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Can the story on US food aid get any worse?

By William Easterly | Published October 16, 2010

Hundreds of thousands of malnourished children are receiving poor quality and even harmful food aid because of the slow introduction of more nutritious alternatives, a medical charity has warned.

The US is continuing to donate directly to relief agencies fortified flour mixes of corn and wheat with soya that do not meet international standards agreed in the 1960s…

…older corn-soy blend (CSB) pre-mixed foods donated by the US contained insufficient micronutrients, anti-nutrients that interfered with child absorption, no dairy proteins that were important for growth, and were bulky, limiting intake by young children with small stomachs.

see the full story in the FT.

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6 Comments

  1. Word_Bandit wrote:

    Horrible.

    Wish I could read the article.

    Thank you for posting.

    Posted October 16, 2010 at 5:10 pm | Permalink
  2. Word_Bandit wrote:

    I registered.

    This struck me:

    “A study conducted by MSF in Niger among almost 500 children showed that more than twice as many fed with CSB required hospital treatment than those using RUTF, totalling 19 per cent compared with 9 per cent respectively.”

    Posted October 16, 2010 at 5:15 pm | Permalink
  3. Brett Keller wrote:

    There are a lot of things right about this campaign, because there are a lot of things wrong with US food aid: too many in-kind donations that mess with economies, and it’s all driven by a US lobby rather than by actual needs. That said, I think MSF needs to do a better job in differentiating between what good food aid for acute malnutrition is (CSBs are bad there, as demonstrated by their studies) as opposed to chronic malnutrition. For the latter, CSBs may be helpful if they’re not the only source of food (ie, combining a corn/soy product with micronutrients – which is better than plain corn or plain soy – with other foods). That said, the CSBs should be locally produced. One example is Vitacereal, a CSB paid for by the World Food Programme but made in Guatemala, where it’s used.

    Posted October 16, 2010 at 7:35 pm | Permalink
  4. Paul Rigterink wrote:

    The Washington Post had a nice article today (Sunday, October 17) on “Brazilian scientists turning nation into an agro-power” (see http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/16/AR2010101604144.html ). I believe Brazil’s agro success could also be achieved in many poor countries without a huge investment of funds. Existing food aid programs need to study what is being accomplished in Brazil and borrow some of their ideas.

    Posted October 17, 2010 at 9:20 am | Permalink
  5. cat scratch fever wrote:

    thanks for sharing this great post, I enjoy reading it

    Posted October 19, 2010 at 6:26 am | Permalink
  6. Chris wrote:

    Hi Bill. I enjoy the blog, but find posts like this a bit frustrating. You highlight the most salacious quotes from a mediocre FT article and add no substantive commentary other than an inflammatory title. As mentioned in another comment above, the US food aid system certainly has major problems but the reality is more complex than you or FT seem to be willing to acknowledge. Is this because colorful criticism of aid is good for blog readership or do you just not spend the time it takes to learn a bit more about the topic?

    Posted October 20, 2010 at 9:18 am | Permalink

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    [...] Can the story on US food aid get any worse from Aid Watch posting Financial [...]