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Food Aid: Good, Bad, or Indifferent?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

Christopher Stevens
Christopher Stevens
Affiliation:
Research Officer, Overseas Development Institute, London1
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Extract

Is food aid an effective means of assisting the needy, or a cynical response to inefficient agricultural policies in the rich countries? The second view is increasingly being heard, particularly in the main donor countries;2 yet the World Food Council, on which the developing countries are strongly represented, has called for even greater efforts so that at least 10 million tons of grain are available for food aid each year. This brief article outlines the scope and major conclusions of an O.D.I. research project that has studied the impact of food aid in four African countries in order to answer the question posed in the title.3

Type
Africana
Information
The Journal of Modern African Studies , Volume 16 , Issue 4 , December 1978 , pp. 671 - 678
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1978

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References

page 671 note 1 This study is substantially the same as that presented to a meeting of experts at the O.E.C.D. Development Centre on ‘Scope and Conditions for Improved Use of Food Aid for Development’, Paris, 03 1978.Google Scholar

page 671 note 2 See, for example, George, Susan, How the Other Half Dies (Harmondsworth, 1976),Google Scholar and Lappe, Francis Moore and Collins, Joseph, Food First (Boston, 1977).Google Scholar

page 671 note 3 See my forthcoming Food Aid and the Developing World: four African case studies (London, 1979).Google Scholar

page 671 note 4 See, for example, Schultz, T. W., ‘Value of US Farm Surplus to Underdeveloped Countries’, in Journal of Farm Economics (Lexington), XLII, 12 1960, pp. 1031–42;Google Scholar Jitendar S. Mann, ‘The Impact of Public Law 480 Imports on Prices and Domestic Supply of Cereals in India’, in ibid. 49, February 1967, pp. 131–46; Dudley, Leonard and Sandilands, Roger J., ‘The Side Effects of Foreign Aid: the case of Public Law 480 Wheat in Colombia’, in Economic Development and Cultural Change (Chicago), XXIII, 2, 01 1975, pp. 325–36;Google ScholarMatzke, Otto, ‘Searching for Security’, in Ceres (Rome), 39, 05–06 1974, pp. 40–3.Google Scholar A more favourable view of food aid is given in Isenman, Paul J. and Singer, H. W., ‘Food Aid: disincentive effects and their policy implications’, in Economic Development and Cultural Change, XXV, 2, 01 1977, pp. 205–38.Google Scholar

page 673 note 1 Other criticisms are that food aid provokes changes in consumer tastes away from locally available foods towards imported varieties, that it creates a dependent population (and a dependent government), and that it can harm health. These points are considered briefly in Stevens, Christopher, ‘Food Aid: more sinned against than sinning?’, in O.D.I. Review (London), II, 1977, pp. 71–85.Google Scholar

page 675 note 1 This possibility has been demonstrated in the case of Colombia by Dudley and Sandilands, loc. cit.