POLICY FOCUS
Stephen Padre/Bread for the World
Two Steps Forward
Food-Aid Reform Begins,
but More Work Needed
Reforms to food aid could mean the U.S. government has the flexibility
to purchase more food from local farmers like this one in South Africa.
This year’s Offering of Letters campaign brings Bread
members on a journey of urging Congress to make reforms
to our federal government’s programs that provide food aid
overseas. The good news is that we have already taken two
steps down the road in the right direction.
Two major pieces of legislation that have recently been
signed into law—the long-awaited farm bill and the bipartisan budget agreement—each contained parts that affect the
government’s international food-aid programs. These new
laws put into place modest but significant changes that mean
800,000 more people could have access to U.S. food aid each
year. There is more work to do, however.
Bread’s advocacy around the farm bill last year focused
heavily on protecting SNAP (formerly food stamps), but
Bread also led a coalition to support what the Senate included in its version و H