Foreign Aid
Phoebe Kuo writes:
Foreign aid doesn’t get a lot of media fanfare. Food distribution is slow and journalists don’t get too many juicy stories from it. And yet, a good number of Americans don’t support it, especially when there are other programs they would rather see enacted and supported closer to home. Americans tend to think that we give out a lot of aid abroad, and they have good reason to. We are able to do an enormous amount of good for the world’s citizens; luckily, that doesn’t cost as much as one would think. The US agency for international development (USAID) published a small infographic to clear up this misconception. Still, a 2011 Bloomberg poll showed that 7 out of 10 respondents supported cutting foreign aid.
Bearing this in mind, it is pretty easy to see where some of the political battlegrounds lie. Elected officials are unlikely to support further aid programs in the budget for fear of backlash at home. In addition with the sequester poised to hit all agencies with cuts across the board, few congressmen are thinking about the fate of farmers in Cambodia. Add to that, the fact that Obama’s administration has steadily increased the number of agriculture and food security programs around the globe. Of the 387 ongoing programs, 289 were started since the President’s 2008 inauguration. It would seem as though foreign aid may be in danger.
But even with the overwhelmingly negative view from the public and political pressure to cut foreign aid spending, USAID and other agencies are still able to continue operations and even expand some of them. What this means is, people contest the idea of foreign aid, but not the specific programs and policies. Thus, USAID enjoys a certain degree of autonomy in deciding where to give foreign aid, how much ought to be spent, and the specifics of each of its campaigns abroad.
This autonomy is incredibly important in maintaining another foreign policy tool for the US government. A 2011 article argued that foreign aid programs were “crucial investments” in national security and future interests. Thus, the important question to consider is how to make these programs more efficient and more sustainable. If USAID is about to enter a few rounds of budget cuts, they may need to take note of how their programs will play out in the long run. To make programs more sustainable, we need to structure existing programs to help local populations deal with future crises.
Three years ago, PBS came out with a report on the effects of the influx of foreign food aid to Haiti following the 2010 earthquake. And the results were a little disheartening. Far from helping to rebuild a disaster struck Haiti, the necessary food assistance came with long-term structural changes in the Haitian economy. Local production of rice, a large staple food, went down. The rice market was completely disrupted: with so much cheap and/or free rice coming in, there were no incentives to set up lines of production to sell either local or imported rice. The decreased demand even had an effect on rebuilding the main ports.
However, Haiti’s problems are not just a result of the post-earthquake food aid. This specific case already highlights potential competing variables that can be shown in the trends in the local rice market prior to 2010. Even before the earthquake, local production and supply of rice was going down and being replaced with imported rice.
Most likely, these trends could be explained by the difference in the price of rice in Haiti and in the US. Perhaps it just made more economic sense to import rather than produce and the Haitian farmers were simply outcompeted. Whatever the case, the foreign aid that did come in post-2010 did not help local agriculture. I am hoping to study and research the potential effects of foreign food aid on local economies. Specifically, does open ended food aid crowd out local development of agriculture? Or are there other factors that stunt agricultural sustainability and development?
Phoebe,
I agree. Once you start digging into the statistics about aid, it is certainly more than a little disheartening. Also, foreign aid has fallen on and off the radar of news reporting, but Deborah Sontag for the New York Times has done a great job of chronicling the progress of aid distribution and development in Haiti over the years. This most recent piece that she did (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/24/world/americas/in-aiding-quake-battered-haiti-lofty-hopes-and-hard-truths.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0)also links to a great graphic, serving as a visual aid as to where the money is actually being spent (http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/12/24/world/americas/haitigraphic.html?ref=americas). From what we discussed in our Global Health and Diplomacy class, it is widely debated whether or not the world is doing aid “right”. We have seen over the course of the past couple of years, a realignment as to how money is being spent — many people arguing, for example, if we invest in women and girls in particular (due to their under-representation and lack of equal opportunities) this in turn will cut costs in other areas, as this will bolster health, education, and the workforce in many countries. It is estimated that when 10% more women go to school in a country, the country’s GDP increases by 3% annually. That is a tremendous amount! In the example of Haiti, we see that most of the money is going to things that aid donors had been giving before the earthquake, such as building roads and HIV prevention. When actually, what the country needs is a greater effort in building up safe housing and giving attention to the youth and women of the country to create some sort of stability. On the other hand, as you have argued in regards to food aid, sometimes too much aid can have the opposite effect. It is very difficult to find a middle-ground. I am really interested in reading your paper and seeing where this idea takes you as you finish up your final draft!