Alex Renton reports on the damaging effects of US food aid to Malawi.He quotes Charles Rethman who stated:
It's very short-sighted - it doesn't make any sense. It's going to short-circuit the effort to improve nutrition here, it undermines farmers, households. It's not sustainable and it won't bring about any long-term change to malnutrition rates,'
It has been shown that this type of assitance
can and does often do more harm than good. The very promise of free food can cause disaster-hit populations to leave their homes and move to refugee camps. They may become dependent on it, making it harder for them to take up their lives again when the disaster or danger has passed. Farmers leave their fields, prices fall and local traders lose their businesses. Clearly, while food aid saves lives in a disaster, it can hamper the return to normality.
It has done more insidious damage, as detailed by some aid agencies. Food aid can permanently damage the economies of nations it was sent to help. Vast tonnages of rice donated by the USA and Japan to Indonesia after the country's economic collapse in 1997 caused damage to farmers and distributors that has never been repaired: having been one of the world's largest producers, Indonesia is now a net importer of rice.
via African Agriculture
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