Tag: FFP

U.S. Food Aid (Part 5): Prepositioning Food Stores Overseas

July 19, 2026    This is the fifth article in a series about lessons about U.S. Food for Peace and food aid, recognizing the redesign of food aid by the US Department of Agriculture.   USDA which has requested inputs and advice for future FFP programming in their recent Request for Information, downloadable here.
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Large emergency grain reserves, to have food aid ready for food crises were debated in the 1970s.  The USG, the World Bank, and others explored a large buffer stock of grains during years of abundance to release grain during dangerous global shortages.  The FAO and Food for Peace worked toward a distributed reserve.  The costs were, however, too large.  The Food Security Wheat Reserve Act of 1980 authorized a reserve of up to 4 million metric tons of wheat, solely for emergency humanitarian needs in developing countries, and this eventually became the Bill Emerson Humanitarian Trust.  In recent decades FFP concluded that it was more effective to have food aid pipelines — continuously moving food around the world – that permit food to be redirected for new crises.

However, because U.S. food aid often arrived too late to mitigate fast‑moving food crises, Congress encouraged Food for Peace (FFP) in 2000 to adopt prepositioning as a strategy to accelerate emergency response. A 2007 GAO review found that U.S. food aid was “generally too time-consuming to be sufficiently responsive in emergencies, requiring 4 to 6 months on average.”  

 What Prepositioning Is:  Prepositioning involves procuring and storing shelf‑stable foods, such as lentils, peas, vegetable oil, and other staples, in either U.S. warehouses or overseas sites near high‑need regions. Rather than waiting for a crisis before purchasing and shipping commodities, stocks are positioned in advance.   Prepositioning is also valuable when conditions evolve in complex emergencies and food access changes, and foods need to be offloaded to a prepositioned warehouse (keeping supplies on an ocean vessel is too expensive.).  FFP therefore seeks tactical flexibility that doesn’t rely on bulk ocean vessel carriers which cannot redirect routes.

The first overseas preposition pilot site was Dubai, with broader operational stockpiling beginning in 2005.  The Dubai hub was necessitated because food meant for Yemen had to be placed in storage while access in Yemen was unpredictably blocked due to war.  Questions arose about shelf life after foods were in storage for a period of time.

 Delivery Time Improvements:  The U.S. GAO estimates from FY 2007–2012 show that prepositioning reduced delivery times by one or more months, which can matter when responding to famines.  Timing is particularly relevant in regard to hurricanes, earthquakes and flooding, i.e. short-onset disasters.  But whereas short-onset disasters typically require a few hundred pallets of supplies, famine or larger emergencies often require thousands of tons.

Cost Implications:  Prepositioning adds significant costs due to warehouse storage, additional shipping legs, and sometimes higher commodity prices. Overseas prepositioning is far more expensive than domestic storage. A 2008 analysis found:

  •   __*   +$23/metric ton additional costs, for domestic prepositioning
  •   __*   +$164/metric ton additional costs for overseas prepositioning (about 7× higher) due to two or more ocean voyages

In FY 2012, USAID spent approximately $8 million on warehouses and $13 million on secondary ocean freight from overseas sites.

 Growth of Prepositioning:  Prepositioning expanded from ~3% of food aid (2005–2006) to 22–29% in some regions by the early 2010s.

 Operational Challenges and Losses

A 2013 Inspector General audit of the Djibouti warehouse found a 0.5% inventory reconciliation gap, far above the 0.02% contractual threshold;  Commodities were “infested by ants and tobacco beetles” that were not fumigated; USAID stopped tracking warehouse losses after 2011, despite recording $235,919 in losses in 2007

Poor warehouse management contributed to spoilage. For example:

  •  * In 2025, $2.9 million of Super Cereal Plus spoiled from insect infestation in Djibouti
  •  * In Dubai, $1.37 million of unused commodities incurred $919,000 in storage costs over two years—two‑thirds of their purchase value

Food for Peace Changes After 2014 GAO Recommendations

USAID improved data collection on shipment times, procurement costs, storage, and vessel tracking.  Additional refinements included:

  •  * Better inventory management and rotation
  •  * More site visits and stronger contracting
  •  * Adjusting domestic/overseas balances based on crisis patterns

Prepositioning sites expanded to include Dubai (UAE), Durban (South Africa), Mombasa (Kenya), Djibouti, Colombo (Sri Lanka), and the Canary Islands (Spain).

During the 2011 Horn of Africa famine, FFP deployed $124 million in prepositioned food:

  •   _*  Djibouti: 57%
  •   _*  Durban, South Africa: 25%
  •   _*  Houston: 10%
  •   _*  Mombasa, Kenya: 6%

A recent 2026 inspection report by the Office of the Inspector General found that during a visit in 2025, the storage of sorghum and vegetable oil in the Durban warehouse generally met the contract requirements and best practices, though with some deviations that may risk spoilage.

Prepositioning has been increasingly paired with strategic local procurement to improve responsiveness.  The USG has gained much experience with local purchase of foods in the last 15 years.  Regional purchase offers flexibility and can save on costs.

FAQR Findings and Recommendations

Tufts University’s Food Aid Quality Review (FAQR) identified prepositioning as essential for rapid emergency response. Key recommendations included:

  •    *   Revising procurement systems to allow 12–18‑month contracts with fixed volumes
  •    *   Supporting prepositioned stockpiles of Fortified Blended Foods (FBFs) and specialized nutritious products

Quality Assurance and Incident Management:  The FAQR found recurring quality problems at PREPO warehouses, including improper fumigation. However, incident reporting systems lacked sufficient detail to determine whether damage originated at the manufacturing plant, during shipping, or during storage. FAQR recommended updating Loss and Damage (L&D) reporting templates to better identify root causes and track where contamination or degradation occurred.

One finding:  Analysis of 2011–2016 data showed that overseas “transit” warehouses were the third‑largest destination for food aid products, primarily holding prepositioned stocks destined for Ethiopia and Sudan.

Tufts’ FAQR’s crafted a solution, their Commodity Supply Chain Optimization Model (see diagram below), which was created to help donors and NGOs evaluate prepositioning levels, routing, procurement, and transfer modalities to maximize cost‑effectiveness.

In more recent years, FFP has sought to minimize losses during ocean transport due to humidity, shock and high heat.  This has used advanced methods for small sensors in shipping containers and better tracking of ship routes, temperatures at sea, and queues at ports of disembarkation.

U.S. Food Aid (Part 2): FAFSA – “Food Aid & Food Security Assessments”

July 13, 2026   This is the second of a series of Hunger Notes articles about the re-design of the U.S. Food for Peace (FFP) program,that is now in process at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which just released a request for informational inputs this past week.

In past decades, USAID commissioned two expert teams to review experience with development food-aid programming: the first in 2002–2003 and the second in 2012–2013.   The first, the 2002 “Food Aid and Food Security Assessment“ (FAFSA 1) found that success in health, nutrition, and agricultural components was largely driven by U.S. Government (USG) complementary inputs, such as technical assistance (TA) and training, both of which were primarily financed through the monetization (sale) of food aid. FAFSA 2 reinforced this, emphasizing that distributing food alone is of reduced value for improving food security and should be combined with non-food resources to build durable livelihoods and community resilience.  Although styled as an ‘assessment,’ the 2002 report functioned primarily as a broad program review.  It addressed the wide variety of competing mandates being pursued, including support for microenterprise, education, HIV/AIDS and emergencies, all while achieving sustainability.

During the two decade period, 1993 – 2013, the US shipped an estimated 17 million metric tons of food, worth $4.5 billion (not adjusted for inflation) for development programs (not including the larger volume for emergencies)..

Both studies found that FFP exit strategies were weak and that project outcomes were often not sustained.  Both studies reported broad improvements in child nutritional outcomes across the countries reviewed though this was based on a mixed set of project evaluations that did not include randomized controlled trials (i.e., with control groups).   Measures of child (under five years of age) nutritional status focused on stunting (which is a long-term outcome) and weight-for-age, not weight-for-height (wasting) that is more critical for health.

FAFSA-1:  Implementing agencies “should continue to use growth monitoring and promotion as key strategies to improve the nutritional status of children under 3 years old and improve referral and follow-up of malnourished children. [They] should establish clear protocols for identification and referral of malnourished children to health facilities.”

  • ◊ Agricultural programs ought to be market-driven, not just production-driven. While early programs often focused merely on increasing staple crop yields, FAFSA-2 found that the most successful agricultural programs adopted a “Pull Plus Push Model.” This approach links farmers to promising, higher-value markets (the “pull”) while simultaneously providing them with  new technologies, TA, and training needed to compete in those markets (the “push”).  Furthermore, FAFSA-2 emphasizes that programs should target farmers who are “vulnerable and viable.” For food-insecure populations who lack sufficient land or assets to farm their way out of poverty realistically, programs should focus instead on creating off-farm jobs and non-agricultural income generation.

  • ◊  Maternal and Child Health and Nutrition (MCHN) should focus on prevention during the first 2 1/2 years of life.  A major finding in FAFSA-2 was that preventive supplementary feeding, targeting all pregnant/lactating women and children under two years of age, is significantly more effective at reducing stunting than recuperative feeding, which only treats older children who are already malnourished. Additionally, evidence suggests that providing food to individual people is more effective and cost-efficient than providing larger rations to whole families.

◊  Food-for-Work (FFW) should be focused on the creation of public goods such as roads and canals.  The authors viewed FFW as having poor sustainability.
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◊  Income generation should be combined with behavioral change such as caretaker behavior for diets and improved hygiene.  Increasing a household’s income does not always  improve family diets or reduce child undernutrition.
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◊ Program evaluations should be more independent, standardized, and professionalized.  FAFSA-1 noted the need to reduce variability in how performance indicators were defined and measured and recommended shifting the burden of complex evaluations away from those NGOs implementing programs.
Both study teams, composed of different individuals, were led by agricultural economists, so it was not unusual that both studies focused on gains in crop yields and supply chains.
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Differences

Co-authored by Roberta van Haeften, Mary Ann Anderson, Herbert Caudill and Eamonn Kilmartin, the FAFSA-2 (2013) report goes further than the first report by:

  • » Quantifying impacts (e.g., stunting reductions, income improvements).  FAFSA-2 calculated that U.S. food aid led to reductions in underweight children by 0.63%/year. Asia/LAC outperformed Africa (1.53% vs. 0.98% annual stunting reduction).
  • »  Emphasizing water, sanitation and hygiene interventions:

“Ninety-four percent of the Title II programs with WASH interventions created and trained Village Water Committees. This very important step greatly improved the likelihood of successful operation and maintenance once the Title II programs ended.”

  • »  Introducing new frameworks (e.g., risk/vulnerability, Food Security Country Frameworks).
  • »  Aligning with broader U.S. initiatives (Feed the Future,  Global Health).
  • »  Documenting external critiques (e.g., monetization, urbanization).

Where the first report dwelled more on qualitative data, the second report tried to include a meta-analysis of nutritional impacts, standardized indicators (MAHFP, HDDS), and quantitative trends (e.g., stunting reductions).

The second (FAFSA-2) report reviewed total of 101 programs (projects) across 28 countries. These were distributed geographically with 64 programs in Africa, 23 in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), and 14 in Asia.  FAFSA-2: observed that the majority (57%) of food aid beneficiaries were women (2009), with a slightly higher female participation in health and nutrition programs (59%)

FAFSA-2 addressed supplementary feeding for families with AIDS and TB patients.  And it took a broader view of USAID programming, looking at alignment with non-FFP funding areas by Feed the Future (FTF) and Global Health Initiative (GHI), that had not yet been launched in 2002 when FAFS-1 was commissioned.  FAFSA-2’s review included some~80% of resources going to agriculture (49%) and household nutrition (35%).  A declining 8% went to food-for-education, which has been phased over USDA.

Using the conceptual model shown below, the FAFSA-2 report concluded that FFP programs were generally successful at increasing household access to food, with 92% of the reporting programs seeing improvements in the number of months of adequate household food provisioning. Furthermore, 79% of reporting programs saw improvements in household dietary diversity, and 80% exceeded their targets for increasing household income.  The FAFSA-2 report highlights that by identifying and applying the specific technical models, approaches, and practices that contributed to these positive food security impacts, and by learning from the strategies that did not work well, there is a tremendous opportunity to improve overall program performance in the future.

U.S. Food Aid (Part 1): Reflections about Food Aid by Long-Term Practitioner

July 7, 2026    by Mara Russell     This is the first in a series of articles by Hunger Notes about the U.S. Food for Peace (FFP) Program.  “Food for Peace Title II Non-Emergency Programs: What are they and Why are they needed?”

In the United States, government-funded “Food for Peace” (FFP) programs  transitioned from USAID to the State Department when the former agency was dissolved  in 2025. Several months later, the Food for Peace program was transferred to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), a large federal agency that had not managed this program previously. Soon after this transition, $452 million in FFP resources was awarded directly to the U.N. World Food Programme (WFP) for food activities in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), El Salvador, Ethiopia, Guatemala, Haiti, Kenya and Rwanda.[i]

Then, as recently reported in Hunger Notes, in 2026, USDA released a “Notice of Funding Opportunity” for nonprofits (NGOs) for new Emergency Food for Peace programs, naming the same set of countries that were eligible for food assistance.  These upcoming programs are scheduled to be worth $357 million in total.[ii]  Since a total of $1.2 billion was appropriated by Congress for Food for Peace in FY26,[iii], USDA is now considering how to implement the rest of the funding for “development” or non-emergency food programs, referred to during the past seven years as Resilience Food Security Activities or “RFSAs.”[iv].

One critical variable that non-emergency programs have leveraged during recent cycles of USG funding is timeframe. These NGO-administered programs are generally five years in length, while emergency programs only last for a maximum of two years. Emergency programs are designed to address the impacts of acute (wasting) malnutrition and severe food insecurity. Resources in emergency programs are provided to address short- to medium- term impacts of a severe shock. This can be due to a natural disaster such as an earthquake, a severe storm, drought, or  severe conflict. The spread of an epidemic or pandemic disease can also result in such impacts, either due to a breakdown of production and markets, or due to people being at greater risk of malnutrition due to the impacts of a disease. Or shocks can result from a combination of several things.

On the other hand, non-emergency programs focus on preventing emergencies.   They address the underlying causes of hunger that tend to become more serious when conditions are such that food supplies become limited, or people lose access to food due to the types of shocks outlined above. These underlying causes, such as poverty, cultivation practices that result in poor yields, inadequate services or limited safety-nets that result in food insecurity and malnutrition, lack of income earning opportunities, poor access to water for agriculture and for drinking and inadequate sanitation that can cause water-borne disease- a significant underlying cause of acute and chronic malnutrition, lack of attention to the special nutrition needs of women of childbearing age, pregnant women and young children, and lack of capacity to prepare for potential shocks that impact food security and nutrition. These are complex issues that call for a combination of access to goods and services, while adopting of behaviors and practices within households.  Programs also ensure that the food consumed meets the standards of a healthy diet, prevent water-borne disease, and build resilience to unexpected shocks.

This takes time. There is a limit to what can be done in only one or two years. This is especially the case because according to the 2026 USDA Emergency funding opportunity, it takes between 45 and 90 days from the award of a program until food aid from the Food for Peace program can be exported from the United States, and then up to another 6 months for commodities to arrive in the country where they will be distributed.[v]

A second factor has to do with geography.  Emergency food aid programs are in countries and locations where there is an active ongoing shock, and large concentrations of people, including refugees and internally displaced people, living in a situation of extreme food and nutrition insecurity that should be addressed immediately.  Identification of these locations is guided by early warning systems or methodologies that classify people based on the degree to which they are currently food insecure or malnourished. The system that tends to be most respected internationally is the U.N.’s Integrated Phase Classification or IPC system. During its existence, USAID utilized this system, and now USDA is using it also as a way of designating where and among whom an emergency program should be implemented. In its recent funding request, USDA stated that a minimum of 20% of the population to be targeted with food aid should be living at IPC 3 or higher. The IPC classifies populations at levels 1 through 5 based on the severity of food insecurity as follows: 1 = None/Minimal, 2 = Stressed, 3 = Crisis, 4 = Emergency and 5 = Famine. The “shorthand” clarification used for those populations needing immediate assistance are those at IPC 3+.[vi]

However, non-emergency programs aim to reduce the likelihood that people living in a particular geographic area will experience conditions at or above IPC 3. Countries prioritized for these programs may already have sizeable populations at IPC 3+, but there may not be significant active shock conditions causing this situation. Sometimes, populations may be at IPC 3+ due to a shock that has previously increased food insecurity and malnutrition. For instance, after the Haiti earthquake in 2010, there were emergency programs that addressed food insecurity, malnutrition, reconstruction and access to food for the people impacted by this shock.  However, by 2013, many of the immediate impacts of the quake, such as food insecurity and displacement were initially addressed, but there was a need to address long-term root causes of malnutrition and vulnerability.  At that time USAID implemented a non-emergency program that sought to address these underlying causes and increase the ability of the country to cope with severe shocks.[vii]

Many countries where non-emergency programs are implemented experience cyclical shocks that recur on a periodic basis. They do not always exist in shock situations but may be impacted by droughts or floods during serious weather events, such as El Niño or La Niña events. During the El Niño event in 2023-2024, most of the harvest of the country of Zimbabwe was ruined due to inadequate and poorly timed rainfall.[viii]  However, on-going non-emergency programs continued to increase yields, increase incomes and reduce malnutrition, while emergency programs supported households and communities as necessary with additional food and other emergency assistance. Most of these countries also experience an annual “hunger season”, which tends to occur anywhere from 3-6 months prior to the next harvest when food stocks and cash earned from the prior harvest have been depleted.  Thus, while non-emergency programs are not implemented in contexts where active shocks occur, they may be targeted within fragile environments where hunger seasons make life very tenuous for people living in those geographies.

Another important element in these programs are the participants who are targeted. In emergency programs, large portions of the population are highly vulnerable due to the impacts of a disaster, such as an earthquake, a hurricane or other cyclonic storm, or severe conflict. In these cases, those targeted for assistance may have been displaced, or otherwise lost everything – including their health. In such emergency situations, it does not matter whether people were rich or poor prior to such shocks.

However, Title II non-emergency program participants tend to be those who are poorest, receive the fewest services, and are at greatest risk of malnutrition and food insecurity.  Often the focus is on those who have the least to fall back on when shocks occur and tend to be those most impacted by annual hunger seasons and other severe shocks.  A case in point is the Ethiopia Productive Safety-Net Program (PSNP), which has been supported by Title II non-emergency food aid since its inception in 2005.[ix] The PSNP targets people who are impacted by the annual hunger season through a Cash or Food for Assets (FFA) activity that creates a safety-net during the period of greatest vulnerability in normal years while developing assets that communities can use during good years and fall back on in bad years. The PSNP is supported by the Ethiopian government as well as several other donors. During normal years, a certain number of households are targeted for the program based on their chronic food insecurity and malnutrition. However, during years when poor crop yields and impacts increase the number of households needing food assistance, the number of households targeted increases to also address the needs of those who would not normally be included in the PSNP program.

In addition to selecting participants based on their food insecurity, there is a difference between how emergency and non-emergency programs select participants when it comes to malnutrition. In the case of emergency programs, care is taken to address the needs of people who are acutely malnourished, mainly children under 5 and pregnant and lactating women. In the case of emergency programs, acute malnutrition, in which the body loses weight rapidly, becomes a major risk. Moderate acute malnutrition exists when body weight for height among children under 5 falls below 2 standard deviations from the global mean, and severe acute malnutrition exists when this falls to 3 standard deviations below the mean.  If the rate of wasting malnutrition in a population reaches or exceeds 10%, this is deemed a humanitarian emergency requiring immediate rehabilitation using ready to use therapeutic and supplementary foods  that provide concentrations of fat, calories, protein and other nutrients all aimed at ensuring survival and rapid weight gain. Women of childbearing age, including those who are pregnant or breastfeeding as well as men also benefit from rehabilitation with RUTF or ready to use supplementary foods (RUSF), designed to also rehabilitate people in these conditions. These products are available via Title II.

However, in the case of non-emergency programs, participants are targeted based on the rate of “Stunting”, or chronic malnutrition, which exists when height-for-age among children under the age of 5 falls below 2 standard deviations under the global mean. The logic behind this is that there are milestones for linear growth that children need to reach before the age of 2 to avoid being developmentally disabled and to ensure a healthy life. Infants and young children under age 2 in this condition can recover from this and their linear growth can catch up to normal levels before they reach age 2.  However, after these children reach age 2, it becomes extremely difficult for their growth to catch up.  It is possible for a child to be both chronically and acutely malnourished (also known as “wasted”). It is also possible for stunted children not to be wasted and wasted children not to be stunted. However, there are certainly connections between these different types of malnutrition.  Nonetheless, stunting and wasting are indicative of different situations based on how and when they occur within the population. High levels of acute malnutrition indicate the existence of an acute shock as it does not take long for children to become acutely malnourished. This occurs when children are deprived of the food they need for a period of days or weeks (at most). However, it can take a long time for a child to become stunted. Children become stunted because they lack sufficient nutrients in their diet (both macro- and micro-nutrients) to fulfill their daily requirements. It takes months for a child to become stunted, and it also takes a long time for them to overcome this problem. If there are a lot of stunted children in the population, this indicate that the population is chronically food insecure and poor.

Thus, non-emergency Title II programs target populations with high chronic malnutrition rates among children under 5 as this is a clear red flag that there is a significant poverty and food insecurity problem within these populations. Targeting participants from these areas indicates that while there may not an active shock situation, there may still be a lot of food insecurity – which left unaddressed – could lead to more serious problems.  People living in these contexts are on the edge, and one missed harvest due to a storm or drought or earthquake or locust swarm or violent attack could result in them becoming part of the emergency case load of Title II programs.

Non-emergency Title II programs focus on ensuring that infants are exclusively breastfed until they are six months old, and that beyond that time their diets consist of the types of diverse foods that children of their age need to meet their linear growth milestones by age two. At the same, these programs  also address the underlying causes of chronic malnutrition. They train mothers to feed their children properly, including exclusive breastfeeding, take care to prevent water-borne disease through handwashing and use of clean water. At the same time, these programs recognize that mothers will be unable to feed their children the types of food they need if they are not able to produce or purchase it throughout the year. Raising these issues among all community members can build support and solidarity to ensure that children’s and women’s dietary needs are met. In addition, creation of clean water access and sanitation – including installation of accessible working water points and household latrines – support practices such as frequent handwashing with soap, and reduction of open defecation. These practices in turn reduce water-borne disease from hindering the absorption of the nutritious food being consumed. And, integrating these practices into people’s lives takes a long time, thus the longer timeframe of these programs is critical.

Non-emergency programs also provide a few more benefits that make them important to reduce the emergency caseload of Title II. They target countries and regions that are fragile and shock prone. They can detect changes in conditions,  both positive and negative, which can reduce time lags on responses. If the number of acutely malnourished children begins to escalate – this could easily occur within the areas where populations are most food insecure. If harvests begin to fail due to weather impacts, many farmers in the geography where the program is implemented (they may or may not be participants) will experience these conditions first.  The presence of an implementer (NGO) in these areas can ensure the monitoring of IPC levels, levels of acute malnutrition, impacts on harvests and prevalence of diseases – including those that are water-borne.

At the same time, these programs seek to enable participants to anticipate and cope better with the types of shocks that normally impact these geographic areas. Reviewing the history of the targeted population, it is possible to learn more about the major shocks that typically impact them, and they are sometimes cyclical. For instance, locust swarms may occur every so often in parts of East Africa. Working with communities likely to be impacted by these swarms during years when they don’t occur to prepare for when the locusts return will help participants to cope more effectively when this happens. There are now many agricultural technologies that enable farmers to adapt to drought. This could range from water-harvesting, to irrigation, to use of drought-adopted seeds, to reorienting productive systems through methods such as Resilient Design and Perma-gardening.[x]  The last two types of systems prevented farmers from losing their crops during the El Niño drought event in Zimbabwe mentioned above.[xi] It was a non-emergency Title II programs that provided training to farmers to enable them to maintain their crops in the face of this severe drought.

Finally, one of the key underlying causes of food insecurity is poverty.  Farmers may depend on their crops for food, but they need cash to fall back on when their crops fail, and they need to purchase food from markets. Also, for farmers to maintain their land and plant crops, they need cash for inputs and often to pay for land,  either as the owner or as a renter or lease holder.  It also costs money for children to attend school, and it costs money to get to markets, visit health centers, buy fertilizers and crop-protection products. Maintaining water points and latrines can also cost money because spare parts and their installation is not free. And when the program is over after five years of investment, ensuring that people not only achieve but also sustain their food security will mean that people have a secure source of cash and savings to fall back on.  Otherwise, closing the program will be commensurate to a shock for those who have benefitted from it.

A methodology that has proven itself over the years, and within the past nine years in Title II non-emergency programs has been the Graduation Approach.[xii]  Developed and initiated by BRAC in Bangladesh, this approach has been tested throughout the world in fragile contexts where large numbers of poor and food insecure people live.[xiii] The approach targets extremely poor people, provides them with food assistance safety-nets  and then links them to a savings and loan group where they meet others in their situation and obtain peer group support. At the same time, they are provided training in a livelihood opportunity for which there is demand within their context. This livelihood training could be agricultural (crops or livestock) or non-agricultural in nature and offers people the opportunity to become employed or operate their own business. After their training is complete, participants  receive small grants or assets (such as equipment or animals) that enable them to start their activities until they become viable. During this time, they continue to receive coaching and mentoring so that they can be successful within their chosen livelihood. They also receive training and support with respect to nutrition, water and sanitation and learn to anticipate and respond effectively to shocks. The Graduation Approach has been shown to ensure a high return on investment and results are sustained over time after the end of the program.[xiv]

Now that the program has moved to USDA, the leadership is reviewing the program and will likely make changes that will increase the cost  of food and ocean freight versus what is provided to those in need.[xv]  The recent Emergency Program set of funding opportunities stipulated that at least 50% of program budgets must be devoted to commodities and ocean freight.[xvi] This reduced the funding that could be provided to internal transportation storage and handling to distribute commodities. It also reduced the funds that could be provided for technical interventions such as monitoring of severe food insecurity and levels of acute malnutrition, training mothers about how to monitor and refer their children, and enabling technical interventions that will help people to recover from emergency situations. It is possible that the same 50% requirement may be put in place by USDA for future Non-Emergency Programs, and this could reduce the resources available to enable the sustainable improvement of food security and nutrition in extremely poor and fragile contexts as described above.

Changes in the legislation over the years made it possible to integrate international disaster assistance funds  with emergency Food for Peace programs enabling the use of cash, vouchers and local, regional and international procurement  to ensure that the right resources were available at the right time to address peoples’ needs. This prevented the need to wait 6 – 8  months for U.S. commodities to arrive in country to begin addressing acute malnutrition.  As noted above, the impact of acute malnutrition is rapid and if not addressed quickly will lead to death.

Similarly, U.S. legislative changes enabled the coordinated use of Development Assistance funds with non-emergency Food for Peace programs, which covered the cost of the complex interventions discussed above. These resources also provided the opportunity for programs to transition people away from dependence on U.S. food aid and foreign assistance.  While food aid has been important for non-emergency programs to build stability for those suffering chronic food insecurity, we will not ultimately accomplish Title II’s objectives if people remain dependent on food aid at the end of each program.

As global conditions worsened around the turn of the century, the need for emergency food aid programs increased around the world.  These needs began to reduce the funds available to pay for non-emergency programs. Thus, in the 2008 U.S. Farm Bill, a Non-Emergency “Safe Box” was integrated into Title II legislation to establish minimum funding to ensure that these programs could continue to be implemented. Currently $365 million is designated for the implementation of these programs.  $700 million of USG  funding from FY26 and FY27 allocations may be made available soon for these programs.[xvii]

While much remains unclear about the future of U.S. Title II non-emergency food aid programs, the need for activities that reduce and prevent high levels of acute and chronic food insecurity and malnutrition has not diminished,  and perhaps has increased, during the 18 months since the 2025 Executive Order to pause foreign assistance was announced.[xviii] It is also clear that addressing the underlying causes of food and nutrition insecurity is still important. Hopefully, USDA will hold true to this fundamental mandate of these programs. This will entail implementing these programs over a 5-year timeframe, in fragile geographies where shocks are frequent, among participants who are chronically poor and/or malnourished, while increasing peoples’ ability to cope with shocks, and producing outcomes that are sustainable.  If these are not the Title II mandate’s parameters for non-emergency programs, they run the risk of violating legislation..

Further Reading:

Food for Peace / U.S. Food Aid

Global Hunger, IPC, and Malnutrition

Country-specific articles relevant to your examples (Haiti, Ethiopia, Zimbabwe, DRC, etc.)

REFERENCES:

[i] Miolene, Elissa, USDA takes over Food for Peace with $452M World Food Programme deal, 29 January 2026.

[ii] U.S. Department of Agriculture, Food for Peace Notice of Funding Opportunity, Fiscal Year 2025, May 13, 2026

[iii] Miolene, Elissa, House locks Food for Peace into USDA with 50% commodity requirement,1 May 2026,

[iv]  These progras were known variously as Development Activity Programs (DAPs), Multi-Year Activity Programs (MYAPs), Development Food Assistance Programs (DFAPs), Development Food Security Activities (DFSAs) and Resilience Food Security Activities (RFSAs). There were differences between these programs, but those differences were not necessarily associated with the names given to them.

[v] U.S. Department of Agriculture, Food for Peace Notice of Funding Opportunity, Fiscal Year 2025, May 13, 2026, https://grants.gov/search-results-detail/362375.

[vi] Integrated Phase Classification, https://www.ipcinfo.org/ipcinfo-website/ipc-overview-and-classification-system/en/?__cf_chl_f_tk=vmmArOlbSf51oWrK_G0UqCVyP0w6jSuy9SVydqdsIlk-1783098737-1.0.1.1-XKb_PsSY1mVf1b2u8K3Udd85lbGsjDgfDcO0yyY9UrE,

[vii] https://borgenproject.org/kore-lavi-provides-food-security-in-haiti/; accessed July 3, 2026.

[viii] United Nations, UN News, Zimbabwe faces worsening food crisis due to El Niño droughts, 7 August 2024, https://news.un.org/en/story/2024/08/1152936.

[ix] IFPRI, Productive Safety-Net Program, https://essp.ifpri.info/productive-safety-net-program-psnp/, accessed July 3, 2026

[x] FANRPAN, Scaling up Resilience Design in Zimbabwe: Position Paper, https://fanrpan.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Takunda_CareSlideDeck-1.pdf.

[xi] Chitsa, Tanaka, Growing Hope: Community gardens flourish amidst El Nino challenges, 27 August 2024, https://www.carezimbabwe.org/growing-hope-community-gardens-flourish-amidst-el-nino-challenges/.

[xii] AVSI, Graduating to Resilience, https://www.avsi.org/en/graduating-to-resilience

[xiii] BRAC, Graduation Out of Ultra Poverty, https://www.brac.net/solutions/development/ending-poverty/ultra-poor-graduation/

[xiv] Abrams, William, Joshua Goldstein, Larry Reed, Carine Roenen, and Jean Francois Tardif, The Business Case for Investing in Graduation, September 2017, ultra-poverty.org, https://www.ultra-poverty.org/blog-post/the-business-case-for-investing-in-graduation/#.

[xv] Miolene, Elissa, House locks Food for Peace into USDA with 50% commodity requirement, 1 May 2026,

[xvi] U.S. Department of Agriculture, Food for Peace Notice of Funding Opportunity, Fiscal Year 2025, May 13, 2026,

[xvii] Miolene, Elissa, US Dept of Agriculture to reboot Food for Peace’s ‘safe box’ programs,

[xviii] The White House, Reevaluating and Realigning United States Foreign Aid, January 20, 2025, https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/reevaluating-and-realigning-united-states-foreign-aid/.

Mara Russell is a career programmer of Food for Peace Title II food aid including leading Food Aid Management, and spearheading CARE’s food aid for decades.

New Food for Peace Programming by the U.S. Department of Agriculture

May 24, 2026    BACKGROUND:   The primary way that the United States government, working with nonprofits, has fought hunger and malnutrition around the world has been through the U.S. Food for Peace program (originally Public Law 480, or PL 480), which began in 1954 and was expanded by President Kennedy in 1961, at which time it took on the name Food for Peace (FFP). Over seven decades, it has reached roughly 4 billion people in 150 countries through a mix of emergency relief and longer‑term development projects. Annual funding has typically ranged from $1.2–2 billion in recent years for the core Title II program (the main grant‑based humanitarian component), though overall international food assistance outlays have averaged $2–2.6 billion, fluctuating with global needs.

The structure and flow of resources for FFP begin with Congress, where appropriations come through agriculture and foreign operations bills. In its early history, most FFP aid went to “development,” but over time the balance has shifted toward emergencies. The main food commodities provided by the United States have been wheat, rice, sorghum, corn‑soy blends, beans, peas, lentils, vegetable oil, and ready‑to‑use supplemental foods. These are purchased competitively from U.S. farmers and producers and often bagged on ocean freighters bound for Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East.

RECENT ADMINISRATIVE SHIFTS:   After the Trump Administration dissolved USAID in 2025, FFP planning and administration moved temporarily to the State Department and then, in late 2025, to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, with a strong “America First” focus on buying American‑grown foods. In December 2025, USDA and the U.S. Department of State signed an interagency agreement for USDA to take over FFP. USDA has long supervised other in‑kind international food aid programs, including the school‑feeding‑focused McGovern‑Dole Food for Education and the development‑focused Food for Progress (FFPr) programs, each delivered via partnerships with NGOs and the U.N. World Food Programme.

For many months it had been unclear how USDA would redesign FFP, how it would work with other organizations to deliver aid, and where. Then, in early May 2026, USDA announced a $350 million allocation of foods to WFP. In response, U.S. Wheat Associates announced that it “welcomes the announcement of the award of 20,000 metric tons (MT) (735,000 bushels) for emergency feeding programs under the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) administration of the FFP program.”

NEW OFFERINGS

The new May 2026 Notice of Funding Opportunities published by USDA for NGO proposals sets out three reforms USDA has applied to the inherited portfolio:

  • *-100% U.S. origin for every commodity procured.
  • *-Strict traceability of every taxpayer dollar to guard against fraud, waste, and diversion.
  • *-“Offboarding and graduating” criteria, so that Title II funding “prioritizes emergency and in‑need geographies rather than forever‑aid countries.”

At present, the geographic scope has narrowed. NGO applications can only be submitted for seven countries: Democratic Republic of the Congo, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Guatemala, Haiti, Kenya, and Rwanda—a notable contraction from the broader Title II caseload USAID historically managed. Award sizes range from $20 million to $200 million, with USDA anticipating seven to fourteen awards out of $357 million in available federal funding, and a performance period of 18 to 24 months. The application submission deadline was June 12, 2026. Eligible applicants include public or private organizations, including intergovernmental organizations, language that explicitly keeps WFP and similar multilateral partners involved, while foreign governments are excluded.

With the large‑scale defunding of U.S. NGOs and other aid partners in 2025, intense competition for these new FFP program awards is expected.  NGOs such as CARE, CRS, World Vision, Mercy Corps, Save the Children and Action Against Hunger applied for FFP grants.

At the same time, USDA is layering the program on top of its existing Food for Progress (FFPr) framework. Separate from Title II FFP, the new FY26 Food for Progress solicitation to NGOs—released last week, closing July 6, 2026, with awards expected by late September—makes up to $226 million available across seven countries: Bangladesh, Bolivia, Ecuador, Morocco, Philippines, Sri Lanka, and Thailand, with awards of $28–35 million over four‑to‑five‑year performance periods. Food for Progress operates on a monetization model authorized under the Food Security Act of 1985 (7 U.S.C. § 1736o) in which the USDA buys U.S. commodities domestically and ships them overseas, the NGO sells them in emerging markets, and the NGO uses the proceeds to fund agricultural development.  Monetization used to be standard as well for FFP programs particularly in the 1990s.

Both of these competitions for bids are concurrent with USDA funding opportunities for school feeding (McGovern‑Dole).

See also:  USDA:  https://www.fas.usda.gov/programs/food-peace

https://alliancetoendhunger.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/FINAL-FY27-ATEH-Senate-Agriculture-Appropriations-Letter-1.pdf

and:  https://www.devex.com/news/house-locks-food-for-peace-into-usda-with-50-commodity-requirement-112420

A primer from the Congressional Research Service here