece here.

The World Bank will offer $1.2 Billion UDS in food aid, setting aside grants for the countries most at risk.

From BBC News.

“It is crucial that we focus on specific action,” said World Bank president Robert Zoellick.

“These initiatives will help address the immediate danger of hunger and malnutrition for the two billion people struggling to survive in the face of rising food prices.”>

Countries will be able to access money to provide food for schools and other core services as well as to buy essential items such as seeds and fertilizer.

UPDATE: See the WorldBank’s press release here.

The U.S. Government Accountability Office will release a report today saying that the United States’ and multilateral agencies efforts to reduce hunger in sub-Saharan Africa have been “insufficient.” The report comes one week before a special United Nation’s summit in Rome on the global food crisis.

From today’s Washington Post:

“To see that chronic hunger in Africa is getting worse despite our actions shows that the international community must retool its strategy to combat it,” said Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.), chairman of the subcommittee on African affairs, who led the request for the report. “Rather than simply sending more food aid to Africa, the U.S. and the international community need to address the factors that contribute to food insecurity.”

A spokeswoman for USAID said the agency was aware of the report but said it would decline comment until its official release this morning. The report comes on the heels of another released by the GAO last year sharply criticizing U.S. food aid programs. That report called them “inherently inefficient” because they rely on the sale of American-grown food that is costly to transport overseas, as opposed to food purchased closer to the troubled regions themselves.

-Virginia Simmons

Last week, we reported on the continuing calls to alter food aid policy so that 1/4 of the food could be purchased local to its distribution location (rather than shipping it all from the U.S.) Today, Reuters reports on a tide-changing shift toward that change.

Some excerpts:

President George W. Bush, taking a harder line in recent weeks, appears closer to victory in persuading Congress to accept a proposal to use some U.S. food-aid funds to buy crops overseas in the end game of a long-delayed agriculture law.

Giving poor countries the authority to buy food aid locally “seems like it’s becoming a requirement to get this farm bill passed,” said Rebecca Bratter, who follows trade at U.S. Wheat Associates, an industry group….

Although no final decisions have been made, according to one congressional aide, lawmakers are more likely than ever to set aside sharp agribusiness opposition and vote to allow up to a quarter of the largest food-aid program, run by the U.S. Agency for International Development, to buy crops overseas.

-Virginia Simmons

1970 Nobel Peace Prize winner Norman Borlaug and Georgetown professor and former USAID administrator Andrew Natsios join the chorus advocating for U.S. food aid reform in this joint Wall Street Journal op-ed.

Specifically they state: “Congress should amend the Farm Bill to allow up to 25% of the appropriation for USAID’s food-aid program to be used to purchase food locally” instead of insisting, as the bill currently does, that the U.S. only purchase and ship U.S.-grown food.

A couple more excerpts:

The U.S. government currently buys grain and other foodstuffs from American farmers for free distribution in poor countries…

Ocean shipping costs are 20%-30% of the food-aid budget; and it takes on average over four months to order, buy, ship, offload and transport food by ground. In a famine, people can die waiting for the food to arrive.

Other problems arise. One food shipment sunk in a storm off the coast of Asia in 1996. In 2006, two food shipments were hijacked by pirates off the coast of Somalia. Hurricane Katrina nearly shut down much of the foreign food-aid delivery system in the Mississippi Delta…

Seventy-five percent of USAID food aid goes to Africa, the most food-deprived region of the world. More robust agricultural growth there will help in a period of rising food prices. More prosperous African nations will become better trading partners, expanding imports of U.S. agricultural commodities, machinery and technology. Any near-term losses will lead to longer-term gains for the American economy.

Read the full article here.

Last week the World Food Program held talks to discuss how to ration critical international food aid, this week, the USAID is doing the same.

The soaring price of basic foods – like wheat, corn, rice and other cereals – over the past half year is creating a funding deficit likely to reach $200 million by the end of 2009. USAID currently provides food to almost 40 countries and areas – including Ethiopia, Iraq, Somalia, Honduras and Sudan’s Darfur region. Now the agency must decide how and where to scale back.

From this weekend’s Washington Post:

“USAID officials said the administration, facing a tight budget year, was not planning to request funds to cover the projected $200 million shortfall from the price increases. USAID purchases grains in the same domestic commodities market as the U.S. companies that serve up Wonder bread or Big Macs, meaning they pay the same high market rates. As a result, officials said, the program cuts are necessary. “At this point, this is the administration’s request,” Borns said yesterday…

Frank Orzechowski, an adviser for Catholic Relief Services, said his organization has calculated that U.S. food aid would drop from 2.6 million tons last year to about 2.2 million this year. “That is going to be a pretty big hit for the people who can afford it the least,” he said.

“The biggest concern is that there are going to be more people being pushed into food insecurity in poor countries because they don’t have the purchasing power to cover higher costs, and we will be less rather than more prepared to cope with that. Higher commodity prices is not a situation that the U.S. is to blame for, but we are going to need to see it step up now and decide to make a greater contribution anyway.”

The full article here.

-Virginia Simmons

The World Food Program is holding talks to create rationing plans if the costs of agricultural commodities (like wheat, corn, rice and soybeans) keeps rising at their current rate.

From today’s FT piece:

Josette Sheeran, WFP executive director, told the Financial Times that the agency would look at “cutting the food rations or even the number or people reached” if donors did not provide more money.

“Our ability to reach people is going down just as the needs go up,” she said.

WFP officials hope the cuts can be avoided, but warned that the agency’s budget requirements were rising by several million dollars a week because of climbing food prices.

Read the full piece here

-Virginia Simmons

A relevant excerpt about food aid, AIDS, malaria and education below:

Feeding the hungry has long been a special calling for my nation. Today, more than half the world’s food assistance comes from America. We send emergency food stocks to starving people from camps in Sudan to slums in — around the world. I’ve proposed an innovative initiative to alleviate hunger under which America would purchase the crops of local farmers in Africa and elsewhere, rather than shipping in food from the developed world. This would help build up local agriculture and break the cycle of famine in the developing world — and I urge our United States Congress to support this initiative.

Many in this hall are bringing the spirit of generosity to fighting HIV/AIDS and malaria. Five years ago, in Sub-Saharan Africa, an AIDS diagnosis was widely considered a death sentence, and fewer than 50,000 people infected with the virus were receiving treatment. The world responded by creating the Global Fund, which is working with governments and the private sector to fight the disease around the world. The United States decided to take these steps a little further by launching the $15 billion Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief. Since 2003, this effort has helped bring cutting-edge medicines to more than a million people in sub-Sahara Africa. It’s a good start. So earlier this year, I proposed to double our initial commitment to $30 billion. By coming together, the world can turn the tide against HIV/AIDS — once and for all.

Malaria is another common killer. In some countries, malaria takes as many lives as HIV/AIDS — the vast majority of them children under the age of five years old. Every one of these deaths is unnecessary, because the disease is preventable and treatable. The world knows what it takes to stop malaria — bed nets and indoor spraying and medicine to treat the disease. Two years ago, America launched a $1.2 billion malaria initiative. Other nations and the private sector are making vital contributions, as well. I call on every member state to maintain its focus, find new ways to join this cause, and bring us closer to the day when malaria deaths are no more.

Third, the mission of the United Nations requires liberating people from the chains of illiteracy and ignorance. Article 26 of the Universal Declaration states: “Everyone has the right to education.” And when nations make the investments needed to educate their people, the whole world benefits. Better education unleashes the talent and potential of its citizens, and adds to the prosperity of all of us. Better education promotes better health and greater independence. Better education increases the strength of democracy, and weakens the appeal of violent ideologies. So the United States is joining with nations around the world to help them provide a better education for their people.

A good education starts with good teachers. In partnership with other nations, America has helped train more than 600,000 teachers and administrators. A good education requires good textbooks. So in partnership with other nations, America has distributed tens of millions of textbooks. A good education requires access to good schools. So in partnership with other nations, America is helping nations raise standards in their schools at home, and providing scholarships to help students come to schools in the United States. In all our education efforts, our nation is working to expand access for women and girls, so that the opportunity to get a decent education is open to all.”

Full address here.