Author: Steve Hansch

Djibouti’s Child Hunger

August 15, 2026    Djibouti:  the latest UN food insecurity estimates that more than 256,000 people, 25% of the population, in Crisis or worse during July–December, up from 166,000, or 16%, in May–June.  About 30,000 people are now projected in Emergency.  Rural Tadjourah and Obock have deteriorated to Phase 4, while nearly 70% of refugees in Ali Addeh and Holl-Holl camps, more than 21,000 people food crisis. Import-price shocks, weak purchasing power and El Niño effects are the main drivers.  The IGAD Climate Prediction Centre forecast that the June–September 2026 season would bring below-normal rainfall across most of the Greater Horn of Africa, including Djibouti, with a high probability of warmer-than-average temperatures

 In the Ali Addeh and Holl-Holl refugee camps, close to 70% of the refugee population (21,000+ people) are classified by the UN IPC as Crisis or worse.  this  small but chronically vulnerable refugee caseload (largely Somali and Ethiopian/Oromo origin, some Yemeni), who typically sit outside normal market and livelihood systems and are first to show acute deterioration when pipelines tighten.

Food inflation stood at 4.60% year-on-year, and the Consumer Price Index reached an all-time high of 106.90.

The UN has flagged that disruptions to regional trade flows and geopolitical tensions around the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait are affecting import costs and supply chains.  The port of Djibouti remains the principal transit point for Ethiopian cargo and a key link for the Black Sea Grain Initiative. The Djibouti Red Crescent Society, operating with only 37 staff, five branches, and roughly 1,000 volunteers, has delivered assistance to 45,000 people through Disaster Relief Emergency Fund allocations, but had to suspend mobile humanitarian service points for migrants due to lack of resources.

Three drivers of risk:

*  Climate hazards:  an emerging El Niño signal bringing irregular rains, elevated temperatures, and drying water points, which is squeezing the last available pasture for pastoral herds and cutting into both crop and livestock production. For a country where pastoralism is a core livelihood strategy in the interior (Dikhil, Ali Sabieh, Tadjourah, Obock — the same zones ACAPS and earlier droughts have flagged), this is the classic pathway from climate shock to acute food insecurity.

*  High food prices via import disruption — Djibouti imports up to 90% of food needs, so it’s structurally exposed to any friction in Red Sea/Bab-el-Mandeb shipping. The analysis flags regional trade disruption and geopolitical tension around the Strait specifically — plausibly tied to the broader Red Sea shipping disruptions and Middle East-adjacent instability that have been running since late 2023, though the report as summarized doesn’t itemize a single incident.

* Economic/inflation shocks — compounding price pressure on already-thin purchasing power among rural and peri-urban poor households, which is also slowing broader economic growth.

The current scope of food assistance is insufficient relative to need,  meaning a large share of even those already receiving aid are still running consumption deficits.  the regions implicated (Ali Sabieh, Arta, Dikhil, Obock, Tadjourah) are the same drought-affected pastoral zones that have been chronically stressed since the multi-season drought that began around 2020–2021, so this reads less like a new shock and more like an existing vulnerability being pushed over a threshold by El Niño plus price/logistics stress.

The World Meterological association has been assisting with preparedness for rainfall and flood risks:  https://wmo.int/media/project-update/from-forecasts-early-action-strengthening-community-preparedness-djibouti

Photo: Fishercd / Wikimedia Commons

–  Contributed by Hunger Notes Editor, Steven Hansch

 

Book Review: “Food Fight” by Stuart Gillespie

August 14, 2026     Writing about “From Plunder and Profit to People and Planet”, Stuart Gillespie’s 2025 book, “Food Fight’ argues for a new, common vision of human and planetary health in which power over food systems is better balanced, building on a tradition, he cites, from Susan George’s How the Other Half Dies.”

Gillespie argues that the modern food system, as shaped after World War II to mass-produce cheap calories and avert famine (with geopolitical aims), has become a major driver of harm.

His main criticism is aimed at the concentration of food companies on a global scale:  “Five companies – ADM, Bunge, Cargill, Cofco and Louis Dreyfus – control 70-90% of the global grain trade… Never before have we seen such a hyper-concentration of power at all points from farm to fork… Another four companies – ChemChina, Corteva, Bayer and BASF – control 66% of the world’s agricultural chemicals market, while a similar cluster… owns 53% of the global seed market.”   Gillespie details corporate political tactics (analogous to those historically used by the tobacco industry) and policy inertia, while highlighting citizen movements, local successes (e.g., city-level strategies), and practical levers for change such as public procurement, taxes with revenue recycling, marketing restrictions, conflict-of-interest rules, and broader mobilization.  The book mixes exposé with a call for structural transformation toward a system that prioritizes people and planet.  He concludes:  “The large-scale damage done to people and planet is a feature of our food system, not a bug.”

He particularly criticizes global trends in the consumption of ultra-processed foods.

“Governments need to act because malnutrition represents what economists call a market failure, a negative externality – and what the rest of us call an injustice.”    He adds that “malnutrition is multi-causal in nature,” requiring a whole of government response, and “Economic growth won’t fix it.  nor will technology.”

He criticizes nutritionists who promote national food fortification schemes or other efforts to provide vitamin and mineral supplements for involving the private sector (corporations).  Yet he explains the importance of micronutrients:  “micronutrient malnutrition also travels through generations.  A lack of essential vitamins and minerals can be devestating for a pregnant woman and her unborn child.  The micronutrient-deficient mother is more likely to have complications in pregnancy and more likely to die giving birth.  Iron-deficiency anemia causes one in four maternal deaths around the world.”

Some of his history is confusing, such as when he writes about the Bay of Bengal famine “starting” in 1943, when the conditions leading to it began in 1942, and he refers to the United Nations in the same breath, though the U.N. was not founded until 1945.  Yet, he is critical of the donors and aid agencies helping, referring to “white saviourism.”

He correctly critiques an obsession in the 1950s and 1960 with a “protein gamp” and notes how in 1974, Donald McLaren “blew the protein obsession out of the water.”

His recommendations span all of society to take more responsibility and he addresses NGOs like Save the Children, and repeatedly UNICEF.  He seeks a revolution in the governance of for-profit corporations.  Though citing examples in a few countries, his book is generic, about the world.  Though a preponderance of his interviews, analyses and criticisms are targeted to one country, the United Kingdom.

He recommends four “Ins” incentives, institutions, information and interests.  He recommends the use of taxes and subsidies to reshape the food environment.  Governments should tax products and practices that damage health or the environment, especially ultra-processed foods and sugary drinks, and earmark the proceeds to make nutritious foods more affordable for low-income households.

–  Contributed by WHES board member, Steven Hansch

Specialty Foods for Malnourished Children (Plumpy’Nut and RUTF)

August 2, 2026        At the 2025 roundtable about America’s  comparative advantages for solving hunger, food insecurity and nutrition overseas, organized by World Hunger Education Service with other sponsors,  participants agreed that America should keep providing quantities of “Ready to Use Therapeutic Foods” (RUTFs) as a magic bullet for fighting hunger.

Indeed, aid agencies, foundations and the U.S. Government have provided more and more of this peanut-based, fortified paste around the world in programs of “targeted feeding” that enroll children suffering from wasting (“acute”) malnutrition, which is life-threatening.   Wasting malnutrition is one of the top three main causes of deaths in famines, refugee flight, and complex emergencies.

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND:    Over the last half century, NGOs, governments, and INCAP in Central America have experimented with novel new approaches toward developing foods that best save the lives of severely malnourished children and ensure their recovery.  For most of that time period, the standard food for supplementary feeding for undernourished children has been porridge, frequently corn or wheat-based porridge, supplemented with vegetable oil and sugar. The USG. report, Beyond Child Survival, cataloged other earlier initiatives such as Fafa in Ethiopia and Likuni Phala in Malawi, which were effective at treating malnourished children.

A major step forward came in 1996, when Michel Lescanne of Nutriset and French pediatric nutritionist André Briend came up with a new formulation called “Plumpy’Nut” that closely matched the WHO-recommended formula, “F-100” for inpatient (hospital) treatment of malnourished children.  For children with shrunken stomachs and limited appetite, it optimized the child’s chance to survive and recover from malnutrition.

Plumpy’Nut, produced in France by Lescanne’s production organization, Nutriset, was designed to have a long shelf life, to be appetizing for even malnourished children with reduced appetite, to taste good, and to have the right balance of fats, vitamins and minerals that a malnourished child should have.  The idea was to create a food that could be handed to a family once a month, with sachets that a small child could open and eat each day.

Plumpy’Nut became the first in a line of products collectively referred to as “ready-to-use therapeutic foods”, which share similar nutrient compositions and are now used at large scale by groups like UNICEF, MSF, Concern, Action Against Hunger, and Save the Children.

In the last two and a half decades these RUTFs have become a core part of a new model for reaching children with malnutrition, known today as “Community Management of Acute Malnutrition,” or “CMAM.”  This model does not require family members to take time to bring young, malnourished children to a central feeding center, which had been the previous main model.  Children are still observed, measured and given medical attention, but monthly, not daily, and via an outpatient, or mobile community model.

NGOs give families supplies of these 92-gram sachets at a community clinic, mobile van or displacement site. The child eats the paste directly, without cooking, clean water, refrigeration, or admission to a hospital.  A standard sachet supplies approximately 500 kilocalories and comprises:  Peanut paste, Skimmed-milk powder or other dairy ingredients, Vegetable oil, Sugar, and vitamins and minerals from a commercial premix powder.

CONSCIOUSNESS

There’s something about RUTF and Plumpy’Nut that resonates with people and encourages them to donate.  Plumpy’Nut has proven to be popular among the public, media and donors.  World Vision uses Plumpy’Nut to focus attention and drive private fundraising.  A CBS 60 Minutes episode about the use of Plumpy’Nut in Niger, West Africa was reportedly the most popular episode in the decades-long history of that television show.

SCALE AND COVERAGE

While UNICEF promotes supplies of RUTF across lower-and middle-income countries (LMICs), it is too expensive for poor households to purchase and does not reach most of the children who need it.  Most RUTF has been used in emergencies, where international NGOs tend to be more present, and where malnutrition is often more concentrated.  Despite the increased scaling of RUTF, in most years 80% of malnourished children don’t get any.

In the last few years, governments have been increasingly supportive of RUTF, increasing donations to UNICEF and NGOs to several hundred million dollars worth.  The Eleanor Crook Foundation has sought to engage private foundations and companies to donate.  RUTF is on the approved commodity list of foods that NGOs can request from Food for Peace at USDA.

PRODUCTION

In the early 2000s, there was essentially one qualified international source of RUTF, i.e. Nutriset in France.  Nutriset and donors have encouraged other factories to start up.

By 2025, UNICEF reported more than 20 suppliers across Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas. Roughly half of UNICEF-procured RUTF is estimated to be from suppliers in low- and lower-middle-income countries such as Ethiopia Burkina Faso, Kenya, Madagascar, Niger, India, Haiti, Sudan.

In the United States, there are three certified producers: Edesia in Rhode Island, recently profiled by Hunger Notes; MANA Nutrition, based in Georgia, and  Tabatchnick, in New Jersey.  Between 2022-2024, Edesia shipped over 6 million cases (or 900 million sachets) of RUTF, while MANA shipped 300 million packets.

COSTS

Costs of producing RUTF had been steadily declining from the 2000s to 2020, as seen in the graph at right.  However, the cost of food ingredients, such as dairy milk, has increased in recent years, forcing up the cost of producing RUTF.

Production in LMICs has been limited by the high costs of quality control, ensuring none of the food is contaminated, and the import costs of key ingredients.  The costs of production locally often tend to exceed the costs of importing from France, the U.S., Norway, India, or South Africa.

UNICEF is the world’s largest buyer of RUTF, at around 49,000 metric tons each year, deploying cartons to some 3.5 million children.  A graph of estimated annual production of RUTF appears at right.

ALTERNATIVES

As noted in the recent Hunger Notes article about Tufts University’s Food Aid Quality Review, controlled studies of field effectiveness and efficiency suggest that more children could be reached, and lives saved, with other formulations and foods, taking into account the cost.  For example, Tufts noted that Corn Soy Blend Plus was more efficient in the recovery of wasted children.

NGOs are partnering with researchers in finding new solutions.  Edesia Nutrition is working with Action Against Hunger in  “Novel RUTF” development, such as alternative protein sources (e.g., plant-based soy/maize to replace or reduce expensive milk powder) for lower cost, local producibility, climate resilience, and acceptability while meeting nutritional specifications.  They are pursuing microbiome-directed enhancements (e.g., via partnerships with OpenBiome, a U.S. nonprofit microbiome research organization) to incorporate beneficial microbial communities or prebiotics into RUTF-like products.

Ongoing field research is testing the scalability, bio-utilization, and overall benefits of RUTF variants.  One experimental form is MDCF-2, a microbiota-directed food based on chickpeas, soy, and green banana, recently noted in the New England Journal of Medicine.  This MDCF-2 represents a new line of thinking, with fewer calories as it reframes “recovery” to include the microbiome, the plasma proteome, address environmental enteric dysfunction, and durability — not just weight-for-height.

The dairy ingredients in/of RUTF are expensive.  Alternatives that do not use milk replace it with crystalline amino-acid fortification, with alternative bases such as oats or fish.   A recent fish-based paste (NumTrey, Cambodia) matched weight gain among children, when compared with standard RUTF, but suffered intra-household sharing/acceptability problems (other children ate it).

Many locally-produced variants increase the density of the least-expensive inputs.  Mark Moore of MANA wrote, “Most of the newer, lower-cost formulas achieve savings by increasing the cheapest ingredients. Sugar and oil are incredibly cheap most everywhere.”  But, he continues, “If this were my child who was severely malnourished, would I rather have a product built primarily around sugar and oil because it is cheaper, or would I rather have the original formulation with 35-40% peanuts and other more nutrient-dense ingredients?”

The Mark Manary Lab has promoted a new formulation that adds pre-formed DHA (omega 3) needed for brain development.  Using more omega-3 fatty acids and less omega-6 fatty acids adds 6-15 IQ points to every child treated.  Trials in Malawi suggest it led to superior cognitive, brain outcomes 6 months post treatment, compared to standard RUTF.  An MFGM-enhanced variant adds milk fat globule membrane to support brain development.  Separately, a rice-bran-enriched RUTF (SEHAT) was tested in Indonesia and showed increased weight gain among children.

Other advances include the use of additional inputs, as child recovery may be limited due to bacterial infection and gut inflammation, not just nutrients.  An oral antibiotic has been seen to reduce the death rate of children from 7% to 3.5%  So, amoxicillin (antibiotic) provision improved recovery and cut mortality.  An azithromycin trial  in Niger hinted at mortality benefit in underweight children, tempered by antimicrobial-resistance concerns.

–  Contributed by WHES board member, Steven Hansch

 

U.S. Food Aid (Part 10): To Monetize or Not to Monetize? A Review of Food Aid Monetization

July 30, 2026    by Mara Russell      Title II monetization has been highly controversial throughout its existence. Going back to the beginning of Public Law 480 in 1956, food aid was provided through a government-to-government program known as Title I in which recipient governments received large concessional loans of food aid, which were subsequently sold locally, to provide funding for government initiatives and inputs to local food industries.

In its recent Request for Information, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) asked for advice about the monetization of food aid, i.e. when donated bulk food aid is sold after being transported to a target country, typically sold at wholesale markets.

The early Title I program has not been funded formally for many years, but using the Food for Progress program, USDA sometimes provides government-to-government grants consisting of food aid which is subsequently monetized. In FY2013, the Government of Mauritania received commodities worth $5.16 million, in FY 2014, the Government of Guatemala monetized commodities worth $30.5 million, in FY2017 the Government of Jordon monetized commodities worth $18.7 million, and in FY2021, the Government of Sudan received 300,000 metric tons (MT) of Hard Red Winter Wheat worth $120 million. Venezuela is also listed as having received $12,674,433 in FY 2019 as a “Provisional award contingent upon initiation of a democratic transition in Venezuela”. However, until its elimination last year, Title II food aid programs were always led by USAID. Now Title II programs are being managed by USDA because of an inter-office mechanism that transferred them to the latter agency.

Title II programs are, by definition, managed by partner organizations, such as World Food Programme and not-for-profit International Non-Governmental Organizations. These latter organizations became very interested in using Title II monetization during the 1980s to cover the costs involved in delivering food aid while addressing the underlying causes of food insecurity. While the logistics of monetization were complex and often difficult to manage, funding from monetization enabled implementation of programs that would not have been possible otherwise. Throughout the 1990s into the early 2000s, Title II monetization enabled introduction of programs that aimed to improve food security using technical interventions in food production, nutrition, and water, sanitation and health (WASH) in non-emergency programs. Many of these programs used 100% monetization in which food aid commodities were exclusively monetized and not distributed.

This led to a shift in the types of commodities used in Title II programs. Initially, commodities were developed with recipients in mind. Grains were most often milled and highly fortified. For instance, Corn Soy Blend (which until 1990 included Non-Fat Dried Milk, and was called “Corn Soy Milk”), was fortified with a blend of vitamins and minerals as well as including protein-rich soy flour. Bags were manufactured to reduce the potential for loss, spoilage and infestation, and such shipments were containerized. Vegetable Oil came in small metal tins that could be easily carried by recipients. Yet, as monetization involved the sale of commodities to private sector food industry traders and food processing companies in developing countries, it was much easier to sell bulk commodities to these industries. These buyers were much more interested in doing their own value addition and selling these commodities to the private sector. There was reduced attention among NGOs in distributing commodities to poor and malnourished recipients, and more attention to generating resources through monetization, which, several NGOs admitted, diverted organizational resources away from addressing the needs of hungry people and the underlying causes of food insecurity. Instead, commodities such as bulk wheat, rice, corn and soybeans were sold without the need for bags, and bulk crude, degummed, soy oil was pumped directly from tanker ships into processing plants. Instead of value being added in the U.S., value was added in the recipient countries. Bags and tins were not required. Containerization was not necessary. And, while there were hefty costs associated with monetization, with 100% monetization, there were no longer requirements for significant funding for internal transport storage and handling. Unfortunately, as a result, by the mid-1990s, the demand for processed and packaged commodities declined so much that they made up less than half of the non-emergency commodities shipped by Title II, despite a Congressionally mandated minimum of 75% use of processed and packaged commodities. Producers of processed and packaged commodities lost revenue as a result, and some went out of business. Relevant U.S. commodity organizations advocated for bulk commodities for monetization to be reduced in line with the processed and packaged mandate. It also became apparent after a certain point that import of bulk commodities had a negative impact in some countries on farmers and market systems by creating unfair competition.

In addition, after several years, concerns were raised that the costs involved in the purchase and shipment of commodities to developing countries were not being adequately recovered through sales. Although cost recovery varied widely depending on the country, time of purchase in the U.S. and timing of the sale in the receiving county, the buyer, and the method used for sales, overall, cost recovery on monetization sales overall was less than 100%. The GAO reported in 2011 that during the three prior years, USAID cost recovery was 76% and USDA cost recovery was 58%. At the time, the high cost of ocean shipment, heightened by a 75% preference for U.S. flag ships that limited competition for these cargoes further increased ocean freight to make up a third of the overall costs, and made cost recovery much more difficult. This resulted in concerns that the full value of the taxpayer dollar was not delivered to recipients as intended by Title II programs. However, most international NGOs were more interested in being able to provide agriculture and other technical and training services that could enable people to grow out of poverty, or to teach mothers how to improve the nutrition of their children without imported food aid, or how to develop water systems without the need for food distribution. While specialized Title II commodities did not disappear, NGOs often favored using cash to address the underlying causes of food insecurity to prevent hunger and malnutrition rather than simply distributing commodities to people.  Monetization provided a source of cash that would not be available otherwise to implement programs that sought to address not only short-term needs, but also long-term causes, thus eventually resulting in self-sufficiency with a focus on building sustainability. In 2003, David Tschirley and Julie Howard of Michigan State University reported that the U.S. share of official development assistance had declined during the past forty years, and that it had fallen by half between the mid-1980s and mid-1990s and continued to fall. Moreover, U.S. funding for agriculture declined to only 4.1% of  foreign assistance.

While American INGOs continued to actively advocate for monetization, European NGOs voiced many concerns about it. These included the fact that as the U.S. accepted less than 100% of the cost of food and freight from monetization, this amounted to a subsidy that created an uneven playing field for other commercial exporters. These concerns were raised at the Doha Round of the World Trade Organization and created some confounding issues for U.S. trade negotiations in the early 2000s. Also, many American INGOs had federation members based in donor countries, including many in Europe. These European federation members raised some of the strongest objections to monetization, and organizations that monetized either had to agree to disagree with these European brother and sister agencies or go along with them and stop monetizing.

It was European INGOs, who were largely focused on providing food aid for humanitarian assistance, who raised some of the strongest concerns about food aid that should have been used to help feed hungry and malnourished people being sold to the private sector, which then turned a profit and sold the food in commercial markets. Also, some views changed among staff of American NGOs who were concerned about the growth of hunger and malnutrition, and the fact that food aid being sold to support their programs was not being used to feed increasing populations of people impacted by disasters, conflict and chronic hunger and malnutrition. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the proportion of U.S. emergency food aid increased significantly in comparison with non-emergency food aid. This led U.S. NGOs to advocate strongly to establish a set aside “safe box” for non-emergency programs.

Added to this was growing evidence that monetization was likely resulting in negative market impacts,  including disincentives for local farmers and market actors. While NGOs implementing monetization were required to conduct market analyses to avoid these disincentives, there were concerns that these so-called “Bellmon Analyses” may not have been objective because the end-goal for the NGOs involved was to monetize and generate as much cash as possible.  Also, some NGOs began to import Title II commodities in consumer packaging and sell them to buyers outside of the large urban centers so that the commodities could reach people in rural areas, thus making these products more accessible to the people these programs were designed to support in Rwanda. However, there were also concerns about how  monetized commodities may create competition with local producers and vendors, which in turn resulted in dependency on these imported commodities.

As well, cost recovery can be very difficult to achieve. If something happens to a shipment or there are significant commodity losses, this can be a problem. If commodities are not sold by the time they are shipped, this can result in commodities going unsold, resulting in lower prices paid than projected. However, in some cases, the opposite was true if an auction methodology was used to sell commodities for which there was strong demand. Nonetheless, if commodity specifications fail to meet buyer expectations, this can also result in defaulted sales or lower prices. Commodity spoilage, theft or other loss can result in lost funding. Buyers have been known to collude to keep prices low, or to renege on contracts. Shipments carrying monetization cargoes have been known to catch fire or sink. Unsold commodities have been known to become unsafe for human consumption or be stolen. As noted above, NGOs that monetized often invested heavily in addressing monetization issues at the expense of fulfilling their mandates of meeting humanitarian among vulnerable populations.

In 2005, long-standing concerns about how to do food aid were explored in a book by Cornell University’s economist Chris Barrett and Dan Maxwell published Food Aid after Fifty Years: Recasting its Role. They recounted how the time needed for food aid to reach malnourished people, and the costs involved in commodity purchasing and ocean shipment were high, whereas, in theory, if food were purchased locally (or in a nearby country), the time needed to transport food could be reduced by six months or more. Also, commodity and transportation costs could be reduced.  There could be considerable benefits to local farmers and markets if instead of purchasing and shipping food from the U.S., food is purchased overseas, within the target region. Their book also proposed a global procurement system to obtain the  most competitive prices were being paid for food aid. Meanwhile, the World Food Programme uses similar processes to ensure the cost-effectiveness of many of its local, regional and international purchases.

In 2009, CARE changed its policy and took a stand against monetization, proclaiming that it would not monetize. In doing so, CARE  reported that it lost approximately $46 million per year by not monetizing. The INGO led an advocacy campaign against food aid monetization, and for increasing the use of cash to address underlying causes of food insecurity. It also advocated for the use of local and regional procurement, cash and vouchers for food assistance that would not only increase local food consumption and hence demand for local production and marketing, enabling people to have a choice about the food they consumed.

However, CARE made an exception by monetizing in Bangladesh. The Bangladeshi Government agreed to purchase Title II wheat for monetization and distribute this through the national food safety-net system, with the idea that people in need would receive this food. The GoB agreed to pay no less than an 80% cost recovery (usually around 82%) and continued to do so through 2020. This was incorporated into the CARE’s food aid policy, stating that it would not conduct “private sector” monetization. CARE also made an exception if it was working in a consortium with one or more organizations, it would use any cash resources that could be made available.

In the years that followed, some other NGOs shifted away from monetization. New other USAID initiatives began that provided cash to NGOs for agriculture, food security, food market growth and nutrition activities (Development Assistance funds). These were in response to an international “Food Price Crisis” that revealed vulnerability in global stocks that resulted in commodity price increases. These programs eventually came to be known as Feed the Future, which was signed into law in 2015. In 2014, funds from this program were first integrated into Title II and could be used in non-emergency programs. These funds were known as “Community Development Funds” or CDF and were finally available to be used in lieu of monetization. A total of $80 million per year was made available for this purpose and were in fact enshrined in Food for Peace legislation.  Moreover, while in the past, there was a 15% floor on the use of monetization in Title II programs, there is now a 15% (as of 2018) a ceiling, thus indicating a priority in the legislation to use cash and not monetization proceeds. When CDF funds became available, it became possible for organizations like CARE that do not monetize to implement these programs.

However, since the 2026 transfer of Food for Peace to USDA, it is not clear what funding will be available to provide technical and operational support to these programs. The Feed the Future program is no longer being implemented by the State Department and the recent Food for Peace Emergency Notice of Funding Opportunity stipulated that 50% of resources should be used for commodities and ocean freight, so other resources are needed to cover the costs of internal transport storage and handling to ensure the accountable, effective and secure management of food aid and to ensure that food aid quality is maintained until it is consumed. Funds will also be needed to cover the technical costs associated with addressing the underlying causes of food insecurity, such as increasing food production, building the capacity of people to earn sustainable incomes, adoption of critical health and nutrition behaviors, construction and maintenance of water and sanitation infrastructure, and ensuring communities are more able to address shocks and stresses that impact food security, and ensure that these outcomes outlast the end of these programs. It is not clear where these funds will come from without CDF, and thus monetization funds may be needed to support these programs to ensure that food aid is managed accountably, securely and food quality is maintained, and at the same time ensure that programs are effective in building and ensuring food security in the long run, thus avoiding dependency.

As international non-governmental organizations weigh whether to engage in food aid monetizations, a few questions are likely to be important in decision-making.  Since there are many potentially negative outcomes that could result from monetization, would it be an acceptable action in the short term? And, if so, how many years will these monetization programs continue? Will there be a future in which cash funds will cover the costs of internal transport  and other program costs? If so, when will that happen and what will it look like?

Will legislation that ensures the use of CDF be acted upon if Development Assistance funding becomes available for use in food security in the future? And, if so, when will that be and what will it look like? CARE and other INGOs advocated for at least a decade for cash funding for use in lieu of monetization. If INGOs such as CARE agree to monetize food aid under the current circumstances, will they continue to advocate effectively for availability and use of CDF funding? Moreover, American farmers and farmer associations that benefit from monetization will strongly push back on efforts to replace monetization funds with CDF or other cash. Will that make it more difficult to implement Food for Peace programs without monetization? As Food for Peace non-emergency programs are among the very few U.S. Government foreign assistance non-emergency food security and nutrition initiatives still operating since the elimination of USAID, would monetization be an acceptable short-term solution? Unfortunately, bringing cash back to these programs may take a long time and this could result in necessitating the use of large-scale monetization activities for years to come. Finally, not monetizing could be seen as not supporting farmers who have, in essence, ensured the continuation of the Food for Peace program.

Faced with a future in which monetization may need to happen, organizations may wish to consider options that support programmatic objectives. For instance, CARE and other U.S. INGOs implementing in Bangladesh negotiated an agreement with the Bangladeshi government in which it purchased wheat at a set rate of cost recovery (80% minimum) and then used the commodity in its food safety-net system. This may not work elsewhere, but it is a bit more predictable and at least ensures that poor people access this food. Other organizations have monetized food as a way of contributing to the manufacture of products that were ultimately distributed.

Land O’Lakes International Development monetized non-fat dried milk powder in several Asian countries, selling it to processors that developed nutritious, fortified, UHT milk snacks for distribution in schools. As mentioned above, monetization among small scale vendors outside of large urban centers could also ensure that monetization commodities create value for traders and households in rural areas. So, there may be options available to “mitigate” some of the downsides of monetization, by ensuring that the food used for monetization eventually provides food for those the program might target with food assistance. Unfortunately, as time and resources devoted to these options may add to the cost of monetization, it will ultimately reduce the ability of humanitarian organizations to fulfill their mandates of addressing the needs of food insecure populations.

Further Reading:

Gaibler, Floyd, Deputy Under Secretary, Farm and Foreign Agricultural Services, U.S. Department of Agriculture, The Impact of the World Trade Organization on Food Aid Policies, Presentation at the USDA and USAID Export Food Aid Conference, Kansas City, Missouri, April 25, 2006.

EveryCRSreport.com, International Food Aid Provisions of the 2008 Farm Bill, July 10, 2008, https://www.everycrsreport.com/reports/RS22900.html#_Toc346816996, accessed July 28, 2026.

Government Accountability Office (GAO), Funding Development Projects through the Purchase, Shipment, and Sale of U.S. Commodities Is Inefficient and Can Cause Adverse Market Impacts, GAO-11-636, June 2011, https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-11-636.pdf, accessed July 28, 2026.

Harrell, Eben, CARE Turns Down U.S. Food Aid, Time, August 15, 2007, https://time.com/archive/6922467/care-turns-down-u-s-food-aid/, accessed July 28, 2026.

CARE USA, White Paper on Food Aid Policy, June 6, 2006, https://www.care.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/CARE20monetization20farm20bill20white20paper5B35D.pdf, accessed July 28, 2026.

Mara Russell has led food aid programming for decades.

 

 

Hungry in a Prosperous Nation, America

July 28, 2026   By Nadira Kabir      The United States is one of the wealthiest nations in history, a global agricultural powerhouse that produces enough food to feed millions beyond its borders. Yet beneath this abundance lies a growing contradiction: more middle‑class Americans are struggling to afford groceries.

These are not households facing chronic poverty.  They are teachers, nurses, military families, first responders, nonprofit staff, government workers, and small business owners, people who work full time, often own homes, and once felt economically secure. Increasingly, their paychecks no longer stretch far enough.

Prosperity Does Not Equal Security

Traditional indicators paint a picture of economic strength: low unemployment, steady consumer spending, and continued growth. But national statistics rarely capture what families experience around the kitchen table.

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, 13.7% of American households, or nearly 48 million people, experienced food insecurity in 2024, the highest rate in almost a decade.  Nearly one in five households with children struggled to afford enough food for an active, healthy life.  51 million U.S. households are ALICE,  Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed (United Way, 2024).

Food banks now report more first‑time visitors from suburban neighborhoods, including people arriving directly from work in uniforms or business attire. Some who once donated to food drives now rely on them.

The Cost of Being Middle Class Has Changed

For much of the twentieth century, a middle‑income salary could support a family, cover housing, allow modest savings, and reliably put food on the table. That equation has unraveled.   Housing costs have increased. Childcare rivals college tuition. Healthcare premiums continue to rise. Transportation, insurance, utilities, and property taxes consume larger shares of household budgets.  Grocery prices rose 25% between 2020 and 2024 (BLS CPI).

Food becomes the only flexible expense.  Families stretch groceries by buying fewer fresh fruits and vegetables, reducing meat purchases, choosing generic brands, shrinking portions, or skipping meals, often parents first, so children can eat normally. These sacrifices rarely appear in GDP reports, yet they increasingly define middle‑class life. 

When Groceries Become Debt

A recent Urban Institute analysis found that many Americans are not just paying more for groceries, they are borrowing to buy them. Working‑age adults increasingly rely on credit cards, emergency savings, or short‑term financing to cover food costs.  Credit card balances reached a record $1.37 trillion in 2024, with food purchases among the fastest‑growing categories (Federal Reserve).  This trend mirrors other reporting from World Hunger Education Service, which highlights rising financial strain among working families, including farm workers, the very people who harvest the nation’s food.   Hunger Rising in America, offers a deeper look at how economic pressures are reshaping who struggles to afford food: https://www.worldhunger.org/hunger_rising_in_america/ and https://www.worldhunger.org/america-farm-workers-face-food-insecurity/

A growing number of households fall into the “missing middle”: earning too much to qualify for assistance but too little to absorb rising costs. SNAP remains one of the most effective tools for reducing food insecurity, yet many working families sit just above eligibility thresholds.  This benefits cliff, where a small increase in income results in losing assistance even though financial strain remains, is one of the most pressing challenges in U.S. anti‑hunger policy.  Food insecurity is highest in the South and Southwest, with rates exceeding 15% in states such as Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas (Feeding America).

What Middle-Class Hunger Looks Like Today

Hunger is not defined by homelessness. Today, it may be:

  • A suburban family whose mortgage doubled.
  • A teacher working a second job.
  • A nurse juggling childcare costs.
  • A military family navigating another relocation.
  • A retiree watching food prices outpace Social Security.

These households work full time, pay taxes, and appear financially stable — which makes their struggles easy to overlook. A family of four becomes ineligible for SNAP at roughly $40,000–$42,000 annual income, even though average living costs exceed $60,000 in most states.

Hunger Is About More Than Food

Food insecurity affects far more than grocery budgets.  Children facing food insecurity are at higher risk of developmental delays, behavioral challenges, and lower academic performance. Adults experience higher rates of stress, anxiety, depression, diabetes, and hypertension.  Poor nutrition also increases healthcare costs, reduces workplace productivity, and strains social service systems.

Rethinking Hunger in a Prosperous Nation

Anti‑hunger efforts have long focused on households below the federal poverty line. But today’s food insecurity demands a broader lens.   Strengthening food security entails improving economic security: affordable childcare, reduced healthcare costs, wage growth, and modernized nutrition assistance programs that reflect real household budgets.

A Global Lens on a Domestic Crisis

International development practitioners have long recognized that hunger is rarely caused by a lack of food.  It stems from inadequate access — shaped by poverty, conflict, or economic shocks.  The same principle applies in the United States.  Grocery shelves are full.  Agricultural production is strong.  The challenge is affordability.

Toward a More Honest Measure of Prosperity

A prosperous nation is not defined solely by the size of its economy or the abundance of its harvests. It is defined by whether working families can meet basic needs with dignity.  Recognizing the changing face of hunger is the first step. The next is ensuring public policy reflects the realities families face today.   See: The Politics of Hunger, which examines how policy decisions shape who receives support and who is left behind:

Further Reading

A Promising Model to Predict Rates of U.S. Food Insecurity

May Data Shows Food Insecurity Rising in America

Foreclosures of American Farms Increase

  1. U.S. Department of Agriculture. Household Food Security in the United States, 2024.
  2. Urban Institute. Many Families Rely on Credit and Savings to Afford Groceries (2026).
  3. Feeding America. Map the Meal Gap.
  4. Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Food Insecurity and Consumer Pessimism (2026).
  5. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Consumer Price Index.
  6. Brookings Institution. Research on Affordability and Middle-Income Households.

Update about Hunger & War in Iran

July 26, 2026   By Stephen Sellers        What began as a single day of strikes on February 28, 2026 has become one of the longest and costliest U.S. military engagements in decades, and the humanitarian toll on Iran’s youngest children has deepened rather than resolved. Nearly five months on, the threat to child nutrition described in our initial briefing has moved from a fear we anticipated to documented reality, compounded by a currency collapse, a leadership crisis, and a war whose ceasefire has repeatedly failed to hold.

Hunger Notes reported large-scale population displacements in February.  Most of 3.2 million Iranians who were displaced have returned home.  A residual caseload of displaced remains from destroyed housing: 149,528 civilian units damaged (according to the Iranian Red Crescent, in June); ~400,000 people had homes directly affected. Only ~9,000 were still in tracked shelters in June.

Iran’s safety net appears to be effective at reaching vulnerable children, and preventing rates of wasting from increasing.  The Iranian Welfare Ministry food-basket program, Phase 34 (17–18 July 2026), which provides the most recent concrete figure, identifies 180,826 malnourished children aged 5–59 months who are enrolled for subsidized food baskets (152,788 in “very needy” households + 28,038 “moderate need”).

Malnutrition is worsening in the provinces Hunger Notes flagged as most vulnerable

Sistan-Baluchestan, which was named in our February briefing as an already-strained border province, remains the hardest hit by hunger.  Up to one-third of children under five in the province now face severe malnutrition. Many families subsist on little more than bread and tea, and the loss of free school meal programs has left some students too depleted to concentrate in class or attend at all. Nationally, child stunting continues to concentrate in Sistan-Baluchestan, Kerman, and Hormozgan, alongside a parallel crisis of; roughly 30% of pregnant women are failing to gain sufficient weight during pregnancy.

The war has not ended — it has cycled through ceasefires that collapsed

After more than five weeks of fighting, the United States and Iran agreed on April 7–8 to a ceasefire that also encompassed Israel.  U.S. President Trump extended it indefinitely on April 21, but both sides violated it almost immediately. A June memorandum of understanding sought to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and formally end the war within 60 days. Instead, fighting resumed in July after Iran struck three commercial vessels that had bypassed its pre-approved shipping route. By mid-July, the U.S. President had declared the ceasefire over following a new round of strikes after Tehran targeted vessels in the strait, and as of July 18 there was no sign the renewed fighting would end soon; a week of intensified strikes had left the ceasefire in tatters. Adding to the instability, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was killed and buried after marathon funeral ceremonies. His son and successor, Mojtaba, has not appeared publicly since taking over leadership.

Overall food production is up this year, or near average according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization.  The Government is purchasing large amounts of wheat, but remains constrained in being able to pay farmers.  Iran has imported 22 Metric Tons of food, with Russia as the main source.

Iran’s food supply (production plus imports) has recovered  over the six months, while household food security has deteriorated sharply due to inflation and the collapsing value of the Iranian currency, the rial.

A collapsing currency has turned food into a luxury for many

The economic backdrop against which malnutrition is now unfolding is far worse than in February. Iran’s currency, the rial, approached 1.95 million to the dollar on July 20  down in value by roughly a third since January,with the IMF projecting nearly 69% average inflation and a contracting economy for 2026, leaving the official minimum wage worth only about $87 a month. Iran has not published GDP data since 2024, and a nationwide internet blackout has made even the country’s own statistics hard to verify from outside.

Food prices have increased 140% year-on-year, with flour up 170% and rice up 220%.  One dollar bought roughly 1,350,500 rials on January 1; by July 20 it bought nearly 1.9 million.  This means a  household purchasing-power collapse layered directly on top of the wartime disruption to food imports described in our original briefing.

The blockade of the Strait of Hormuz is squeezing food and fertilizer supply chains region-wide

More than 90% of Iran’s annual trade passes through the Strait of Hormuz. The strait’s effective closure, combined with a subsequent U.S. blockade, has cut off up to 70% of Iran’s export revenue. The damage is not confined to Iran. Since the end of February, roughly 3.9 million tons of fertilizer exports, about 30% of the Gulf states’ annual fertilizer trade, have been suspended, and shortage risk keeps rising the longer the strait stays closed. The war continues to choke deliveries of fuel, fertilizer, medicine, and aid shipments transiting the Middle East, forcing the World Food Program and Save the Children to reroute aid around restricted waterways, adding weeks of delay and millions of dollars in cost.

The war’s humanitarian shockwaves have reached far beyond Iran’s borders

Perhaps the starkest change since February is how far the malnutrition impact has traveled. This past March, Hunger Notes projected that increases in fertilizer prices would result in reduced food production worldwide, and resulting hunger.

Save the Children, the nonprofit, projects that every $5 rise in oil prices tied to the conflict wipes out a month’s worth of life-saving humanitarian aid for nearly 40,000 children. . In Nigeria, children who had recovered from malnutrition are relapsing: hospital records in Sokoto show nearly 40 children previously treated since February back under treatment, with many more undocumented, as families lose income to war-driven fuel price increases. Hunger Notes,  UNICEF, Reuters, and the Financial Times have warned that a continued war will likely  push up to 23.4 million additional children worldwide into monetary poverty by year’s end.

What has changed, and what hasn’t

The core vulnerabilities identified in February include Iran’s large under-five population, pre-existing pockets of wasting and stunting concentrated in Sistan-Baluchestan and other border provinces, a food supply chain dependent on imports now vulnerable to blockade, and a government historically wary of Western humanitarian NGOs — have all held true and intensified. What has changed is the scale and duration: a war many observers once expected to last days or weeks instead approaches its fifth month with no durable ceasefire, a currency in freefall, a change in the country’s top leadership, and malnutrition effects now documented as far away as Nigeria and Somalia. Without a lasting cessation of hostilities and a functioning channel for food and medical imports, the compounding crisis facing Iran’s youngest children, and the children of countries dependent on the same shipping lanes and aid budgets, shows no sign of leveling off.

Humanitarian aid to Iran is relatively small.  Domestic organizations, such as the Iranian Red Crescent Society, provide most aid.  In April 2026, the ICRC delivered more than 170 tons of relief supplies, followed by another 18-ton shipment in June, UNICEF continues to provide child health, nutrition, vaccines and hygiene.

Further Reading:

FAO’s Global Information and Early Warning System

World Food Programme

 

 

U.S. Food Aid (Part 9): Critiques of Recent Development Food Aid (RFSAs)

July 24, 2026     Since 2019, U.S. Food for Peace spent between $1.8 and $2 billion in development programs called RFSAs, for Resilience Food Security Activities.  RFSAs were more than simple food distribution; they combined food or cash transfers with nutrition educaiton, water supply, hygiene, agriculture, savings groups, market links, mentoring, disaster risk reduction, local governance, gender, and behavior change. The complex designs of these programs made them hard to evaluate, to ascertain whether they reduced hunger or malnutrition.  Most of the measurements from these programs were not about nutrition or hunger, but were about NGO activities or skills training, water committees, microfinance organizations or planning.

Making sense of what RFSAs actually accomplished is clouded by all the complex things NGOs sought to do.  In their own reporting aid agencies are more prone to showcase their field activities over their outcomes or impacts.  For instance, much of what has been written in recent years about the Food for Peace RFSAs is about their design, their theory of change, how many people reached, but not as much about what they accomplished.

The numerous US-funded RFSAs showed many promising near-term outputs, but in the end, showed minimal long-term change in nutrition.  In other words, a repeated lesson from RFSAs was that short-term improvements do not prove durable resilience.  Food aid and complementary activities may improve consumption and nutrition while the project is operating, but lasting impact requires stronger local systems, markets, income streams, water access, and shock-responsive safety nets.

 One RFSA evaluation expert had these reflections about RFSAs:

>   “The  kitchen sink approach (many sectors, scattered activities) to a problem (malnutrition) is difficult to implement and merits more prioritization;”

>   “The USAiD strategy of sequencing and layering makes sense conceptually but it may be hard to implement.  It is hard to assess or evaluate, and should not be an after thought;”

>   “Revisiting the project’s theory of change each year represents a big burden on everyone involved;”

>   “Separating the leaning function from the monitoring and evaluation function, i.e. giving roles to different institutions, is unnecessary and reflects too much micro management.  Meanwhile,tThere were too many monitoring and measuring activities;”

>   “The subsidies given out as supplemental income to buy food will not work if amounts are too low or if other non-food needs are so great that funds are diverted by families to other ends than food.”

>    “Project management offices were too far from the areas of implementation.”

Across the evaluation literature, only a minority of RFSAs produced strong causal evidence that malnutrition rates changed because of the RFSA.  One of the larger programs, in Ethiopia, was evaluated by IFPRI:  despite high baseline stunting and wasting, there was no measurable average impact on child anthropometric status from the Ethiopian SPIR program package.  Meanwhile, in Asia, the multi-year SHOUHARDO RFSA in Bangladesh had a rigorous pre-post evaluation that documented improvements in per capita food expenditures (increasing from $2.03 to 22.22) but found no attributable differences in child malnutrition.

Many of the RFSAs provided cash and food to families and then measured whether the families had more wealth (more cash).  In other words, people given money had more money, at least during the project period, and they said they consumed more food.  But 18 months later, while  families said they were better off,  nutrition gains were not sustained.

Several of the RFSAs never published final project reports or impact results. The most sobering evidence comes from Malawi’s WALA long-term evaluation, where positive endline trends in nutrition and food-aid need were not clearly sustained several years later under climate and pest shocks.   Other evaluations included as Niger’s Hamzari/Girma/Wadata, Zimbabwe’s Amalima/Nuyok/Apolou, Madagascar’s Fararano/Maharo/Fiovana, and Malawi’s UBALE/Njira. These could not isolate RFSA effects from broader trends, shocks, or selection.

Other evaluation lessons of RFSAs include:

The graduation model of sequencing each household’s intervention and mentoring appears to have improved livelihoods and food security.  But the sequencing/layering method did not work in other countries.

Nuggets of success can be identified.  For example, mothers’ “Care Groups” is a model of improving nutrition that is  scalable, and cost-effective. Lead mothers (volunteers) reach 10–15 neighboring households with timed, sequenced messages. Evidence from multiple contexts shows strong improvements in young child feeding practices, hygiene, and service utilization.  Greater success was consistently associated with interpersonal nutrition counseling and home visits, population- and community-based Social and Behavior Change Communication (SBCC) strategies, and targeting children under two or three years (the critical window).

Programs providing preventive supplementary feeding achieved twice the rate of stunting reduction, an average annual decline of 1.69 percentage points, compared to recuperative-only or no-ration programs.  (Less successful programs often relied on stand-alone Positive Deviance/Hearth (PD/H) approaches focused narrowly on recuperation rather than prevention, or failed to integrate services.)

The RFSA model was most effective when it gave poor households a real consumption floor through food, cash, or vouchers and it layered a credible economic pathway: assets, savings, coaching, agricultural or livestock support, market access.

Photo credit:  from CARE’s SHOUHARDO III Plus Program page at https://www.facebook.com/groups/2195296804116047/

U.S. Food Aid (Part 8): Nawiri in Arid Lands of Kenya

July 24, 2026    This is the eighth Hunger Notes article about Food for Peace programs to help inform the public and USDA about lessons learned during past decades about the design and evolution of US food aid, intended to inform USDA which has an outstanding request for information.

Nawiri was the most recent Food for Peace program for Kenya, with about $200 million to different NGOs, led by two groups, Catholic Relief Services and Mercy Corps, covering drought-prone arid lands with mixed pastoral and agricultural economies.  The CRS consortium included Caritas, Tufts University, IBTCI, Concern, Village Enterprise and Kenyatta University and worked in Isiola and Marsabit counties, while Mercy Corps worked in Samburu and Turkana counties, with Research Triangle Institute, AVSI, Viamo, Caritas and the African Population and Health Research Center.  Together these teams  reached some 550,000 people.

Program metrics showed that Nawiri achieved substantial positive impacts but the benefits were often uneven, context-dependent, and constrained by severe environmental shocks.   The implementing agencies found that acute (wasting) malnutrition varies significantly between neighboring wards, across different seasons, and over time, meaning that generalized regional approaches are often ineffective.  Also, screening methods like mid-upper arm circumference (MUAC) and weight-for-height z-scores (WHZ) behave differently across seasons, sex, and age groups.  Relying solely on MUAC can delay the identification of malnourished children; employing both metrics is necessary to accurately capture different characteristics and stages of malnutrition.  Not surprisingly, they found that dry climate correlated with worse malnutrition.

NGO evidence generally showed that where their interventions were concentrated, malnutrition measurably fell.   During the period of study, wasting malnutrition declined by over 20% in target areas, though it increased 40% in Turkana. Furthermore, longitudinal studies noted that stunting (long-term malnutrition) increased significantly over time for the sample as a whole, particularly in Laisamis.

Increased systematic screening and referral of malnourished children to health posts were an important reason for those declines seen in wasting.  In the  Turkana, Nawiri equipped 210 community health volunteers in 4 communities with dosage carts, pneumonia beads, and malaria test kits.  Concern piloted an integrated health intervention that added malaria, pneumonia and diarrhea case management with existing integrated-management of acute malnutrition.

Some 57 water systems were rehabilitated, important in a dry lands, and Nawiri fostered 35 local “Water Use Associations” for ongoing improvements for tanks, pipes and water points.  Crops were expanded with irrigation: sorghum, maize, watermelon, green grams, fodder. A 7 km canal was desilted.

“The primary pathway between water insecurity and malnutrition in the arid lands of Kenya is women’s time burden collecting water to meet the minimum drinking and hygiene needs of the household. Water collection is performed exclusively by women and girls and remains one of the pervasively gender inequitable elements of pastoral life. Nawiri aims to address the role of water system functionality through borehole rehabilitation.”

The project found that traditional pastoralist strategic mobility and social institutions (like sharing milk, food, and childcare) are the frontline of disaster response and foundational to community resilience.  Nawiri helped establish retail shops (dukas) in remote areas to stock better varieties of nutritious foods, bringing vibrant markets to communities that previously had to travel up to 7 kilometers for basic goods.  Nawiri promoted livestock health and livestock disease surveillance.

Applying the graduation model, some 500 households in 14 villages graduated with Village Enterprise assistance.  In The Isiolo pilot (600 households) launched 204 businesses and 20 savings groups; Food Consumption Score rose from 51.3% to 83.8% in 3.5 months and children (6–23 mo) meeting minimum acceptable diet rose from 6.38% to 31.65%.

The Double-Edged Sword of Diversification: While livelihood diversification provides alternative income, it can act as a maladaptive coping mechanism if it forces women into labor-intensive, low-return activities,. The program observed that as women spent more time on business activities, time spent on childcare decreased, which in some zones led to reduced breastfeeding and higher acute malnutrition.  While the drought pushed communities to diversify away from livestock, weak local economies meant many new businesses sold the same basic goods (like sugar and flour), fast-tracking local market saturation

Under CRS, 207 teenagers graduated the “Nawiri na Ujuzi” course (tailoring, masonry, plumbing, electrical, mechanics, driving), which was jointly funded by Nawiri and the County Government of Isiolo.  CRS Deputy COP Margaret Kahiga notes all beneficiaries come from households with under-five children facing malnutrition.  In a separate area, a randomized controlled tiral conducted with the Rural Entrepreneur Access Project (REAP) in Samburu revealed a limitation to these economic benefits:  if market saturation crossed a certain tipping point (over 60% enrollment in a specific locality), the income impact for individual businesses could reduce over time as businesses competed against one another

Resilience was highly dependent on informal safety nets, asset ownership, and access to savings.   The program emphasized layered, sequenced interventions (e.g., combining water with agriculture, nutrition education, and markets) and local ownership, leading to better resilience against shocks like drought. The partner county governments agreed to sustaining gains post-closeout, including asset handovers and policy integration. The NGOs also observed a chronic deficiency in prioritizing and budgeting of government resources for nutrition, and political leaders frequently lack awareness of the importance of multisectoral nutrition approaches.

Much of Nawiri intentionally focused on formative research and theory-of-change-analysis during the first two years.  The  Feinstein International Center at Tufts University managed a longitudinal study (bimonthly surveys) in four sentinel sites.  Tufts found that few individual/household variables predict malnutrition, whereas basic structural drivers (pastoralism under pressure, climate variability, weakening customary institutions) dominate.  Mercy Corps’ review of longitudinal data found that wasting malnutrition had persistently been above 15% for three decades, without improvement.

Notably, DOGE terminated the CRS program, despite positive progress and investments, because DOGE’s simplistic word search through the fun. ding agreement found politically-offensive words, like “gender”, and “climate.”  Because Nawiri was terminated early, a full, independent endline evaluation of final impact may be incomplete.

–  Contributed by WHES board member, Steven Hansch

 

 

U.S. Food Aid (Part 7): Lessons of Exit & Sustainability

July 21, 2026   This is the seventh part of a Hunger Notes series that review of lessons of U.S. food aid.

The ultimate goal of aid agencies’ food aid projects is to solve hunger problems in a lasting way.  Rarely, however, are aid agencies able to come back and see what improvements persisted after the project was over.

Unique and powerful research conducted by Beatrice Lorge Rogers and Jennifer Coates of Tufts University’s School of Nutrition (commissioned by the USG Food for Peace program) looked in-depth at what happens after food assistance projects ended. Their key conclusion was that project success at the moment of exit does not reliably predict long term sustainability.  (see:  synthesis report.)

The study found that many interventions that looked strong around the end of implementation weakened or collapsed once external aid resources and incentives disappeared.  As a result, the researchers argued that sustainability must be designed from the beginning of a project, not added late in the final year. They emphasized that sustained outcomes require three jointly necessary factors. These are:  1) a continuing source of resources, 2) technical and managerial capacity, and 3) motivation that does not depend on project inputs. A fourth factor, linkages to institutions, is often essential for phase over. The study stated that “endline achievement is not evidence of durability” and that “hope is not a strategy.”  In a series of reports produced by Tufts University, they demonstrated that sustainability is a trajectory that unfolds over years, not a status measured at a single point in time.

The research followed twelve NGO projects funded by the US Food for Peace program in four countries: Bolivia, Honduras, India, and Kenya. These projects had been deemed to have been generally successful at the time of their completion, and had documented sustainability plans.  Included in the study were ADRA, CARE, Save the Children, World Vision, Food for the Hungry, ACDI/VoCA, Counterpart International, and local sub-awardees.  The Tufts study used mixed methods and collected data at exit and again one to three years later. It examined whether services continued, whether practices were maintained, and whether outcomes persisted or changed. The findings challenged common assumptions in development programming.

One assumption they found NGOs too often make is that once people have been trained, they will continue the activity. But the study found that training alone was not enough. People also needed motivation, resources, linkages, and opportunities to refresh knowledge. Another assumption is that establishing contact between community actors and government services will create a durable relationship. The study found that linkages were sustainable only when responsibilities were explicit, the receiving institution valued the activity, and the institution had staff, authority, budget, and supplies.

The research also showed that abrupt exits often led to collapse, while gradual exits that allowed independent operation before departure were more promising.

Across countries, sustainability requires deliberate integration of resources, capacity, motivation, and linkages. These factors need to be built into program design from the start. The study found that the first three factors were jointly necessary. No project achieved lasting sustainability without all three functioning together. Resources refer to a continuing source of financial, material, or human capital. Capacity refers to technical and managerial skills. Motivation refers to incentives that do not rely on project inputs. Linkages refer to vertical connections to institutions that can provide supervision, supplies, or market access. The study found that projects often achieved high impact at exit because they were supplying resources and incentives; but, once those supports disappeared, outcomes could remain stable, improve, erode, or change in unexpected ways. The researchers warned that focusing exclusively on maximizing impact at exit, as is common, can undermine sustainability.

“Even evidence of continued impact at one point in time post-exit may not predict long-term sustainability.”

Case examples illustrate these findings.  In Bolivia, NGOs built piped water systems and established community water committees. Households paid monthly user fees. The systems were highly sustainable because they combined resources, capacity, and motivation. The user fees provided resources. The committees had strong managerial capacity. Households valued the benefit of piped water and were motivated to pay. In contrast, water quality testing and chlorination collapsed. NGOs had managed and paid for water testing until the final day. Committees had never practiced independent operation. Beneficiaries disliked the taste of chlorine and did not perceive the need for treatment. Motivation was absent.

“Impact and sustainability are distinct achievements, and an exclusive focus on impact at exit may jeopardize sustainability. For example, providing free resources up to the time of project exit may maximize project impact, but the withdrawal of those resources poses a bigger threat to sustainability than a gradual withdrawal with the development of substitute resources.”

In agriculture, NGOs relied on model farmers to teach improved techniques. They provided free inputs to incentivize the model farmers. When the free inputs ended, almost all model farmers stopped training others. In maternal and child health, NGOs provided free food rations to mothers as incentives to attend community growth monitoring sessions. When the free food stopped, mothers abandoned the sessions. Many volunteer community health workers lost motivation and felt their roles had diminished. Mothers shifted participation to government clinics where cash transfers and supplements were available.  See:  Bolivia synthesis.

In Honduras, abrupt withdrawal of free food rations caused a sharp decline in mothers’ participation in health monitoring. Community health workers became demotivated. Interventions that established fee for service models and gradual transitions were more sustainable. Community managed piped water systems achieved high sustainability because they secured resources through user fees, built capacity, and maintained motivation. Linking farmers directly to commercial buyers was effective. Farmers continued agricultural practices and incomes because the linkage provided market access and motivation. Phase over to government programs struggled due to national resource constraints and a political crisis. Government health systems lacked resources to supervise volunteer health workers. Without supervision and supplies, the workers’ functionality declined.

In India, the government context shaped sustainability. The Indian Supreme Court ruled that food is a basic human right, and the government banned import of genetically modified corn soy blends. Food for Peace projects devoted their final phases to transitioning food aid responsibilities to government programs. CARE transitioned the food supply chain to the Integrated Child Development Service.  Many Anganwadi Centers maintained uninterrupted food supply for preschool children after exit. Take home rations were less reliable. In Orissa, distribution dropped dramatically due to irregular deliveries. In some states, beneficiaries reported that the quality of government rations had degraded so much that some fed it to animals. Mothers continued attending health days only to receive the rations. Catholic Relief Services attempted to transition school feeding programs to the Mid Day Meals program. This largely failed because the government lacked motivation to provide free food to private religious and boarding schools.

“The study findings demonstrate that it is critical to verify the validity of a project’s underlying theory of change at the project design stage and to reassess its validity throughout project implementation.”

The most sobering lesson from India was that the projects failed to reduce child malnutrition. The assumption that combining food supplementation with health education would reduce undernutrition was not supported by evidence.   See:  Synthesis of India study.

In Kenya, gradual exit was effective. CARE’s Community Savings Mobilization project organized savings groups and provided training. CARE provided no external seed capital. All loan funds came from members’ savings. CARE graduated the groups to independent operation after one year. For the remainder of the project, CARE served only as an on call technical resource. Three years after exit, the groups were thriving and multiplying. They had high motivation and solid organizational capacity. In agriculture, CARE required basmati rice farmers to assume the cost of premium seeds before exit. This resulted in independent producer associations. In contrast, abrupt exits led to collapse. NGOs managed water quality testing until the final day. Committees had never practiced budgeting or hiring services. Beneficiaries disliked chlorine. The practice was abandoned. In maternal and child health, NGOs distributed free food rations as incentives. When the free food ended, participation collapsed. Volunteer health workers lost motivation. In livestock health, community-based animal health workers charged fees from the beginning. Livestock owners valued the benefit and paid. The fees provided resources and motivation. This intervention was highly sustainable.

Across all four countries, the study found that free handouts pose severe risks to sustainability when no alternative local source is established. Free food rations, free agricultural inputs, and free services created expectations that could not be maintained. When the free resources ended, participation and service delivery collapsed. The study found that fee for service models were more sustainable when culturally appropriate and introduced early.

Charging fees established expectations and built market viability. Attempting to impose fees at the end of a previously free project almost always failed. The study also found that linkages to institutions were often necessary but not always viable. Linkages succeeded when the partner had resources, motivation, and capacity. Linkages failed when the partner lacked budget, staff, or political will. The study stated that “government will take over is not a strategy unless the government unit has both commitment and operational capacity.”

The research also emphasized the importance of designing for context and resilience. Projects operate within environments shaped by political, economic, and environmental shocks. In Kenya, droughts devastated yields and livestock herds shortly after exit. Farmers continued applying improved techniques, but the shock wiped out yields. They lacked resources to purchase inputs for the next season. In Honduras, a constitutional crisis reduced government resources and undermined planned phase over of health services. Sustainability plans must account for predictable shocks. Projects should integrate crop insurance, promote diversified income streams, and establish drought resistant infrastructure.

RECOMMENDATIONS

  • •  Post-project sustainability needs to be designed from the start of the project. NGOs should consider embedding lasting resources, build capacity, align with intrinsic motivation, and secure viable linkages.
  • •  Donors should extend timelines when there is evidence of progress. True capacity building and phase over often require more than five years.
  • •  Donors should fund post project evaluations five to ten years after exit. Sustainability is a trajectory, not a one time status.
  • •  Projects should avoid free handouts unless a local source of resources will exist after exit. Fee for service models and business approaches are more sustainable when introduced early.
  • •  Projects should cultivate multiple layers of government ownership. Continuity should not depend on a single political stakeholder. Commitments should be incorporated into municipal plans, budgets, administrative decisions, departmental responsibilities, and civil service job descriptions.
  • •  Projects should ensure that linkages are viable. Responsibilities must be explicit. The receiving institution needs to value the activity and have staff, authority, budget, and supplies. Mechanisms for communication, supervision, and accountability must remain active.
  • •  Projects should plan gradual exits. Communities and local organizations need time to operate independently while the NGO is still present. Abrupt exits often lead to collapse.
  • •   Projects should design for resilience. They should anticipate shocks and build systems that can withstand them.

The studies’ headline conclusion is that achieving high impact at exit does not guarantee long term sustainability.  The researchers found that “even evidence of continued impact at one point in time post exit may not predict long term sustainability.” They argued that sustainability requires resources, capacity, motivation, and linkages. These factors must be deliberately integrated into program design. The study influenced USAID’s Food Assistance and Food Security Strategy. Development awards came to require explicit sustainability plans and exit strategies. The four factor vocabulary entered mainstream guidance. The research provided a blueprint for designing programs that outlive their funding cycles. It showed that lasting development success depends not on short term statistical triumphs but on long term resilience and independent operation.

These studies had a profound influence on USG planning.  FFP’s decade strategy (released October 2016) explicitly reframed the agency’s development goal around sustaining gains; it “broadens the previous goal of reducing food insecurity to one that envisions improving food security and sustaining it,” and commits FFP and partners to “strive for greater impact with greater efficiency and sustainability.” Tufts and its collaborators state the connection directly. In a Tufts Now feature (Jan 2017):  “Food for Peace has already incorporated many of the recommendations from the Tufts study in its guidance to aid organizations.” Implementing partners echoed this; ACDI/VOCA (2021) described FFP as having “incorporated many of the recommendations that arose from Tufts University research into its 2016–2025 strategy, now requiring detailed sustainability plans for all DFSAs.”

Refer to:

https://www.fantaproject.org/research/exit-strategies-ffp

https://www.fantaproject.org/sites/default/files/resources/India-Exit-Strategies-Report-Jan2017.pdf

The past FANTA project (formerly, USAID) also continues to provide summaries and links.

–  Contributed by WHES board member, Steven Hansch

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U.S. Food Aid (Part 6): A Timeline of U.S. Food Aid

July 20, 2026    This is the sixth posting in an effort to inform the public and USDA about Food For Peace lessons and directions.  Below is a timeline of selected milestones in the history of U.S. food aid sent overseas. World Hunger Education Service compiled this from a range of sources with inputs from various experts. It selects for different ways that the US has provided foods to other countries with a particular emphasis on Food for Peace, PL 480, Title II.

Notably, at the time of this publication the key food aid initiative is the same as the first, in 1812: aid to Venezuela in response to an earthquake. Contents in this table is meant to complement and not reiterate content published in other articles here at Hunger Notes.   Photo credit:  The John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston.

Timeframe U.S. Food Aid Milestones
1812 USG sends food aid to Venezuela after earthquake. President James Madison and Congress appropriate $50,000 for wheat flour aid.
1847 Choctaw nation in Oklahoma raises famine relief funds for Ireland.
1914-1919 Commission for Relief in Belgium during WWI channels U.S. wheat that fed 10 million people in Belgium and Northern France, daily. Future president Herbert Hoover organizes first large scale food logistics to combat famine.
1918-22 American Relief Administration provides 700,000 MT of famine-relief food aid to Russia, Poland, Austria.
1930 U.S. Foreign Agricultural Service posts agricultural attachés around the world, starting in South Africa, Sydney, Belgrade.
1943 Catholic Relief Services (CRS) channels food aid in war-torn Europe. U.S. foods for Europe went through the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) and the UN Food and Agricultural Organization.
1944 Dutch famine (Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague) led to US Operation Chowhound of B-17 Airdrops of flour, meat, eggs. Later US military trucked in food as Operation Faust.
1945 WWII famine relief. George McGovern in the 741st Bomb Squadron flew surplus food aid to Trieste in northeastern Italy. George McGovern later becomes first director of the Office of Food for Peace, and Democratic nominee for President.
1945-47 CARE Packages as WWII relief, using surplus US Army “10-in-1” rations stockpiled for the canceled invasion of Japan. CARE leaders negotiated with the Army to acquire nearly 3 million pre-packaged rations. Post-WWII US aid also flowed through multilateral channels like UNRRA, the Marshall Plan/GARIOA. CARE and CRS bridged U.S. surpluses through private networks.
1948-49 USG and UK airlift 296,000 tons of food (and coal) to West Berlin. CARE delivered 230,000 packages to Berlin on its own planes.
1948-51 American Friends Service Committee, CARE, and USG provide aid to famine threatened parts of India during the Partition that created India & Pakistan. US passed India Emergency Food Aid Act providing 2 million MT of grain.
1950s India looms large as major concern for large food shortages & famine. US provided large scale grain shipments under Title I and II.
1950s US holds large domestic reserves, including surplus dairy products. FFP framed as a benefit to US farmers as safety valve for purchasing surplus production.
1954 FFP assistance to Korea includes large quantities of wheat flour shipped under Title I, a total of $1.6 billion through 1974. Later in 1987, Korea became a food donor.
1954 Western Wheat Associates (U.S. wheat growers) used food aid for market development, teaching bakers in Japan and India how to use wheat flour.
1954 PL 480 signed into law by President Eisenhower with primarily Title 1 government to government food going to governments.
1954-59 Food aid to Pakistan, Japan, Taiwan, Yugoslavia, Greece, Italy, Spain.
1955 CARE’s Board of Directors votes to not dissolve, but to refocus the organization’s aid from Europe to other continents, hence the name changes from Cooperative for American Remittances to Europe to “Cooperative for American Relief Everywhere.” This passed by a single vote. CARE implements Title I and II food aid in Haiti, Guatemala, Honduras, India and Dominican Republic.
1958 “Food and Fiber as a Force for Freedom” Senate report recommends food as a force for democracy and coins the phrase “food for peace”, written by Senator Hubert Humphrey, future nominee for US president.
1959 INCAP in Central America creates Incaparina weaning food to prevent malnutrition.
1961 President John F. Kennedy rebrands the initiative “Food for Peace” and consolidates U.S. overseas assistance under the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). Title III food aid created to incentivize agricultural modernization.
1961 WFP proposed by George McGovern, the first director of the U.S. Food for Peace program, as a three-year UN “experiment” to internationalize food aid.
1963 FFP fuels Operation Niños: Ag Secretary Orville Freeman claimed that U.S. food reached one in four Latin American children, that rural school-meal programs in Bolivia and Peru doubled school attendance. Food for Work also in S America.
1966 Egypt gets soft loans to purchase PL 480 food.
1966 Food aid in India peaked during the severe Indian famine of 1965–1966. During this time, the U.S. used food aid as a heavy diplomatic lever. CARE receives food aid for emergency food program in drought areas. President Johnson involved in every food aid decision related to India.
1966 The 1966 Food for Peace Act PL 89-808 reframes aid from surplus disposal to development conditionality and economic development. President Johnson transfers FFP direction from the White House to the State Department. Johnson emphasized agricultural reforms as a precondition for a country to receive food aid.
1966 Likuni Phala fortified weaning food is pioneered in Malawi.
1968 USAID offers Corn-Soy Milk (CSM) and Corn-Soy Blend (CSB) as fortified foods.
1968-69 U.S. C-97 Stratofreighters (Boeing) help deliver $50M of food aid to Biafra during war in Nigeria, via CRS, CARE, the ICRC and Joint Church Aid. First large scale deployment of new CSB. First live-televised famine; introduced kwashiorkor.
1972 World food crisis, Sahel famine.
1972-1974 Dan Shaughnessy directs Food for Peace and planning for the 1974 UN World Food Conference. Henry Kissinger plays central role in targeting countries for food aid.
1975 Integrated Child Development Services large child nutrition program in India. USG Corn Soya Milk and non-fat dried milk provided through South India Flour Mills for CARE’s “balahar” fortified food for school feeding, led by Tim Lavelle.
1976 World Hunger Education Service begins educating the public and USG about food aid issues and begins quarterly publication of the journal, Hunger Notes.
1977 Title III food aid revised to focus on barter for debt forgiveness and tying aid more explicitly to policy reforms and long-term development in recipient countries.
1979 Two key publications: Amartya Sen’s Poverty & Famines demonstrates that food insecurity is not only about food availability but also about access. Lincoln Chen demonstrates that risk of death increases non-linearly by degree of child wasting.
1979 U.S. donates polished (thiamine removed) white rice to anti-Khmer Rouge groups in Cambodia, resulting in epidemic beriberi (deficiency disease).
1980s Maternal Child Health (MCH) is main type of project supported by food aid, having grown during the 1970s. Food for Work also common for roads/infrastructure.
1983 Church World Service (CWS) stops taking USG FFP resources, following controversial episode of 60 Minutes on CBS about CWS programs in countries with communist governments. CWS goes overnight from being the largest food aid agency in the world to one of the smallest.
1984 Burma Border Consortium of NGOs formed, purchasing food locally for Burmese refugees in camps in Thailand, supported by the U.S. Department of State.
1985 Food for Progress Act explicitly references “Private Voluntary Organizations” or PVOs. Food for Progress authorized CCC financing for grants or credit sales to support agricultural development in developing countries and emerging democracies.
1985 6 million MT of food sent for African famine. Two supplemental appropriations made for Ethiopia famine. FFP manages $500M for Ethiopia alone, plus more for Sudan, and across 21 African countries.
1985 Farm Bill promotes PVO/NGO monetization, using Title II as an alternative revenue stream to direct-dollar grants. U.S. Dry Bean Council positioned pintos and black beans as shelf-stable, high-value food for NGOs to monetize. Initially monetization was to pay for internal transport, which was later funded by USAID in the 1990s.
1985 Ellen Levinson creates the Coalition for Food Aid of NGOs in Washington, DC to promote the roles of NGOs in food aid. Title II Enhancement Grant (later, Title II Strengthening Grant) for PVO headquarters capacity building.
1986 Famine Early Warning System Network (later named FEWS.NET), established on the advice of Tufts University’s President Jean Meyer. Credit also to John Field.
1989 Collapse of Soviet Union shifts emergency food aid gradually away from refugees fleeing regimes in host countries, instead to internally displaced persons.
1990 Food Aid Management funded by FFP with 5 original PVO members.
1990 Fred Cuny pioneers local purchase of food as a more appropriate response to food needs in Ethiopia.
1990s PVOs promote local village “grain reserves” with food aid for resilience.
1990-93 End of US food aid to Somalia leads to famine throughout 1992. President Bush directs US airlifts food via C-130s in late 1992. U.S. Food aid monetized to reduce retail prices across the country in 1993, but after famine has receded.
1990 “Partial monetization” turns into “100% monetization” for many NGOs.
1991 Famine Mitigation Project of experts convened by USAID to recommend best practices to prevention of famine. Including livestock, water, local food purchase.
1992 Food aid mobilization to former Soviet states where food insecurity tied to pensions lost from ruble devaluation. USG works through Red Cross movement. Operation Provide Hope channeled 25,000 MT to the Caucasus and Central Asian “Stans.” ADRA involved in Armenia and other states.
1992 Bosnia: Operation Provide Promise began July 2, 1992, becoming the longest-running humanitarian airlift in history. USG provided sorties into besieged Sarajevo, delivering food and other aid to civilians trapped by the Yugoslav war.
1992 Food Aid Management (FAM) publishes Generally Accepted Commodity Accountability Principles, GACAP, representing all NGOs working with US food aid.
1990s PVO/NGO “cooperating sponsors” include CRS, CARE, World Vision, Save the Children, ADRA, Land O Lakes, ACDI/VOCA, Food for the Hungry International, Project Concern, Africare, Technoserve, Partners for Development, World Relief, Mercy Corps, Lutheran World Relief, IOCC, UMCOR, and International Relief and Development. CARE is often lead food agency in refugee camps, while CRS is lead for IDPs.
1992-1994 FFP defines food security as: availability plus access plus bio-utilization.
1993-1996 FFP Director Robert Kramer rebalances food aid from entrenched USAID Mission projects to areas of greatest need (emergencies), and pushed WFP to recognize the greater priority in emergencies of food.
1993 FAM publishes NGO manual, Monetizing Food Aid, a Guide for PVOs.
1992 CRS’ Mike D’Adamo travels to Rome to strike a partnership with WFP, opening an era of WFP collaboration with NGOs.
1994 CARE and CRS account for roughly 72% of PVOs’ regular Title II programs.
1995 2 million refugees plus almost as many IDPs received some 240,000 MT of food in Rwanda and neighboring countries, following genocide and flight.
1995-97 North Korea’s famine received over 1.1 million metric tons.
1996 André Briend & Michel Lescanne create Plumpy’Nut, the first RUTF, at Nutriset.
1997 WFP strikes agreements partnering with NGOs for distribution activities.
1998 USG requires vegetable oil be fortified with vitamin A (and later, Vitamin D).
1997-2001 Asian financial crisis as currencies lost purchasing power. NGOs like IRD, and WFP used food aid as social protection safety nets.
1999 The majority of US food aid now channeled through WFP, not NGOs.
1999 USAID, FAM and the Canadian Govt convene food experts at a symposium at the American Red Cross to document feasibility of fortifying emergency food aid at the local level to mitigate micronutrient deficiency diseases widely seen among refugees.
2000 Global Food for Education Initiative $300 million, with CCC resources. Over next two decades, 5.5 billion meals for 31 million school children in 48 countries.
2000 Congress passes International Food Relief Partnership Act, amending Title II to authorized grants to US nonprofits to create shelf-stable food products for aid, such as Breedlove Foods in Texas.
2001 FFP Officer Tim Lavelle organizes long-term Bridge of Friendship pipeline from hub of Termez over the Amu Darya river from Uzbekistan to Afghanistan, facilitating hundreds of thousands of tons of famine-preventing food aid into Afghanistan.
2002 FFP nutritionist Tom Marchione promotes new formulations of CSB and nutrient-dense foods as part of commodity docket.
2002 CTC/CMAM modality for treating malnourished children with RUTF promoted.
2002 New McGovern-Dole Food for Education program passed in 2002 Farm Bill. This moves school feeding from Food for Peace to USDA.
2002 No more funding for Title III, a government-to-government program under PL 480 where the foreign government sold food for local currency proceeds.
2003 Large-scale U.S. emergency food aid rejected by five southern African famine-affected countries because US corn is genetically modified. Eventually the grain was milled in S. Africa before transporting to Zimbabwe, Malawi, Zambia, etc.
2000s Food aid targets HIV/AIDS response primarily in sub-Sahara Africa. USAID Administrator Natsios pushes for more flexibility for local purchase of food.
2003 Dr. Patricia Wolff from Washington University, St Louis, founds “Meds & Foods for Kids” in Haiti and produces Medika Mamba.
2003 FANTA and FFP develop criteria for prioritization of non-emergency countries.
2004 Jeanie Markunas retires from long career overseeing Food for Peace.
2004 C-SAFE consortium (World Vision, CARE, CRS) manages food aid across southern Africa, with the World Food Programme as a sub-grantee.
2004 Globally, World Vision now channels food aid mostly as a sub-awardee under WFP whereas a few years earlier it was primarily a prime.
2005–2011 RUTF increasingly mainstreamed among NGOs, UNICEF & USAID as part of a shift from blended-flour to lipid-based products for targeted feeding of malnourished.
2006 SMART survey manual released, about measuring acute malnutrition and mortality, with the intent to standardize reliable data across agencies. In 2008, the Global Nutrition Cluster designated Action Against Hunger (ACF) as the global convener of SMART, including ongoing infrastructure, guidance, consultations. FAM hosts a workshop about SMART for monitoring malnutrition.
2008 Farm Bill Sec. 3206 created the pilot USDA Local and Regional Food Aid Procurement Program. The rule established grants for field-based projects consisting of local or regional procurement.
2007 USAID & IFRC plan food aid reserves for future pandemics that contract markets.
2008 Prices for corn and oil increased 125% over a short period, increasing malnutrition worldwide. The USG provided additional $2.8 billion across all international food aid programs, delivering 2.3 million metric tons for 43 million people.
2009 Decades of US food aid to India ends. Meanwhile, India donates food to WFP.
2009 Land O’Lakes International Development nonprofit pilots local purchase of food baskets in Zambia for people with HIV.
2009 Food Aid Quality Review research starts at Tufts University School of Nutrition.
2010 Congress approves The Emergency Food Security Program (EFSP) to allow cash and voucher assistance, instead of only in-kind commodities, using International Disaster Assistance funds.
2010 MSF launches “starved for attention” campaign criticizing the US for donating CSB instead of only procuring RUTF.
2010s Ongoing scale up of RUF production by MANA and Edesia (U.S. NGOs).
2010-2011 Despite early warnings, over 200,000 Somalis die when US cuts off food aid because of Patriot Act. Food aid reinstated only after hunger season ended in 2011.
2010s “Sequencing, layering, and integration” promoted in FFP program designs.
2012 International Food Assistance Improvement Act of 2012 (H.R. 4141) sought to enhance nutritional quality and cost-effectiveness of food aid
2014 Farm Bill expanded Section 202(e) flexibility. USAID increase in authorized 202(e) funding to provide cash transfers, food vouchers, & local purchase modalities.
2014 Charles Hanrahan retires from the Congressional Research Service, after 29 years researching international food aid.
2015 Resilience Food Security Activities (RFSAs) formally introduced as new design of FFP development programs.
Mid 2010s Multi-year, development cooperative agreements, “MYAPs”, replaced by “DFAPs” as main form of FFP projects implemented by NGOs.
2017 Food to four well-publicized man-made famines: S Sudan, Somalia, Yemen & Nigeria.
2018 89% of FFP resources for emergencies. Development food aid % at all time low.
RFSAs emphasize new “graduation model”, along with theories-of-change, learning, and ‘pause and reflect.’
2019 USAID funds Nawiri resilience (RFSA) program in Kenya for northern, arid lands.
2020 Top recipient countries of US food aid from 2015 to 2020 were Yemen, Syria, South Sudan, Somalia, Ethiopia, DRC, Sudan, Afghanistan, Kenya, and Nigeria.
2022 Response to Ukraine war leads to full draining of the Bill Emerson Humanitarian Trust. USG also provides $388 million for shipping/freight, totaling $670 million.
2023 USG and WFP shut down food pipelines to Ethiopia. USAID Administrator on June 8 suspended food aid across Ethiopia because of widespread, coordinated theft of U.S. food by multiple actors (including to military units and markets). This stopped aid for ~20 million people amid drought and post-conflict needs.
2024 First RFSA program in Somalia.
2025 DOGE terminates many FFP (RFSA) and Food for Progress programs, while authority for FFP and FEWS shifted to State Department. A few RFSAs are re-started: Mercy Corps in Kenya, ADRA in DRC, Food for the Hungry in Ethiopia, and CRS in Haiti.
2025 December: FFP transitions again, to US Department of Agriculture which in February commits $452 million to WFP and bids new emergency programs for DRC, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Guatemala, Haiti, Kenya, & Rwanda.
2026 July: FFP announces $235 million to CRS for Ethiopia and Sudan.
2026 USG provides private and UN food aid in recovery from earthquake in Venezuela.

–  Contributed by WHES board members, edited by Steven Hansch