University of Georgia
Nationally known economist Christopher Barrett will debunk myths
of foreign farm aid during this year’s J.W. Fanning Lecture. The
annual lecture will be Nov. 4 at 10:30 a.m. in the Georgia Center
for Continuing Education at the University of Georgia in Athens.
Barrett, professor of economics and management at Cornell
University and co-director of Cornell’s African Food Security and
Natural Resources Management Program, will deliver the annual
lecture in room K/L of the Georgia Center.
An expert in development economics, Barrett will discuss “Food
Aid, American Agriculture, the World Trade Organization and
International Development.” The lecture will be based partly on
Barrett’s coauthored book, “Food Aid After Fifty Years: Recasting
Its Role,” published earlier this year.
Food-aid myths
Barrett will address a number of myths about U.S. food aid. For
example, farm interests have long held that U.S. food aid
provides substantial benefits for U.S. farmers. However, in a
recent interview with The New York Times, Barrett argued that
various intermediaries enjoy most of the gains from U.S. food
aid, not American farmers. These intermediaries include large
U.S. grain merchandising and shipping firms.
His research established that several nonprofit aid organizations
depended on food aid for a quarter to half of their budgets.
While the organizations distribute food in poor countries, it’s
not well known that they have also become grain traders, selling
much of the donated food on local markets in poor countries to
generate tens of millions of dollars to aid their antipoverty
programs.
Barrett’s research established that at least 50 cents of each
dollar’s worth of food aid is spent on transport, storage and
administrative costs in the process of selling food to raise
money for foreign aid.
Inefficient
He calls this an extremely inefficient way to finance long-term
development. It would be more efficient, he says, to simply give
the money directly to nonprofit groups.
In some poor countries, Barrett believes the hunger problem may
not be the lack of food, but the fact that the people are so
desperately poor that they can’t buy the food that’s available.
In a PBS interview, he said much aid has been given to poor
countries, but some of it has been channeled toward debt relief,
emergency assistance and other things that don’t effectively
address the issues of improving the productivity, health and
education of the countries’ populations.
As a result, people in these countries remain unproductive and
desperately poor. “We absolutely must do something now,” Barrett
said.
“It’s the humanitarian imperative,” he said. “But we also need to
anticipate that this problem will recur if we fail to address the
underlying structural causes, if we don’t improve agricultural
productivity and … the marketing infrastructure so people can
earn a living.”
For more information on the Fanning lecture, call (706) 542-2481.
