Buying local food, helping local farmers

There is a push going on among some aid agencies and in Congress this year to change U.S. aid policies. Until now, U.S. food aid to developing countries has usually involved sending U.S.-grown agricultural products to the affected countries. The problem is that such aid can put local farmers out of business. So many aid agencies, and some members of Congress, have proposed a solution that involves buying local food and helping distribute it rather than relying entirely on U.S.-produced food.

President Bush discussed the proposed U.S. change at the UN General Assembly this week.

This change makes a huge amount of sense to me. I’m wondering if the Church should follow suit and buy more locally produced goods, thereby developing local industry and helping local farmers, rather than sending most of its aid from the United States.

UPDATE: We got a response for Church humanitarian services. Read on.

One of the basic principles of aid is that you want to promote independence while at the same time helping people with their immediate needs. This is exactly how the Church welfare system works, and this is how all good aid programs should work.

But imagine you are a wheat farmer in, say, Africa. A neighboring region is suffering from famine, but you have been spared the effects of the famine. You have a good wheat crop, and you’re about to harvest. Suddenly, ships filled with U.S.-grown surplus wheat show up at a nearby harbor and flood the market with free wheat donated from the United States. What happens to the price of the wheat you have produced? Well, if they can get wheat for free, nobody is going to pay for the wheat you have grown. The result is that farmers suffer inadvertently from U.S. aid policies. Farmers may be forced to lose entire crops and even abandon farming entirely by U.S. policies.

What if, instead, U.S. aid groups bought at least a portion of their aid locally? These policies would have the opposite effect: you would promote local agriculture and build up local farmers. This could have the effect of fostering long-term independence in Africa and other developing areas, which is exactly what we should be doing.

As far as I can determine from the Church web site, most Church aid is produced centrally in Salt Lake. Take a look at this program, for example. The Church makes Atmit, an Ethiopian porridge, in Salt Lake City at Welfare Square and then ships it to famine-stricken regions.

For the record, the Church’s aid programs are incredibly successful and well-received worldwide. But I’m wondering if they would be even better received if they involved building up more local industry in developing countries. Would it be possible to change Church aid policy slightly to buy more products locally? What about, instead of sending aid packages from the U.S., we donated money to pay for local industry to produce aid packages in Africa and other stricken areas? Wouldn’t that be a better long-term solution?

I’ll be the first to admit that such a scheme has hazards, especially in areas where corruption is rampant. But if administered correctly, it just might work and be more effective.

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About Geoff B.

Geoff B graduated from Stanford University (class of 1985) and worked in journalism for several years until about 1992, when he took up his second career in telecommunications sales. He has held many callings in the Church, but his favorite calling is father and husband. Geoff is active in martial arts and loves hiking and skiing. Geoff has five children and lives in Colorado.

10 thoughts on “Buying local food, helping local farmers

  1. Doesn’t it make sense financially for the giver as well? It would be much cheaper for the church to wire funds to a representative in Ethiopia than to send pallets of food by boat or plane. That means more for the end recipient.

  2. Jjohnsen, I completely agree. You would need to have a high-level Church representative on the other side in Ethiopia to make sure the money actually goes where it is supposed to go, but this change seems to make a lot of sense in a lot of different ways.

    There are probably things about our aid program I don’t understand, however. I’m willing to be enlightened.

  3. Your suggestion seems to contemplate that the Church is sending food where promoting local faming is a realistic alternative, and I’m not sure that’s true. At least as to humanitarian aid, isn’t Church food humanitarian aid sent when there’s is an emergency or a disaster? In such circumstances, there is likely a shortage of food locally. Were the Church to go in and buy food, it would simply drive up the price, not alleviate scarcity. Perhaps you’re right and the Church does send food to stock bishops’ storehouses for long-term needs. But I’ve never heard of the Church doing that outside the US and Canada, where I don’t think you arguments fit very well.

  4. I like the idea in general, but here’s the other problem: there’s probably all sorts of people who will sign up for a shift of making Atmit in Salt Lake but won’t donate $50 to the fund–because they can’t spare it. The church’s humanitarian aid seems to be labor intensive, and the labor is concentrated in Salt Lake.

  5. Remember also that having wheat available and having all the ingredients needed (plus manufacturing facilities, plus labor not busy rebuilding houses) are two very different issues. Wikipedia says the Atmit recipe is as follows:

    * 50% Fine oatmeal flour
    * 25% Nonfat milk
    * 20% Sugar
    * 5% Vitamins and minerals

    Nonfat milk? “Fine” flour? Vitamins and minerals? This isn’t rugged ground-at-home wheat plus water.

    I think the difference between “local” as in “available within 10 miles” and “local” as in “available within 200 miles” is pretty important, too. The Church seems to do international aid in places where there’s no infrastructure (either because of a hurricane or something, or a widespread famine) and where, quite frankly, we’d already need to bring in trucks and planes and workers and the rest of it — in places where the trucks and planes and workers are already there, we give it to the people who run those operations (Catholic charities, for instance.)

    Whatever cost savings might come from buying wheat (which is fungible, and already cheap everywhere) or other ingredients locally, would be lost by having to hunt down hundreds of individual farmers, collect their goods, and bring it back to the affected area: if those farmers already had efficient methods of transporting their goods to the affected areas, one would expect that they’d already be doing it. And it’s hard enough getting localities to accept food/medical aid — trying to build infrastructure for them would be even more of a challenge, and in the meantime, there’s been a flood and people are hungry. And you still don’t have a modern mill, cows, refrigeration, and readily available labor.

  6. Sarah, excellent points, as always. It turns out this subject is much more complex than I had thought. I got an e-mail from the Church’s Director of Humanitarian Services, Brett Bass, who pointed out the following:

    “Generally the Church views “local” as better than “U.S.” produced. There are however factors that also drive decision making. Concerning everything from tarps to food to anything else response efforts hinge on “local supply and logistics”. After large disasters suppliers can be over run with requests (demands). If demand spikes locally then delays grow thus having some things strategically placed and ready to be “shipped” anywhere makes sense. Interesting, generators and tarp supplies in the U.S. were VERY stressed nationwide following Katrina. Bottom-line: the Church generally chooses to go “local” when it makes sense.

    For longer term initiatives (water, wheelchairs, medical training, etc.) we also focus on local suppliers. We don’t do much, if any, long term supplemental food programs where we might be tempted to send in US corn or wheat etc. By far our largest import program is wheelchairs from China. I just returned from India where we spent considerable time trying to find a local supplier for wheelchairs in India. The reality is that most people and organizations needing wheelchairs around the world are very poor ($) so making wheelchairs isn’t profitable so manufacturing is limited. We continue to be committed to use local suppliers where ever possible. We do not import any technology or equipment for our water projects, we try to buy all medical supplies locally whenever possible. Sustainability of projects is greatly improved is all items provided are locally supplied.

    As for ATMIT, it is a specialty item. We share the recipe with anyone who wants to manufacture it locally anywhere, it has tested better than a similar product used by the UN in its relief efforts. The reality is that because it is a specialty item not very many organizations have shown interest. We continue to be asked to “bring it in” upon request.”

    Me again: The bottom line here is that the Church is using local resources where practical, which is a great thing.

    Once again, Church humanitarian services are “ahead of the curve.” Thanks for Bro. Bass for responding.

  7. Very interesting, thanks for posting that. Shockingly, it sounds like the Church knows what it’s doing in this area.

    😉

  8. There are some really great links as to how local-buying style food aid works if you put “US food aid” or something like that into Google- it’s a very hot topic right now.

    One of the most interesting things about it is that famines are typically caused by shortage of money rather than actual shortage of food- again, check out links if you’d like, it seems to be pretty well-documented. So local purchasing isn’t as doomed as it would seem at the outset. And with fuel prices having doubled or tripled in the last few years, the amounts of food the program’s budgets are able to ship is dropping significantly.

    Additionally, the US food aid programs were indeed originally designed more as a relief valve for glutted US markets than foreign aid per se. Stats show that our relief packages go up when we have a bumper crop. Which makes you think… “What happens to Uganda when we don’t?”

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