Briefing Papers Number 15, February 2012 | Page 4

For decades, the United States has been the world’s leading provider of food aid to vulnerable and malnourished populations. Food aid provided through U.S. government programs combats the complex and intertwined problems of famine, food insecurity, and malnutrition. The United States and other donor countries have helped meet the need by delivering millions of tons of food aid over the years. But the number of chronically undernourished people—especially in vulnerable groups such as women and small children— remains unacceptably high. their own people. In some Asian countries, population growth strains efforts to feed everyone. Malnutrition persists even in areas where foods are available because people cannot afford to purchase them, particularly the variety of healthy foods people need for a diet with adequate micronutrients. Thus, high and volatile food prices coupled with increasingly extreme weather conditions and more frequent natural disasters mean that donors will need to increase the amount of food aid they provide. Meanwhile, new developments in food and nutrition science are fueling discussions at policy and program levels about how to improve the quality of food aid.8 Methods of accomplishing this include fortifying foods with additional vitamins and minerals, targeting specific food aid products to people and regions where they are most effective, and planning to distribute a wider range of the food aid products now available. Donors are already using better food aid products in pilot programs—where documented successes should mean that these nutrition interventions are quickly brought “to scale,” meaning that approaches that work should be used with larger groups of people in need. K. Burns/USAID Food Aid Must Improve to Meet Nutrition Challenges Ugandan food aid recipients have their forms checked before distribution. According to the World Food Program, in 2009—a year when more than 1 billion people, the highest number ever, were undernourished—emergency food aid funding fell by 12 percent and the total tonnage of food aid delivered was the lowest since 1961.7 Only a year earlier, global food prices had suddenly skyrocketed. Many poor people spend much of their entire income on food, so they are simply unable to feed themselves adequately when the prices of basic grains spike. Tens of millions of people fell into hunger as families were forced to skip one or more meals a day, while others still had food but ate a less nourishing and diverse diet. Natural disasters and extreme weather linked to climate change increase the likelihood of food shortages, worsening what is often already a chronic problem. Countries in the Horn of Africa face extended periods of hunger as successive years of drought mean near-total crop failure. In 2011, famine conditions in Somalia were both the result of longstanding civil conflict—many people were trapped in areas controlled by warring factions—and the cause of its escalation. Hundreds of thousands of severely malnourished people managed to reach Somalia’s borders and crowded into chaotic refugee camps in neighboring countries that were struggling to feed 4 Briefing Paper, February 2012 Food aid quality is important but only part of the overall picture of helping hungry and malnourished people. How food is transported and distributed, decisions made about eating and meals within communities or households, when and how best to provide treatment for moderately and severely malnourished children—not to mention the longer-term question of building food security to help end “chronic emergencies”—are some of the other important considerations that must be part of a more comprehensive response to nutrition challenges. Food aid is currently distributed according to the needs of an entire area where people are hungry. Yet no single food can meet the nutritional needs of all people and groups— particularly vulnerable populations such as malnourished children—and no one approach to targeting and distributing food will work in all circumstances. Studies show that a combination of different foods contributes more to overall nutrition than do a combination of nutrients in a single food aid product.9 Addressing the specific nutritional needs of all recipients through large-scale feeding programs is not possible. “General distribution” food aid, provided to meet the needs of an entire food deficit population, is generally a dry commodity of whole grains such as rice, corn, wheat, or sorghum because of the large quantities required. Food aid can be fortified with micronutrients at the production plant or in the field prior to distribution, but it is usually blended