Charity and Food Aid

With the recent picture of the horribly malnourished child being fed from a canister floating around the internet this seems like a good time to talk about charity and food aide.  These two topics at first blush would seem only slightly related, the more charitable the country the more likely they are to give, but the connection is much deeper.  The difference in charitable philosophy has shaped different philosophies on food aid, and the difference is having stark consequence on eradicating hunger.

Charity is split into two camps, government provided and private activity (whether a person or a business.)  Not too long ago, activist were chastising the US for not giving 1% of GDP in charitable donations.  This was only looking at the government contributions.  When looking at both private and government charitable donations; however, the US was by far the most chartable as a percent of GDP.  This is important because the end result is what matters, not the method by which it was given.

The example above of the split in viewpoint in the method of viewing charity is carried out in food aid philosophy.  Europe has a give cash and let the local government purchase the food from local producers and redistribute the food as appropriate.  This is fine in theory, it will lead to a greater local market which will spur greater production.  In application the process is different.  The root cause of hunger in third world countries isn't the ability to purchase food; it's the inability to produce the food.  The philosophy of let's throw money at the problem to create a larger market is essentially a soft form of racism (or at least superiority complex) as it suggests the lack of food is a lack of drive/desire on the part of the local inhabitants.

In reality, the problem is largely a soil issue.  Most first world countries have good soils and are capable of producing sufficient food for their populations.  Most third (or 4th or 5th) world countries do not have rich enough soils to produce sufficient food for their populations.  It has nothing to do with the drive or desire of the local population.  Simply throwing money at the problem doesn't remedy the underlying problem.  The US, on the other hand, gives actual food.  While this too doesn't remedy the underlying issues causing the hunger it does effectively do one thing - remedy the hunger.

Which brings me to ethanol.  The US gives both the plurality of food aid in terms of actual food aid and a majority of food in emergency food aid.  (This comes from data a few years old.)  Being environmentally conscious is important.  I live in a 1150 square foot home and only used 5100 kilowatt hours of electricity last year and drive a vehicle that gets 28ish mpg.  So, yeah, I'm in on conservation and efficient use of resources.  However, ethanol has a significant side effect of reducing the amount of food available to be used as food aid.  Be very cautious when supporting ethanol.  We have other ways to reduce our dependence of foreign oil, but we don't have other ways of having available food to send in crisis situations to starving countries.

Sources:

http://www.forbes.com/2008/12/24/america-philanthropy-income-oped-cx_ee_1226eaves.html