Number 15, February 2012
briefing paper
Improving Food Aid to Improve
Maternal and Child Nutrition
by Scott Bleggi
Bread for the World Institute provides policy
analysis on hunger and strategies to end it.
The Institute educates its network, opinion
leaders, policy makers and the public about
hunger in the United States and abroad.
www.bread.org
UN Photo/Kibae Park
Abstract
Key Points
• Reducing maternal and child malnutrition, especially in the critical 1,000
days between pregnancy and age 2, is a key priority of U.S. global food
security and health initiatives.
• Food aid is an essential tool in tackling malnutrition. As the world’s largest
provider of food aid, the United States can lead the way in improving its
quality to better target undernourished women and children.
• Setting the goal of improving maternal and child nutrition as a central
program objective would help align food aid investments with those being
made in Feed the Future and the Global Health Initiative.
• Lipid-based, fortified, and other nutrition-dense products, already
included in the food aid commodities list, should be more widely procured
and distributed. Successful pilot program nutrition interventions must
move quickly “to scale.”
• Strengthening mechanisms to solicit and promptly incorporate feedback
from implementing partners and to document and disseminate best
practices would improve the responsiveness of food aid programs to
nutritional needs on the ground.
Scott Bleggi is the senior international policy analyst for hunger and nutrition for Bread for
the World Institute.
The United States is the world’s largest
provider of food aid products—procured
by the U.S. Department of Agriculture
(USDA) and distributed by the U.S. Agency
for International Development (USAID)
through partner organizations overseas.
A growing body of scientific evidence
shows that early childhood nutrition
interventions, aimed at the critical “1,000
Days” window from pregnancy through
a child’s second birthday, are extremely
effective and cost-efficient ways to arrest
the lifelong effects of malnutrition. More
than 100 country governments and civil
society organizations have signed on to
the Scaling Up Nutrition Movement,
which supports efforts to expand effective
nutrition programs to undernourished
pregnant women and young children.
Reducing maternal and child malnutrition
is a key priority of the U.S. government’s
Feed the Future and Global Health
initiatives. There are opportunities to
reform food aid to better align it with the
objectives of these two programs. The U.S.
Government Accountability Office has
reported on inefficiencies in U.S. food aid
procurement and distribution, while Tufts
University has released an important study
of ways to improve the nutritional quality
of food aid. With debate on the next farm
bill beginning, now is the time to improve
this essential program.