Tag: food security

Why the Destruction of USAID Increases Hunger and Harms America

March 21, 2025

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the agency created by Congress in 1961 to lead America’s development and humanitarian assistance, has been decimated by President Trump’s January 21 Executive Order freezing U.S. foreign assistance.

Why should Americans care? For several reasons. First, USAID, until it was decimated, was the world’s largest provider of food aid, nutritional, health, and humanitarian assistance, saving millions of lives of women and children around the world. While many Americans believe that foreign aid takes a large share of federal spending, in fact this assistance accounts for less than 1% of government spending.

Cancellation of this aid has direct and immediate impact on vulnerable people in low- and middle-income countries. Nicholas Enrich, the acting assistant administrator for global health at USAID, who was placed on administrative leave on March 2 for documenting the failure of the Trump administration to follow through on its pledge to allow waivers for lifesaving foreign aid, has written that the consequences of halting $7.7 billion in funding for lifesaving global health programs will lead to the following each year:

  • 5–17.9 million cases of malaria, with an additional 71,000–166,000 deaths;
  • a 28-32% increase in tuberculosis globally;
  • an additional 200,000 paralytic polio cases;
  • more than 28,000 cases of Ebola, Marburg, or related diseases;
  • 17 million pregnant women without access to life-saving services when faced with delivery complications;
  • 11 million newborns not receiving critical postnatal care;
  • 1 million children not treated for severe acute malnutrition.

“USAID’s failure to implement lifesaving humanitarian assistance under the waiver is the result of political leadership at USAID, the Department of State, and DOGE, who have created and continue to create intentional and/or unintentional obstacles that have wholly prevented implementation,” wrote Enrich on Feb. 28. “This will no doubt result in preventable death, destabilization, and threats to national security on a massive scale.”

Second, the decimation of USAID hurts American businesses, faith-based organizations, and farmers. USAID had a well-established strategy to prioritize contracts for American small businesses like Rhode Island-based Edesia which manufacturers a lifesaving paste for severely malnourished babies. Cancellation of Edesia’s contract not only harmed this business of 150 employees but also the farmers across 25 states, the U.S. ocean liners Edesia paid to ship hundreds of metric tons of its Plumpy’Nut therapeutic paste, and finally, to the international organizations that distributed it to children staving off death.

Third, this assistance, proudly branded by USAID as “From the American People”, created good will towards the United States and its citizens. It also contributed to America’s and global health security by fighting infectious diseases and strengthening local capacity to detect and fight scourges like Ebola, Mpox, and Avian flu which continue to be threats to the United States. Wholesale cancellation of support for infectious disease and research on how to prevent and mitigate pandemics makes Americans less safe and more vulnerable.

Presidential Advisor Elon Musk bragged on X on February 3 that “We spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper. Could have gone to some great parties. Did that instead.” Under the direction of Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, USAID’s headquarters in Washington, DC was closed, over 4,000 USAID staff terminated, and another 4,765 direct hires placed on administrative leave.

By early February, USAID contractors and implementing partners, including those providing humanitarian assistance and emergency food relief like Catholic Relief Services and Lutheran World Relief, began receiving stop-work orders. Some of these contractors and implementing partners then received communication that the stop-work orders were lifted, but then in many cases were contacted again to say the stop-work orders were still in effect.

Effectively gutting the USAID workforce means that actions to issue waivers for lifesaving programs, as the Trump Administration claimed it was doing, or to support the continuance of “approved” programs, are not happening. USAID’s payment system is not accessible. As a result, most contractors and implementing partners have not been paid for work they did before the freeze, and many have been forced to lay off and furlough staff or even cease operations.

While U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, now the acting administrator of USAID, has repeatedly said he has issued a blanket waiver for lifesaving programs, including food and medical aid, no staff at implementing partners or USAID means promises of such waivers are cruel hoaxes. In early March, Rubio announced that 5,200 USAID programs had been terminated and that about 1000 USAID programs would be continued but administered by the State Department.

In addition to stopping the delivery of food and humanitarian assistance, the Trump Administration also ended the USAID-funded Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET) which monitored drought, crop production, food prices, and other indicators in order to forecast food insecurity in more than 30 countries. FEWS NET was created following the 1984 famine in Ethiopia, which killed an estimated 400,000 to 1 million people – and caught the world off guard. President Ronald Reagan then challenged USAID to create a system to provide early warning and inform international relief efforts in an evidence-based way. Managed by contractor Chemonics International, FEWS NET employed researchers in the United States and around the world to provide eight-month projections of where food crises will likely emerge. Now, its work to prevent hunger in Sudan, South Sudan, Somalia, Yemen, Ethiopia, Afghanistan, and many other countries has been stopped. Amid the aid freeze, FEWS NET has no funding to pay staff in Washington or those working on the ground. The wealth of data that underpinned global analysis of food security – used by researchers around the world and paid for by the American people – has been pulled offline.

Aside from the immediate damage to health and health security that the decimation of USAID poses, the assault on USAID has also removed access to the world’s largest public repository of development assistance documentation, the USAID Development Experience Clearinghouse. A public good paid for by American taxpayers, the Clearinghouse and its thousands of resources are now unavailable. It is clear from the draconian cuts to USAID programs and staff that it is not a priority for the Trump Administration to make development knowledge and information available.

State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World (SOFI) Report 2020

The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World is an annual report prepared by FAO, IFAD, UNICEF, WFP and WHO to inform on progress towards ending hunger, achieving food security and improving nutrition and to provide in depth analysis on key challenges for achieving this goal in the context of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development

Pandemic Exposes Long-Standing Problems in the Global Food System

June 7, 2020

In a very short time, the response to the COVID-19 virus pandemic has exposed many of the long-standing structural weaknesses and inequalities of the global food system.  After years of steady progress in reducing the total number of chronically underfed people, the tide has turned backward, due to civil wars, crop failure, climate change, and now most recently—COVID-19.  The United Nations World Food Programme estimates that more than a quarter of a billion people face starvation this year due to the multiple impacts of COVID-19.

COVID-19 is accelerating global hunger in two key ways:  government-imposed lock-downs adversely affect the poor and unemployed families who are running out of money to buy food, even where it is still available. Ironically, due to the weakened demand stemming from a lack of cash, the FAO-monitored food price index has fallen to a 17-month low.  Also, many of these vulnerable families depend on school feeding programs to ensure that their children have access to nutritious food at least once a day. The closure of schools is depriving 370 million children of this critical source of nourishment.

Global food trade has also been disrupted. In Africa, many borders have been closed, consequently transporters cannot move food, resulting in significant food spoilage.  These localized disruptions have resulted in hoarding and have pushed up prices of staples such as rice.  In Senegal, trade restrictions and curfews have adversely affected the food economy, especially the seafood sector upon which the poor depend for livelihoods and sustenance.  Exacerbating the situation, some major grain producing countries exporters are contemplating controls on food exports. Such trade restrictions make a bad situation worse.  Food deficit countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America, which are suffering from rises in unemployment coupled with drastic reductions in tax and export revenues, now must find ways to feed millions.  International cooperation is desperately needed to assist with food surpluses from other parts of the global community.

While we must mobilize quickly and effectively to deal with the immediate adverse consequences of the pandemic on global hunger, at the same time we also must look to the future and think about how we can address our chronic food problems to be more resilient to future shocks such as drought, flood or plague.  To achieve this, we must invest in agricultural research—better yields, more drought-resistant crops, early warning systems, and sustainable farming.  We must assist small farmers to earn a decent income.  One way to do that is by strengthening local food systems by improving transport, refrigeration and food processing.  Finally, we must improve access to information and finance, so farmers can better navigate future shocks and more reliably produce the food we need.

The global community is more affluent now than ever before.  Our farmers have never produced so much food.  However, food like wealth is unevenly distributed – with devastating and preventable consequences.  In a resource-abundant world, hunger should now be a relic of the past.  Yet it isn’t.

To build a more sustainable and equitable global food system that provides affordable, nutritious and safe food for all, we need strong collaboration between governments, the private sector, academic institutions and intergovernmental bodies.  Together we can help not only those left hungry today and tomorrow by COVID-19, but those who are chronically vulnerable to hunger due to deficits in the global food system.  Now is the time to act to make food insecurity a distant memory.

 

 

Dr. Thoric CederstromAbout the Author: Dr. Thoric Cederström is the Director for Research and Learning for Food Enterprise Solutions which is actively implementing a five-year USAID Feed the Future initiative called Business Drivers for Food Safety.  Previous experience includes: Senior Advisor for Partnerships in Nutrition, World Food Program; Senior Manager for Agriculture in Nutrition, Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN); various positions with Save the Children, Counterpart International, and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), and the University of Arizona.

 

 

 

How urban agriculture can improve food security in US cities

During the partial federal shutdown in December 2018 and January 2019, news reports showed furloughed government workers standing in line for donated meals. These images were reminders that for an estimated one out of eight Americans, food insecurity is a near-term risk.