13. Food security and food assistance

Technical background document
Executive summary
© FAO, 1996

1. Introduction

1.1 In its most general form, food security is a situation in which all people at all times have access to safe and nutritious food to maintain a healthy and active life.

1.2 Food security is about a life free of the risks of malnutrition or starvation. Hunger is a manifestation of food insecurity. The goal of raising agricultural productivity and food supplies to address long-term food security problems must be pursued in order to reduce the risks of future hunger. There is an equal need to address the short-term problem of hundreds of millions of people who go hungry today and those who will surely go hungry tomorrow, through programmes aimed at eliminating current hunger directly.

1.3Hunger is not just a manifestation of poverty, it perpetuates poverty. It is now widely recognized that poverty is the root cause of food insecurity. Broad-based economic growth is often necessary to reduce poverty and eliminate food insecurity. It is also recognized, however, that even if correct policies and programmes were in place, some segments of the population would not benefit from any poverty-reduction programmes, and would not be able to provide for their own food security. There will, therefore, always be persons who absolutely cannot function for themselves within the social and economic environment in which they exist.⁽¹⁾ Even though malnutrition is expected to decline globally from the level of more than 800 million persons today, there will still be hundreds of millions of undernourished individuals in the decades ahead who will need direct food assistance. For many of the beneficiaries, assistance will also be the best instrument to reduce their poverty and improve their long-term food security.

1.4 Food assistance is defined in this paper as all actions that national governments, often in collaboration with non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and members of civil society, and with external aid when necessary, undertake to improve the nutritional well-being of their citizens who otherwise would not have access to adequate food for a healthy and active life.

1.5 The objective of this paper is to show that:

• food assistance is a powerful instrument in alleviating chronic hunger and establishing a base for future food security and is also vital in saving the lives of people affected by disaster and conflict;
• national food assistance has been, and must remain, the linchpin of sustainable efforts to combat world hunger, with international food aid a vital complementary financing mechanism;
• ignoring the hungry today is a tax on future human and economic development for all of humankind;
• targeting is essential for food assistance to reach those most in need, and to minimize production disincentives and market displacement problems in the case of commodity food assistance.

FORMS OF FOOD INSECURITY AND HUNGER⁽²⁾

1.6 Important gains in agricultural productivity and economic growth in recent decades have enabled the world to experience per caput food supplies that are today 18 percent above the level of three decades ago. There has been sufficient development of capacity in exporting countries to produce surpluses that meet the global food market demand. Nevertheless, hunger persists. Despite adequate food for all at a global level, some 800 million individuals remain chronically undernourished. Adequacy of food in the aggregate does not rule out serious hunger for food-insecure households and individuals.

1.7 Dimensions, causes and consequences of hunger vary widely. The hungry do not have uniform characteristics. Some categorization of forms of food insecurity is therefore useful. One method, particularly useful for mapping hunger, is to categorize hungry households according to their socio-economic characteristics. However, in the end hunger is a problem of individual people. In this paper, four main categories of hungry people are identified.

Poverty and chronic hunger

1.8The largest group of the hungry comprises members of households with low and variable incomes, limited assets, few marketable skills and few powerful advocates to act on their behalf: the chronically poor. Poverty is mostly associated with, although by no means limited to, certain forms of occupation. These include many smallholder farmers, landless and/or daily labourers, livestock herders, small-scale fishermen, the unskilled unemployed and the otherwise unemployable. They can be found in developing as well as developed countries. Numbering 1.3 billion in 1993, these people earn less than US$1 per day (Bread for the World Institute, 1996) of which roughly 70 percent tends to be spent on food consumption; they subsist in an abject poverty which, for the most part, translates into hunger (WFP, 1995a).⁽³⁾

1.9 Persistent hunger, largely found in low-income food-deficit countries (LIFDCs), is a stumbling block to efforts aimed at eliminating poverty and is thus self-perpetuating. Chronic hunger is part of a vicious cycle of low productivity and earnings, ill health, indebtedness and malnutrition. Past investments made by vulnerable households are eroded by chronic hunger, and future incomes are also compromised.

1.10 Overlapping with the group that faces persistent energy shortages is an even larger number of people with micronutrient deficiencies resulting largely from dietary inadequacies. Roughly 1.6 billion people are currently at risk of iodine deficiencies which can cause considerable brain damage and cretinism as well as goitre. Almost 500 million women are thought to suffer from iron-deficiency anaemia, leading to poor health and low birth weights. Over 200 million children experience inadequate consumption of vitamin A (WHO, 1992; UNICEF, 1995). The latter is a deficiency responsible for physical impairment among children, blindness and increased risk of death from common diseases.

1.11 Addressing such micronutrient deficiencies is a relatively inexpensive and very cost-effective exercise, particularly when compared to the scale of intervention needed to respond to widespread health problems resulting from serious nutritional failure. Ignoring mild symptoms of malnutrition today can have catastrophic consequences tomorrow.

Life cycle hunger

1.12Another group of the hungry comprises those people who are more vulnerable than others at critical times of the life cycle, including babies in the womb, the newborn and young childbearing and lactating women. Those yet to be born suffer a deficiency of nutrients if their mothers are themselves malnourished since the programming of chronic diseases among adults starts with malnutrition among women during pregnancy (Hoet, 1995). In fact, about 20 million infants are born with low birth weight each year, suggesting maternal undernutrition.⁽⁴⁾ The dangers of premature birth, low birth weight and growth retardation resulting from nutrient deficiencies or health problems represent major constraints to normal childhood development.

1.13 If the constraints at birth are compounded by a continued lack of food, the danger of infant and child mortality, or at least suboptimal growth, is huge. Food-deprived children will be smaller and more likely to die young – it is difficult to make up for damage inflicted in the first five years (Pollitt et al. 1995). Increased incidence of disease has a greater negative impact on children among households that are already Calorie-deficient than among food-secure households (Haddad et al., 1995). Conversely, if malnutrition were totally eradicated from the globe the risk of mortality among infants exposed to infectious disease would be lowered by more than 50 percent (Pelletier, 1994). The associations among food, nutrition and health are crucial. Unless actions are taken today to remove the threat of hunger there are likely to be around 200 million chronically underweight children under the age of five in the year 2020 (FAO, 1995b; Rosegrant, Agcaoili-Sombilla and Perez, 1995).

1.14 But even if children survive severe malnutrition in early childhood, they are likely to become disadvantaged adults, possible victims of future emergencies. Mothers will face harder pregnancies and give birth to nutritionally compromised children, and both men and women will face health and productivity constraints and thus be faced with the chronic burdens of poverty. In sum, hunger begets hunger.

1.15 Given its intergenerational reach, the longer hunger persists the harder it becomes to resolve. Actions taken to address the current hunger of impoverished mothers and their young children, therefore, have a significant impact on food security in the longer term. Hungry children cannot derive full benefits from their education, even if they manage to gain access to formal education. Poor women cannot invest sufficiently in their own or their children’s future, since they are fully preoccupied with the multiple problems associated with current hunger. Investing in people, especially vulnerable women and children, represents a pre-investment in food security.

Seasonal hunger

1.16 A third group of the hungry are those individuals or households that suffer seasonal hunger related to cycles of food growing and harvest. These people have inadequate food availabilities for only part of the year. Poor households in many developing countries often suffer a coincidence of peaks in work requirements, levels of infection, food prices and informal loan interest rates, and troughs in food stocks, food intake and body weights. This occurs during the hungry season, normally a few weeks before a new harvest in most unimodal rainfall countries. Such a regular phenomenon, which is not only climatic but also economic in nature, in so far as the poor suffer from deleterious terms of trade while the rich are able to exploit these fluctuations to their advantage, is a constraint to the development of the poor sectors of economies. Negotiating this period and its damaging effects on household food security inhibits the poor from adopting riskier, but potentially more profitable, innovations.

Acute hunger

1.17 The fourth group of the hungry comprises the people who face acute hunger caused by humanitarian crises. Where the cause of acute hunger is a natural disaster, such as a drought or locusts, actions need to be swift to assist people in their home areas in order to protect their livelihoods. Without a swift response, loss of life and productive assets, through farm and livestock sales and seed consumption for survival, can result in a long-term erosion of development potential for whole regions. For example, although the timely response to exceptional drought in southern Africa in 1991/92 was successful in preventing widespread mortality resulting from famine, the scale of the drought was such that countless households lost many of their productive assets and had to use up their income reserves in order to survive the crisis.

1.18 Problems of hunger are compounded by displacement associated with conflict, the immediate cause of most crises since the early 1990s. The number of refugees and internally displaced persons resulting from conflicts alone grew from 1 million in 1970 to 50 million in 1995. The hungry are often forced from their homes by civil or international strife. In these so-called complex emergencies innocent people are often uprooted from their homes; they lose most of their possessions and face months, perhaps years, of misery; and they may face death. To these people, estimated at nearly 42 million in 1996 (Bread for the World Institute, 1996), survival supersedes thoughts of long-term development. Countries which have the greatest number of people in crisis are Afghanistan and the Sudan (4 million each), Bosnia and Herzegovina (3.7 million), Ethiopia (3 to 4 million), Angola and Rwanda (2.5 million each), Sierra Leone (1.8 million), Liberia (1.5 million), Iraq (estimates range from 1.3 to 4 million) and Haiti, Eritrea, Somalia and Tajikistan (1 million each).

THE GEOGRAPHY OF HUNGER

1.19 No place is immune to hunger if conditions lend themselves to failures in access to adequate, nutritious and safe food. This is true for acute hunger, as defined above; but it is equally true for chronic hunger. The hungry are to be found in rich as well as in poor countries; in net food exporting as well as in net food importing countries; and in temperate as well as tropical regions. Within countries, they can be found among rural landowners as well as the landless unemployed; among civil servants as well as new arrivals in urban slums; and among male-headed as well as among female-headed households. Much depends on the socio-economic situation of the individual household and person, with those on low incomes more likely to be food insecure. National and international efforts to alleviate food insecurity should target the hungry, wherever they are.

1.20 Often mirroring the geography of poverty, the chronically hungry tend to be concentrated in geographical regions, countries, sections of countries and parts of cities where incomes are low. So it is that countries with a high dependence on agriculture, which usually are also LIFDCs, frequently have a higher concentration of hungry people than other countries. Within LIFDCs the absolute numbers of the food insecure tend to be high in rural areas where most of the population is located, although the proportion in urban areas may be as high or higher and could increase with rapid rural-urban migration. In rural areas, landless labourers and those with little land tend to be poorer and more food insecure than the adequately landed groups. Urban slums and ghettos mainly in, but not limited to, developing countries tend to have a higher concentration of the food insecure than the parts of the cities where the rich live. It is estimated that nearly 42 percent of the urban population in sub-Saharan Africa, 23 percent in Asia, nearly 27 percent in Latin America and more than 34 percent in the Near East and North Africa live below official poverty lines and face starvation (Bread for the World Institute, 1996). Given that the urban poverty growth rate is higher than the rural rate, poverty and hunger in urban areas can be expected to assume even greater proportions as urbanization continues to increase at the phenomenal rate of 1 million per week worldwide.

1.21 Commensurate with prevailing attitudes towards the distribution and control of a community’s resources, certain members of the community, such as female-headed households in some societies, may be more vulnerable to hunger than others.

1.22 With respect to geographical regions, the largest number of people currently facing food deficiencies is in Asia. The number of people not eating a minimum diet in South and East Asia is estimated to be over 500 million, equivalent to 18 percent of the population of the region (ACC/SCN, 1993; FAO, 1995a) and 67 percent of the total chronically undernourished population in the developing world. South Asia alone is home to over 58 percent of the world’s undernourished children and nearly 60 percent of the 215 million stunted children in the world (FAO, 1996a). Furthermore, the incidence of undernutrition, if measured in terms of absolute numbers of persons affected, is likely to remain high in South Asia because of continuing high population growth rates (coupled with increasing urbanization) and a slowdown in the growth of food production.

1.23 Hunger and poverty increased in parts of Latin America and the Caribbean in the structural adjustment era of the 1980s. FAO (1995a) estimates that the number of chronically undernourished people has grown from 46 million around 1980 to over 60 million in the early 1990s; this amounts to 14 percent of the population. Considerable improvements are anticipated in malnutrition rates in this region during the coming decades, as it is relatively prosperous and generally enjoys better market and institutional infrastructures.

1.24 Sub-Saharan Africa gives the most cause for concern. Over 200 million (more than 40 percent) of the region’s population is chronically malnourished. Moreover, the intensity of hunger, the degree to which the actual food intake of underfed people falls below the national average per caput requirement of the population, expressed as a percentage, has increased in sub-Saharan Africa, whereas worldwide it has declined by one-half (from 10 to 5 percent) in the 20 years since 1970. Growing poverty, debt, poor terms of trade, declines in domestic per caput production, high fertility rates, natural disasters and the growing problem of emergencies displacing huge numbers of people, which characterize much of the region, have all contributed to the rapid deterioration in its food-security situation.

1.25Although the majority of the hungry are to be found in developing countries, hunger, knowing no national boundaries, is also found in the most affluent societies. The number of hungry people in the United States,⁽⁵⁾ for example, actually increased by 50 percent between 1985 and 1990, when 30 million people (12 percent of the population) were estimated to be hungry. In Canada, 2.5 million people (8.6 percent of the population) were reportedly hungry. One in eight Australians (about 2 million people) suffers from hunger (Bread for the World Institute, 1996). Nevertheless, hunger in wealthy nations is neither as severe nor as widespread as in developing countries.

CURRENT LEVELS OF FOOD SECURITY AND THE ROLE OF FOOD ASSISTANCE

1.26 Hunger persists at a time when global food production could meet the needs of every person on the planet. Current food availabilities for the world as a whole were estimated at 2 710 Calories per person per day in 1990-1992, up from 2 300 Calories in 1961-1963. Moreover, the proportion of people with inadequate food-energy consumption has declined in all regions, with the exception of sub-Saharan Africa. By the year 2010, daily per caput food availability should reach 2 860 Calories. It is projected that by 2010, even developing countries as a group will have achieved the per caput food availability of 2 730, up from 2 520 in 1990-1992 and 1 960 in 1961-1963.

1.27 While there has been impressive progress towards increasing food security, as indicated by average daily energy availability per caput, progress has been uneven within and among countries and regions, leaving an unacceptably large number of undernourished or food-insecure individuals.

1.28 Food assistance enhances the well-being of the chronically hungry. For individuals who have been affected by emergencies – natural disasters and crises caused by humans – food assistance has historically provided, and continues to provide, the only hope for survival.

1.29 There are many forms of food assistance. Direct forms include food stamps, ration shops, fair-price shops, soup kitchens, health centre food packets, food coupons, school lunches, special canteens and food-for-work programmes; they are supported by internationally sourced food and cash aid, public funds, NGOs or private charity. Indirect forms include nutrition education, policies related to food-reserve stocks and a supportive policy environment (comprising, inter alia, pricing policy, marketing policy, exchange rate policy and trade policy). All forms of food assistance aim at providing food free or at a subsidy to a targeted section or sections of the population. While international food aid finances some direct forms of food assistance, indirect forms are mostly, but not exclusively, the responsibility of national governments, with the international community providing the enabling environment.

1.30 The fact that so many persons remain chronically undernourished, however, suggests, among other things, the possibility that not enough assistance has been provided and/or the assistance has not been sufficiently effective to eliminate or reduce significantly that form of hunger. Recent declining levels of national food assistance, often as part of structural adjustment programmes (SAPs) in developing countries and fiscal restraint in developed countries, coupled with politically and economically induced reductions in the volume of international food aid and changes in its structure, do not augur well for the chronically hungry. To make the best use of the available resources, effective targeting of all food assistance will be essential so that it reaches the maximum number of intended beneficiaries with minimum market disruption or displacement.

1.31 The next chapter discusses some forms of food assistance used by national or local governments, often in partnership with NGOs, civil society and the international community.

2. Food assistance to sustain and enhance lives

BASIS FOR FOOD ASSISTANCE

2.1 National governments bear the responsibility for ensuring that all their citizens are food secure. Whereas international declarations⁽⁶⁾ asserting the right to food do not imply that States shall be responsible for directly fulfilling individuals' need for and right to food, the State is obligated to facilitate individual efforts to meet food needs by creating an environment that will allow all its people to achieve food security. Ultimately, then, it is policies that support income generation through, say, employment creation and maintenance in the agricultural sector, where the majority of the poor in developing countries are based, as well as in the formal and informal sectors that will ensure, in the medium and long term, a reduction in poverty and sustainable food security. Broad-based development brings about not only rising per caput incomes which alleviate chronic malnutrition but also transportation, marketing and storage infrastructure which facilitates a more rapid response to transitory food shortages (Gerrard, 1986).

2.2 However, when individuals do not have the capacity to meet their food needs for reasons beyond their control (such as age, handicap, loss of income, famine, disaster or discrimination) the right to food implies that the State must physically provide food (Pinstrup-Andersen, Nygaard and Ratta, 1995) or resources to obtain food supplies.

2.3In line with their obligations, most governments have indeed provided, or have attempted to provide, food assistance to those unable to provide for their own food. Resources supplied through international food aid have complemented domestic resources where the latter have proved insufficient. Even then, national food assistance programmes have been the vehicle for providing food aid to the poor.⁽⁷⁾

FOOD ASSISTANCE FOR HUMAN DEVELOPMENT

2.4 Hunger is integrally linked to other conditions that restrict human potential: poor sanitation and hygiene, illiteracy, lack of education facilities and lack of access to health care.⁽⁸⁾ Targeted food assistance, such as nutritious food provided at appropriate centres, not only responds to immediate hunger but also draws vulnerable mothers and children to clinics, encourages and enables poor women to attend literacy and reproductive health training, induces parents to allow their daughters to attend school, supports communities wishing to develop improved water supply and sanitary facilities and improves the quality and reach of nutrition education. Used in such ways, food assistance represents a pre-investment in human potential – a way of letting the poor take advantage of national and external assistance while avoiding the risks of long-term dependency.

FOOD ASSISTANCE FOR INCREASING AGRICULTURAL PROFUCTION AND GENERATING INCOME

2.5 A world food problem will continue to exist as long as certain portions of the global population do not earn sufficient incomes to demand as much food as required to satisfy their needs. For most such people, particularly those in rural areas with few alternative sources of income, agriculture provides the best, often the only, avenue to alleviate food insecurity. First, agriculture provides the means to produce food of the desired quality and quantity; second, it provides employment and income to the poor, thereby increasing their ability to purchase food.⁽⁹⁾

2.6 Food assistance can be a catalyst for increasing agricultural productivity in both the food and export subsectors. Undernutrition results in substantial productivity losses caused by reduced work performance and inefficient or ineffective income-earning decisions, designed to hedge against limitations on food availability and access. By releasing the human-resource potential, agricultural production can increase and allocation of household resources can become more efficient.

2.7 Rural farmers in many developing countries, when faced with an urgent cash need, for example to buy different types of food or to repay loans, frequently resort to selling part of their already inadequate supplies of food. Some may even sell what they should have stored for the following season’s seed. Temporary food security may thus be achieved at the cost of disposing of substantial assets and of future indebtedness. A household that uses almost all of its resources to achieve current food security renders itself highly vulnerable to future food insecurity. Food assistance, in these circumstances, obviates the need to sell their meagre assets, food stocks and seed, and so ensures better production in the next season.

2.8 Agriculture is, of course, not restricted to rural areas. Urban (and peri-urban) agriculture has increasingly gained ground as a source of supplementary income for a large number of urban dwellers. The provision of food assistance to the urban poor can further enhance growth in urban agriculture and help reduce their food insecurity.

2.9 Food assistance used within the framework of public works programmes, including food-for-work (Box 1), can foster development of infrastructure such as water conservation and irrigation networks, rural roads and market structures, which is often a necessary condition for enhancing agricultural production. Also, through public works programmes, rural people learn and adopt skills that are later useful for generating income to supplement or replace farm incomes.

2.10 Moreover, food assistance mechanisms, including the actual distribution of food, particularly if left to the private sector, can themselves be an income-generating activity. Even where the distribution is in public hands, it provides employment for some of the population.

2.11 Food assistance, judiciously targeted, can reduce the opportunity cost of non-subsistence production and can encourage diversification away from subsistence food production and foster income growth in areas not suitable for food production. The subsequent increase in income should result in higher effective demand for food commodities and spur the growth of food production in zones where this is an efficient option.

2.12 While agriculture provides employment and incomes for the majority of the hungry in rural areas and for an increasingly sizeable proportion of those in urban areas, there are large groups of hungry people in urban parts of both poor and rich countries, as well as in rural areas of some countries, for whom agriculture does not represent an important source of income, if it is a source at all. For such people, efforts to create non-agriculture-based employment (e.g. through public-sector works programmes) are crucial in allowing the current poor to generate income and improve their food security.

FOOD ASSISTANCE AND WOMEN: ENHANCING HOUSEHOLD FOOD SECURITY

2.13 Women are a key part of the solution to hunger (Quisumbing et al., 1995). They shoulder a major share of the responsibilities for household food security, and experience has shown that resources in the hands of women often have a greater nutritional benefit to children than the same resources controlled by men. According to Pena, Webb and Haddad (1994), women are more likely than men to spend a given income on food for the family. Thus, resources for women represent resources for food security. Successful development for women does not stop at women; it benefits whole households and communities.

2.14 Food assistance, as one of several resources supporting positive change among hungry households, often reaches hungry women better than the capital flows that make up close to 95 percent of total development assistance. The potential for food assistance to benefit needy women is large. Food provided as wages or as incentives to participate in income-earning or training activities can reach women in food-insecure households who are otherwise often crowded out of projects that offer cash resources. Similarly, the provision of basic or lower-status food commodities in full or partial remuneration for project activities serves to attract those who are usually the most needy members of a community. Food assistance is a kind of resource window for women and others among the very poor.

DIRECT ASSISTANCE TO THE CHRONICALLY HUNGRY

2.15 Direct food assistance comprises income transfer programmes and direct feeding. Most countries use a combination of these direct forms of food assistance and indirect forms such as nutrition education and macroeconomic policies that influence prices and therefore the consumption of food.

Income transfer programmes

2.16Recognizing that food costs represent more than 80 percent of total expenditure for the poorest families in developing countries and are a significant budget item even for upper- and middle-income people, and that they represent a sizeable proportion of total expenditure among the poor even in developed countries, most food assistance programmes have involved income transfers to the hungry and those at risk of hunger. These programmes reduce the cost of food to the recipients (food-linked transfers) and provide for increased food consumption among those with low incomes (cash income as well as food-linked transfers). Income transfer programmes⁽¹⁰⁾ are easier and faster to implement than income generating programmes such as public works employment programmes.

2.17 Cash income transfers may involve direct income support, as in the United States Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) which provides income support to very low-income households with children under 18, or cash for work, as in the Maharashtra Employment Guarantee Scheme in India. Cash income transfers are based on the premise that food insecurity is a problem of lack of access because of lack of income. They are useful in alleviating chronic hunger but less effective in emergency situations where food supplies are a problem. Where cash income transfers are properly targeted, they are easy to implement, provide flexibility to the recipients as to how much to allocate to which foods, and have the least deleterious knock-on effects on food production systems. However, when not accurately targeted, cash income transfers can undermine the incentive to work, particularly where such transfers are larger than prevailing real wages, and can discourage people from accumulating savings and other assets, where having the latter would disqualify individuals from participating in the programmes. In short, cash income transfer programmes can lead to increased dependency on welfare. Where this is a risk, there should be efforts to link cash transfers with human development so that the anticipated wages of individuals who graduate from the programme can be enhanced.

2.18 Food-linked income transfer programmes are attempts to transfer incomes to families or individuals in target groups in the form of food purchasing power, in order to ensure that dietary intakes increase. Such programmes take many forms, of which food stamps and ration shops are the most common. They are useful in treating chronic hunger. The major argument for transferring food-linked incomes rather than merely cash is that a larger proportion of the additional income is spent on food (a higher marginal propensity to consume food) when food-linked incomes are transferred than when the transfer is cash income. Also, better-off population groups are generally more willing to support income transfers aimed at the alleviation of overt human misery, such as extreme and highly visible malnutrition, than general income transfers for which the spending decisions related to the transfers are left in the hands of the recipient households. The United States (Box 2) is among many countries that use food-linked income transfer schemes as a form of food assistance.

Direct feeding programmes

2.19 Direct feeding programmes transfer food directly to the target population. They include school lunches, health centre food packets as well as residential feeding programmes, soup kitchens and special canteens. They can be full rations or food supplements, such as vitamin and iron supplements used to treat micronutrient deficiencies. Direct feeding programmes are particularly effective during emergencies and where hunger is seasonal and vulnerability is related to age or sex. They differ from income transfer programmes such as food stamps in that: they are usually targeted at individual household members rather than merely at households; they usually involve small quantities of food; and they are often limited to relatively small geographical regions.

2.20 Except in emergencies, direct feeding schemes are usually aimed at household members most likely to be malnourished or at risk of being malnourished; for example, children and pregnant and lactating mothers. Three types of delivery systems are generally used for direct feeding: on-site feeding (including school breakfasts and/or lunches), take-home feeding and nutrition rehabilitation centres. In view of the substitution and sharing that is likely to occur within the household, efforts to target individuals rather than households, particularly with take-home feeding, may be futile.

2.21 Direct feeding treats the symptoms, not the causes. Therefore, unless the causes are removed, principally through income transfer programmes and income generation (see, for an example, Box 3), individuals no longer eligible for direct feeding (for example, children who have left schools which provided school lunches) may quickly return to their nutritional status prior to feeding. Nevertheless, direct feeding schemes remain an effective means of protecting the hungry from current hunger and from the immediate risk of hunger.

INDIRECT FORMS OF ASSISTANCE

2.22 A supportive policy environment is essential for food security. Pricing policy, exchange rate policy and trade policies all influence the prices of food and therefore food consumption in an economy. Where price controls obtain, governments sometimes slant prices in favour of export crops. As a result the production of food crops may be less than it would otherwise have been without intervention. Low supply, other things being equal, will result in high food prices unless the government controls that part of the market as well.

General food price subsidies

2.23 Food price subsidies⁽¹¹⁾ are common in low-income countries where the aim is frequently one of reducing consumer food prices below a free-market level. Consumer food subsidization became one of the prime functions of the numerous marketing boards created or expanded in most developing countries during the 1960s and 1970s. The goals of subsidy programmes vary among countries and over time and may include desires to improve the real purchasing power of all or certain groups of consumers, to reduce or eliminate energy and nutrient deficiencies in low-income population groups, to maintain low urban wages and to assure social and political stability (Pinstrup-Andersen, 1988). Food subsidies can be explicit or implicit general price subsidies with little or no targeting (as in Egypt and Zambia).

2.24 Food price subsidies may improve nutritional status in three ways: first, subsidies increase the purchasing power of recipients because they can buy a larger amount of food at the same cost; second, they may reduce the prices of food relative to the prices of other goods, thereby encouraging households to buy more food; and third, they may make certain foods cheaper relative to other foods, and in this way encourage a change in diet composition. Thus, in addition to their income transfer function, food subsidies applied to specific foods may also direct consumers to nutritionally optimal diets.

2.25 Where food price subsidies are not targeted, fiscal costs can be colossal and better-off households receive larger absolute benefits than poorer ones (Cornia, Jolly and Stewart, 1987). However, to the extent that the poor spend a larger proportion of their income on food, benefits as a percentage of current incomes are larger for the poor. This is important since lifting subsidies across the board (for example, in the drive towards price liberalization and to cut fiscal deficits) just because they mostly benefit the better-off (in absolute values) hurts the poor even more.

2.26 Other than direct fiscal costs, food subsidies can have other costs. To provide essential foods to the poor at low and stable prices, governments may use marketing monopolies that pay low prices for domestically produced food crops. This measure depresses food production and can affect future food security. The credible alternative is to shift the burden of food subsidies to the general taxpayer and to use budget revenues to subsidize consumer prices, rather than to depress farm prices artificially.

2.27 Groups suffering from chronic malnutrition deserve support. Subsidies can be and should be better targeted so that the needs of the nutritionally vulnerable are met in the most cost-effective manner. Programmes that restrict subsidies to the poorest region, or to the poorest neighbourhoods in poor regions, can be cost effective. Similarly, programmes concentrated on foods eaten mainly by the poor can also be cost effective. In Brazil, for example, subsidies on cassava are likely to be more effective in helping the poor than subsidies on rice, bread or maize. One study shows that a US$1 subsidy for cassava would generate US$0.60 in benefits to Brazil’s low-income groups, compared to US$0.40 for maize, US$0.23 for rice and US$0.18 for bread (World Bank, 1986). Rather than disapprove of food subsidies across the board, policy-makers should devote their energies to designing food subsidy packages that redistribute income efficiently without hurting the efficiency of resource allocation.

Food security reserve policies

2.28 Food security reserve policies,⁽¹²⁾ which have been given a great deal of attention, in particular since the declaration on the eradication of hunger and malnutrition by the 1974 World Food Conference, are also among the indirect forms of food assistance. National food security reserve management policies have generally focused on three types of food stocks:

• working reserves, required to ensure a smooth uninterrupted flow of supplies from the farmer or point of import to the processor and ultimately to the consumer, and normally held by producers, consumers and traders at the state, region, village and household levels;
• stabilization reserves, held by the public sector’s price stabilization agency to protect producers from exceptionally low producer prices and to protect consumers from exceptionally high consumer prices;
• emergency reserves, used as a first line of defence against a sudden availability decline or a sudden drop in purchasing power that affects those who cannot secure any food for themselves.

2.29 Most countries have reserve policies that serve one or more of these functions. Box 4 illustrates how Malawi, an LIFDC and one of the most food insecure among them, uses its strategic food reserve as a first line of defence against hunger during emergencies and tries, not always successfully, to ensure stable supplies of food at fairly stable prices during other times.

2.30 Emergency reserves, typically held by the public sector as a national duty rather than for commercial purposes, serve as temporary supplies that guarantee minimum consumption until commercial food imports or food aid arrives. While the chronically hungry benefit from the first two types of reserves – working and stabilization reserves – emergency reserves are of the most immediate usefulness for individuals at risk of acute hunger resulting from emergencies.

2.31 Food security reserves can be physical or financial or a combination of both. The requirement for a physical stock stems from the lag in imports and uncertainty over the availability of foreign exchange funds for commercial grain imports. One mechanism for reducing the physical stock requirement, the maintenance of which can be very costly, is establishment of a financial reserve of foreign exchange dedicated to the import of grain when the food situation deteriorates. A major advantage with a financial reserve is that it can earn interest, whereas physical stocks always deteriorate in quality and usually decline in value. It should be borne in mind, however, that as is the case with physical stocks, financial security reserves require replenishment once drawn down; an added complication for cash-strapped developing countries when the drawdown is in foreign currency.

2.32 While the value of food reserves is undeniable, they should be used as a complement to, and not a substitute for, policies aimed at ensuring adequate food supplies. Food reserves can be expensive to initiate and maintain. Unfortunately, poor food-insecure countries where the danger of food shortfalls is usually highest and which have the greatest need for food reserves are the ones that find maintaining food reserves too expensive without external assistance.

2.33 It is imperative that governments, in collaboration with their development partners, analyse fully the costs and benefits of holding food reserves and determine the appropriate level, taking into consideration the fact that global food stocks are on the decline⁽¹³⁾ and that the proportion of stocks held in private hands (and managed on strictly commercial bases), vis-à-vis government-held stocks in traditional exporting countries, is increasing, signalling potential price hikes and possible problems in obtaining imported food at short notice.

Nutrition education

2.34 Where insufficient knowledge is a major cause of malnutrition, nutrition education programmes can be useful. Nutrition education aimed at reallocating a given amount of real income or food in households with vulnerable members is unlikely to be successful (see Box 5) unless a significant household budget share is spent on non-essential goods and the cost of the current diet is high because of the lack of emphasis on high-risk groups. More often than not, however, the problem is simply that households do not have enough cash to buy the kinds of food required for better nutrition; in this case nutrition education should be linked to direct forms of assistance (particularly income transfers).

PROTECTING LOCAL FOOD MARKET SYSTEMS⁽¹⁴⁾

2.35 Food assistance programmes can have deleterious effects on development and future food security. As noted above, programmes to combat hunger that involve generalized food subsidies can lead to depressed food production (if associated with low procurement prices by marketing monopolies) and can be very costly if maintained over long periods of time. Additionally, resources spent on non-target populations could have been more efficiently used elsewhere in the economy. Take-home food schemes are less effective in reaching target members of households, their effectiveness being dependent on the intrahousehold distribution of food. Cash incomes or food provided to low-income households or individuals, without accompanying education programmes to improve their earning capacity when they are no longer under an assistance scheme, could lead to dependence on the scheme and foster a lack of incentive to work. International food aid allocated to countries that do not really require it could lead to formulation or maintenance of policies that militate against increased domestic food production. Simply put, the abuse of food assistance can be counterproductive. The current poor and future generations of the poor could pay dearly for food assistance that is being abused now.

2.36 Food assistance can also modify consumption habits by creating dependency on food items that are not part of the traditional staple diet.

2.37 The impact of food assistance on local markets needs to be rigorously analysed before it is provided, except, of course, in acute emergencies when it is clear that lives would be lost without relief supplies and the time required to analyse the impact on the market is a luxury humanity cannot afford.

2.38 Food assistance should not lead to market displacement and production disincentives. The latter dangers apply both to internationally sourced food aid and to purchases from other regions within the domestic economy. International food aid commodities, depending on the size and nature of the aid, can adversely affect the local market only, where the size of aid is small and the commodities involved represent a specific area, or the entire domestic market, where the size is large enough to have national repercussions and/or the commodities involved represent a large part of the domestic economy. Commodity food assistance financed from domestic resources and sourced from within the country can also result in market displacement and production disincentives in specific parts of the country while creating dependency in the source regions, much as triangular food aid transactions can do.

2.39 Where chronic undernutrition coexists with well-supplied markets offering food at accessible and stable prices, the most appropriate types of food assistance are likely to take the form of supplies purchased as close to the target area as possible for targeted feeding programmes, or income transfers that successfully raise the purchasing power of households with the worst hunger, including transfers in the form of subsidized employment.

2.40 Where chronic undernutrition coexists with weak markets that are characterized by erratic supply and volatile price regimes, however, the case for providing commodity food assistance, targeted to the most hungry, is strong. In such cases, commodity food assistance can complement markets and offset their weaknesses.

3. Food assistance to save lives

EMERGENCIES AND FOOD ASSISTANCE

3.1 The right to life is enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations. Saving people whose ability to gain access to food has been curtailed is the first principle of humanitarian intervention. People have to survive before they can benefit from, and contribute to, sustainable development.

3.2 Food is a fundamental resource for saving the lives of individuals affected by natural disasters and crises caused by humans. The number of people affected by disasters and in need of emergency assistance has grown sharply over the past decade, from 44 million in the mid-1980s to more than 175 million by 1993 (Webb, 1995).

3.3 Natural disasters – floods, cyclones, drought, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions – continue to afflict humankind. No place is immune to natural disasters. However, as a result of environmental degradation as well as rapidly rising population densities and migrations to vulnerable areas, Asia and the Pacific has become the most disaster-prone region in the world. By one estimate, 800 natural disasters were reported over a 22-year period, giving an average of 35 occurrences per year. This represents 60 percent of the world’s reported natural disasters and includes eight of the ten worst ones.

3.4 Some natural disasters cannot be predicted, but others are slow-moving and can be predicted with a fair degree of accuracy, for example, desertification resulting from environmental damage. Early warning of the onset of slow-moving disasters could trigger responses for avoiding them or mitigating their effects.

3.5 While natural disasters continue to afflict human society, the number of so-called complex emergencies resulting from crises caused by humans has grown sharply in recent years. In the mid-1990s, there were at least 50 serious ongoing armed conflicts in the world, with an increasing concentration of frequency and destructiveness in poorer developing countries (Hansch, 1995). These crises are complex not so much in their manifestation of human suffering (which may differ little from suffering during other emergencies), but in their scale (often regional rather than national) and their complexity of causes and potential resolution, which may have both political and military dimensions.

3.6 The rise in complex emergencies has meant that acute hunger is increasingly found in the presence of political instability, which compounds inadequate past investments, infrastructure deficiencies, rapid population growth and environmental limitations to increased productivity. All of this makes the task of tackling hunger more difficult. This compounding of constraints to the attainment of food security is all too apparent in sub-Saharan Africa.

3.7 As conflict has taken over from drought as the primary cause of famine and human displacement, the numbers of refugees, internally displaced persons and non-displaced but asset-stripped households have grown sharply, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa. The total number of refugees has doubled approximately every six years since the mid-1970s. By 1994, the number had reached approximately 25 million, of whom roughly one-third were in Africa (UNHCR, 1995; ECOSOC, 1995). In addition, the number of internally displaced persons reached an estimated 25 to 30 million in 1995, as many as 60 percent of them in Africa (United Nations, 1995c; UNHCR, 1995). In 1991, Mozambique alone had 5 million (one-third of the country’s entire population) citizens as refugees or internally displaced persons. The global total of people uprooted by conflict or political disturbance has reached roughly 50 million.

3.8 Furthermore, the impact of hunger resulting from conflict and population displacement is not limited to the individuals involved. Host communities, typically as poor as the poor coming to them for help, are drawn into the dislocation. The hosts are affected as commodity prices rise, labour markets are influenced, local or national development activities are curtailed, and widespread natural-resource damage results from new concentrations of displaced people needing land and fuel to survive. The recent growth in numbers of refugees and displaced people shows no signs of abating and is the least responsive to progress made in the realms of food production or distribution. The solution to large-scale population displacements is typically social and political rather than simply economic or environmental.

3.9 The human damage caused by severe hunger is only a part of the overall problem. A depletion of resources caused by large-scale hunger or by the creation of refugee camps carries the implications of food insecurity far beyond the realm of a discrete event. Once a disaster has passed, even a natural disaster, the process of household and nation rebuilding can be severely impeded by the loss of people, community integration, livestock, savings and even the government’s capacity to tax and invest. Thus, once conditions have stabilized and minimal food consumption has been established among affected people, food assistance must be used in varied ways to help enhance the human skills and economic assets of a food-assisted population through nutrition and other training programmes, as well as through community, infrastructure and agricultural development activities.

3.10 The human, productivity and opportunity costs of complex emergencies are extremely high, however they are measured. Households disrupted by armed conflict are vulnerable to hunger over long periods of time. Nations experiencing conflict see past gains in development eroded or destroyed (Stewart, 1993). Destruction in countries such as Cambodia, Mozambique and Nicaragua only adds to the cost of development investments in the future.

3.11 Food assistance for emergencies is provided in a number of ways: as a food reserve released onto the market when local food prices rise beyond a planned threshold; as a ration provided to households in targeted communities to maintain at least minimum energy consumption during a crisis; as a full or supplementary meal provided directly to the most needy individuals, generally women and children; or as a wage good, in cash or food, paid to participants in public works projects that are initiated to provide an employment-based safety net during times of food shortfall.

3.12 Each of these mechanisms has its niche according to prevailing local conditions (prices, policies, degree of hunger and institutional support). They are successful if they manage to save and sustain life, and more successful if they do so in a cost-effective manner. Where complex emergencies and natural disasters occur in areas with poor infrastructure, the costs of transporting food from food security reserve sites, from surplus regions within the country or from international sources can be massive. Moreover, food can spoil in transit or at destination if local storage facilities are inadequate.

3.13 Whatever the cost, of course, food assistance is never wasted if it is the only way to save lives. However, there is a need for better preparedness against crises, and more attention must be paid to the needs of hungry people during emergencies and once emergencies have passed. The rehabilitation phase should lay a solid foundation for development. Better interaction between development and relief professionals is required as early in an emergency as possible to ensure investments that reduce household vulnerability to disasters. In all of this, national food assistance and food aid have a major role to play.

TIMELINESS OF ASSISTANCE TO SAVE LIVES

3.14 Time is of the essence to save lives when sudden natural disasters and crises caused by humans strike. National food assistance has sometimes been unable to reach the hungry because of poor infrastructure, particularly in countries where markets are not well integrated across regions. Sometimes, the situation has been compounded by lack of government resources to buy or transport commodities from one region to another. Meanwhile the import displacement time for international food aid has usually been long because of the time it takes governments to assess the disaster situation and food aid needs and to find or request from donors the finances or commodities required. A full assessment is usually required by the donor community before pledges and disbursements are made. Timeliness could be improved and more lives saved if the international community could commit itself to providing, on an advance basis, interim food assistance to disaster- and crisis-affected areas while assessment of food requirements is under way.

POST-EMERGENCY REHABILITATION

3.15 While relief and access to food in disaster-affected areas must remain a top priority, food assistance must play a role beyond human survival; it should also be a resource for investment in long-term development. Emergency operations must be designed to facilitate a smooth and prompt transition of operations from relief towards development. Attainment of stable livelihoods after a crisis demands more than the long-term feeding of vulnerable groups.

3.16 The first task is to prevent people whose lives have been saved from slipping back into hunger again. This may involve narrowly targeted direct feeding for groups that are still vulnerable combined with a carefully phased reduction in the scale and size of more general distribution activities. The second task is to help regain or rebuild the asset base and productive capacities of people and the local economy. Roads and markets, schools and clinics often need to be rebuilt in war-torn countries such as Cambodia, Ethiopia and Mozambique. The re-establishment or strengthening of markets is helped by using local private-sector services for the transport of food.

3.17 Food assistance can also be used as a resource to support land reclamation, reforestation and small-scale irrigation projects aimed at preventing crises from recurring. Especially in locations where populations are becoming vulnerable to food insecurity and social tensions because of increasing population pressure on scarce land and water resources, food-assisted activities aimed at increasing the productivity of the resource base can do much to prevent future crises from occurring. Vulnerable people must be assisted to be more ready to cope with shocks and able to build on opportunities for advancement. Preparedness mechanisms that include food assistance are crucial in this regard. A good example is the large number of cases in sub-Saharan Africa and elsewhere where national governments have complemented their own resources with international food aid to establish and/or replenish food security reserves.

3.18 Where agriculture proves the best or only avenue to alleviating post-crisis food insecurity, food assistance for agricultural recovery, including provision of seed, fertilizer, pesticides, breeding stock and other inputs, as well as food-for-work to support agriculture-associated infrastructure, can foster the rehabilitation of the agricultural sector in the aftermath of an emergency.

DISASTER PREPAREDNESS AND CRISIS PREVENTION

3.19 Preparedness is a key to avoidance of disasters and to designing actions aimed at mitigating the effects of some natural disasters. Development-related interventions, such as water-saving techniques in drought-prone areas and dams constructed to protect against floods, assist in keeping associated disasters at bay. Food security reserves, maintained at national, regional and local levels, as appropriate, can help save lives in the event of a natural disaster. Early warning of the onset of slow-moving disasters can also allow for the preparation of life-saving mechanisms.

3.20 The solution to crises caused by humans, today’s main cause of large-scale population displacements or endangerment, lies largely in the realm of politics; the ability to diffuse tensions before they become conflicts. In many cases, such crises are predictable and can be prevented with good governance and international diplomacy. Most complex humanitarian emergencies are largely the result of the irresponsible behaviour of a small handful of powerful individuals, yet the resulting emergencies negatively affect the food security of a large number of people, most of them innocent. Governments need to take appropriate action to diffuse any ethnic or sectarian tensions before they erupt into conflicts. Integration of political security indicators in national and international disaster preparedness schemes can provide early warning signals of impending crises and trigger mechanisms for their avoidance.

THE ROLE OF NON-GOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATIONS AND CIVIL SOCIETY GROUPS

3.21 NGOs, local communities and other civil groups, which operate physically closer to the grassroots than national governments or the international community, are usually well placed to assess needs for food assistance and its eventual distribution. Members of these groups often have personal contact with the hungry people. Their ability to identify and target the hungry, quite apart from their advocacy role, has often been crucial in saving the lives of those affected by disasters. They have also been used in rehabilitation schemes all over the world. Box 6 gives an example of how only one of thousands of NGOs assists in alleviating hunger.

3.22 The private sector and private citizens have a crucial role in their humanitarian contributions to the organizations (including the religious institutions) that assist the hungry directly, wherever they are. But the role of NGOs, local community groups, the private sector and private citizens transcends the emergency phases into rehabilitation and development.

3.23 The work of NGOs, the private sector and private citizens is indispensable during crises where no effective government exists or where its performance is impaired because of civil conflict. In such situations, actors other than the government sometimes provide the only means of identifying the vulnerable and saving their lives with food assistance.

3.24 Given their knowledge of local areas, NGOs and other members of civil society should play an even larger role than hitherto in working to eradicate hunger. To do this, they need easier access to food resources from governments and institutional donors. They should also, where it is cost effective, receive administrative budget support. It is of fundamental importance, however, that food assistance provided by or through NGOs and other members of civil society, like that provided by and through other institutions, be better targeted. Furthermore, NGOs and other members of civil society working in situations lacking government as outlined above need to evaluate their food assistance programmes rigorously with a view to identifying lessons learned and applying them in subsequent programmes, exactly as governments ought to do.

4. Financing food assistance

4.1 In developed countries, food assistance is almost entirely financed from domestic resources. For most developing countries, funding is from both domestic resources and external aid. Among the developing countries, those that are more affluent and have a smaller proportion of undernourished people in their populations are better able to use domestic resources to finance national food assistance programmes. On the other hand, most LIFDCs have large proportions of undernourished individuals, and food aid is often an important financing instrument. The same is generally true of funding during emergencies, although international food aid becomes even more crucial then for low-income countries. Worldwide, the amount of resources provided from domestic sources (both public and private) far exceeds the amount provided through international food aid.

NATIONAL FOOD ASSISTANCE⁽¹⁶⁾

The magnitude of national food assistance

4.2 National food assistance is by far the most important means of tackling hunger in the world. Egypt’s expenditure on food subsidies in 1985 was nearly equal to the total value of all international food aid that year. At US$42 billion, the federal government and NGOs in the United States spent 13 times the value of global food aid (US$3 169 million) in 1990 on national food assistance. In addition to regular programmes that provide support to the chronically hungry or those requiring food at specific times of the year, domestic resources are usually the first to be amassed to save lives and provide relief in both natural and human-caused emergencies.

4.3 No global estimates of government expenditures on food assistance are available; countries rarely report such expenditures as a separate item in available statistical documents, but developing countries at least rarely spend less than 5 percent of total government expenditure on food assistance programmes. Some data on food price subsidies alone show that they typically form a significant share of government expenditures in a number of developing countries and are large in absolute terms (even though the share is low) in some developed countries. Mellor (in the foreword to Edirisinghe, 1987) suggests that subsidy costs make up as much as 15 to 20 percent of national budgets. In fact, there is a tremendous variation among countries with regard to expenditure on food subsidies. According to the World Bank, Egypt’s food subsidies, at a peak in 1980 and 1981, accounted for over 45 percent of total government expenditure. In 1973, Bangladesh spent about 27 percent of total government outlay on food subsidies. India, meanwhile never spent more
than 5 percent of its total expenditure on food subsidies (World Bank, 1986). Table 2 provides a snapshot of costs of explicit food subsidies in selected countries, and Table 3 indicates the shares of such costs in total government expenditure and in gross domestic product (GDP) in those countries.

Changes in national food assistance

4.4 Notwithstanding its important role, national food assistance has suffered a reduction in the 1980s and 1990s in both developed and developing countries. Policies associated with macroeconomic stabilization and structural adjustment which have been implemented in many developing countries since the early 1980s have led to a marked decline in resources devoted to social services, including programmes that were of direct benefit to the poor and hungry.

4.5 For example, in order to cut fiscal deficits, many countries have reduced public spending on, inter alia, food subsidy schemes. Elimination or reduction in subsidies, coupled with exchange rate realignments, has resulted in higher food prices and has directly affected poor consumers. For example, by 1985 Brazil had cut its food subsidy expenditure to a mere 19 percent of the 1980 level; Pakistan to 34 percent; Sri Lanka to 42 percent; and Zambia to 38 percent (Cornia, Jolly and Stewart, 1987). Cuts in social expenditure and services have affected the poor, who are the most dependent on public support, and economic adjustments have resulted in increases in unemployment and in a decline in incomes for many; this is bad news for the hungry, given the close relationship between poverty and hunger.

4.6 To increase efficiency and increase foreign exchange earnings, depreciation of the real exchange rate and positive real interest rates have often been part of the structural adjustment policy regime. Real exchange rate depreciation affects food consumption via macro- and microeconomic linkages. Real devaluations of the national currency tend to reduce the real wage rate and thereby the consumption of food, particularly among wage-earners. At the same time, they tend to increase prices of imported food, hurting net food buyers in the rural sector as well as urban consumers, among them, and perhaps in greatest proportion, the poorest.

4.7 Food assistance in all its forms has increasingly become a scarce resource. Yet it remains the responsibility of national governments, in partnership with the international community where necessary, to ensure enough food assistance for their most hungry citizens, wherever they are. As countries are forced to rely less on international food aid as a funding mechanism, domestic sources of funding for national food assistance programmes become ever more important.

4.8 The major multilateral institutions – the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which are the main proponents of SAPs – have recognized that fiscal restraint in some countries affected the poor adversely. IMF, for example, has let it be known that it would consider the distributional implications of alternative programmes, at the request of governments. World Bank conditionality, associated with structural adjustment lending, now typically includes a poverty element along with other conditions. These developments can be built on by governments that would like to protect vulnerable groups and ensure food security for all their citizens.

INTERNATIONAL FOOD AID

4.9 Food aid is another instrument for financing food assistance, particularly in low-income countries. Food as a form of aid to developing countries has its origin in the early 1950s, when the first structural surpluses in cereal products appeared in the United States. The international community, however, formalized the use of food aid as a development resource and tool, first with the establishment of the World Food Programme (WFP) in 1961 and subsequently with the signing of the first Food Aid Convention (FAC) in 1967 within the context of the International Grains Agreement (IGA).

4.10 The historical origin of food aid in agricultural surpluses in the donor countries and its humanitarian objectives are to a large extent responsible for what used to be thought of as its additionality as a resource transfer. At the same time, however, these factors have obscured its role as an effective resource transfer since the provision and use of food aid have not in general been subjected to the cost-benefit criteria that financial transfers are normally subjected to and consequently the efficiency of resource transfers has often been compromised.

4.11 In many developing countries, food aid has a vital role as a complement to domestic resources used for food assistance in enhancing the lives of the chronically hungry and saving lives during emergencies. As such, it has been used in a host of efforts to sustain and enhance lives, providing relief food and financial resources in disaster-affected areas, in price stabilization, in establishing or replenishing food security reserves and in public works programmes (including food-for-work) providing food and employment simultaneously.

Forms of food aid and their magnitude

4.12 The FAO Committee on Commodity Problems (CCP) has identified 13 different types of donor-recipient transactions that constitute food aid (FAO, 1980). These can be grouped, for operational purposes, into three general categories (WFP, 1996b):

• Programme food aid is usually supplied as a transfer of resources to meet balance of payments and budget support objectives. It is provided as a grant or loan on a bilateral basis. Unlike food aid provided for project or relief purposes, it is not usually targeted at specific beneficiary groups but sold on the market of the recipient country. The recipient government has complete control over its use.
• Project food aid is provided to targeted groups to support specific development objectives. It is always supplied on a grant basis. Decisions regarding the use of this form of food aid are taken by donors in partnership with the government.
• Relief food aid is targeted and freely distributed to victims of natural disasters or those caused by humans. National governments, often in collaboration with NGOs and members of civil society, are responsible for distributing the food to the target populations.

4.13 Programme food aid has historically been the most dominant, accounting for an average of about three-quarters of total food aid in the 1960s and nearly three-fifths between 1975/76 and 1994/95. Until recently (1990/91), and except for two years (1984/85 and 1985/86), the share of project food aid in total food had been higher than that of emergency food aid.

4.14 The share of food aid in official development assistance (ODA) provided by members of the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has ranged from a high average of about 14 percent in the early 1970s to about 5 percent during the 1990-1993 period. The value of food aid from DAC members (which has recently represented about 95 percent of total food aid) reached its peak in 1988 when more than US$3.8 billion in food aid was disbursed. That year (1987/88), 13.5 million tonnes of cereals (in grain equivalents), nearly double the cereal production of the entire Sahel region in 1992/93, were disbursed.⁽¹⁷⁾ Since then, lower commitments in value terms, coupled with increases in grain prices, have been translated into declining levels of food aid.

Changes in international food aid structure and priorities⁽¹⁸⁾

4.15 Although food aid for humanitarian relief to alleviate temporary or transitory food insecurity remains relatively uncontroversial, the political nature of decisions affecting international food aid means that its structure has had to be adapted to political and economic realities in donor countries.

4.16 First, there has been an abrupt decline in food aid availability⁽¹⁹⁾ since the record level of almost 17 million tonnes in 1992/93. Forecasts for 1995/96 anticipate a drop to less than 8 million tonnes. Most analysts (e.g. Taylor, 1992; Singer and Shaw, 1995) forecast a further tightening of supplies in coming years. It is too early to say whether, or to what extent, this might be linked to trade liberalization. However, the supply of food aid has always responded negatively to higher food prices. There is a significant correlation between world cereal prices and global food aid, especially where programme food aid is concerned. Moreover, cereal stocks in developed countries are also forecast to fall in 1995/96 to 105 million tonnes from 214 million tonnes in 1992/93 (FAO, 1996c). This would bring the ratio of world cereal stocks to annual global consumption to its lowest level in 20 years.

4.17 Second, there has been a stronger articulation of a concern, as yet poorly reflected in actual food aid flows, to concentrate food aid on least-developed countries (LDCs) and LIFDCs. The share of global food aid for LIFDCs has fluctuated considerably over time. During the 1980s LIFDCs received around 90 percent of total food aid. In the 1990s, however, their share has varied between 67 and 88 percent.

4.18 National food insecurity remains a minor determinant of donor food aid allocation decisions. A recent analysis shows that the food-security status of recipient countries explains only 7 percent of cross-country variation in per caput food aid transfers (FAO, 1994). As a result, the countries that receive the largest volumes of food aid are still not necessarily those inhabited by the largest numbers of hungry people.

4.19 Considered from another perspective, food aid accounted for 20 percent or more of the cereal food imports of LIFDCs during the mid-1980s. In 1995/96, a year of high cereal prices, reduced export subsidies and very low stock levels, food aid is expected to account for only 8 percent of the import requirements of such countries. Food aid for the countries that need it most is declining at the very time when they need it most.

4.20 Through the Decision on Measures Concerning the Possible Negative Effects of the Reform Programme on Least-Developed and Net Food-Importing Developing Countries, ministers negotiating the Uruguay Round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) intended to avoid possible negative effects of such liberalization. Another international body, the Executive Board of the World Food Programme (formerly the Committee on Food Aid Policies and Programmes), also directed that WFP should concentrate a larger share of its resources to countries in greatest need. More specifically, at least 90 percent of that agency’s development assistance is to be allocated to LIFDCs, and at least 50 percent of this is to go to the least-developed countries by 1997 (WFP, 1995a).

4.21 Third, food aid is no longer necessarily a surplus commodity provided by a small number of countries. It now derives from a more diverse range of donor sources, and increasingly, responsibility for its management has shifted to multilateral institutions and NGOs. In 1994, multilaterals and NGOs together handled 52 percent of global food aid, compared with 28 percent as recently as 1989. The fastest growth has been in the portion delivered through NGOs; the share of food aid handled by these organizations rose from 10 percent in 1989 to 21 percent in 1994.

4.22 Fourth, there has been a shift towards emergency-related interventions. This does not, of course, rule out development interventions or minimize their importance. However, development initiatives in vulnerable regions are increasingly linked to the requirements of relief, rehabilitation, disaster preparedness and preventive measures.

4.23 The surge in demand for emergency food aid reached a record high of 35 percent of total food aid in 1994. During the 1970s, emergency food aid represented some 10 percent of the total; during the early 1990s the share rose to an average of almost 30 percent (WFP, 1995a). In terms of tonnage, emergency food aid increased from less than 1 million tonnes per annum in the 1970s to between 3 and 4 million tonnes in 1994/95, with the sharpest rise apparent in the years since 1989/90. The proportion of this type of aid channelled to sub-Saharan Africa has grown from an average of 12 percent during the 1970s to 36 percent in 1994/95. This international food aid is in addition to the large amounts of resources diverted (from development activities) by many countries affected by disasters and crises caused by humans in order to save lives through national food assistance.

4.24 So far, most of the increased share of emergency resources has come at the expense of programme food aid (Figure 1). The share of programme aid, mostly bilateral donations for balance-of-payments support, has fallen from almost 75 percent of total food aid in the 1960s and 1970s to 43 percent in 1994 (WFP, 1995b). Levels of project food aid, while also declining in recent years, have remained somewhat more stable. In 1986/87, when world cereal stocks had reached a historic high and real prices for cereals had fallen to a historic low, almost 30 percent of global food aid was provided for development projects. Since then, the share of project food aid has fallen to around 22 percent.

4.25 Traditionally, the magnitude of programme and project food aid shipments in cereals has been closely related to the opportunity cost of that resource from the perspective of the donors, with emergency food aid being linked to humanitarian relief. Using international market prices of cereals as a proxy for the opportunity cost of cereal food aid, statistical analyses indicate that the magnitude of programme and project cereal food aid tends to decrease when its opportunity cost increases and vice versa.⁽²⁰⁾ There are several factors that may provide an explanation for the observed relationship. The first is related to the negative structural relationship between the level of cereal stocks held in donor countries and international prices, so that when international cereal prices are relatively high and cereal stocks, especially in the donor countries, are relatively low, the competition among the different purposes for which these stocks are used intensifies and causes food aid to decrease. (Conversely, when international cereal prices are low and cereal stocks are high, the competition among uses relaxes and food aid increases). The second is the fact that donors usually fix their food and budgets in fiscal rather than quantitative terms, so that when international prices are relatively high, the quantity of food aid provided for these purposes tends to be relatively low. Finally, programme and project cereal food aid tends to be a close substitute for other forms of aid provided by the donors, so that more of these other forms of aid are provided when food aid becomes relatively more expensive (and when international prices are low, food aid tends to be high and less when food aid becomes less expensive).

4.26 Fifth, as surpluses have become more scarce in donor countries triangular procurement and local purchases of food aid have increased. About 16 percent of global food aid deliveries, representing 1.5 million tonnes, was procured in developing countries in 1995 (WFP, 1996b). This amount is similar to the amounts registered in recent years but greater than those registered prior to the 1990s (Figure 2), showing that in spite of the reduction in food aid budgets, the donor community continues to support purchasing in developing countries. Local purchases, food aid procured in a developing country by donors for use as food aid in the same country, formed one-third of the total food aid procured in developing countries. Triangular transactions, food aid purchases or exchanges in developing countries by donors for use as food aid in other developing countries, represented the other two-thirds.

4.27 There is great variation among donors regarding the use of triangular and local purchases. Total cereal food aid from Ireland in 1995, for example, was procured in developing countries. Norway, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Sweden procured over 80 percent of their food aid through triangular transactions and local purchases. On the other hand, more than 90 percent of food aid from Australia, Canada, France, Italy and the United States was transferred from the donor country. Only one-tenth of 1 percent of food aid from the United States was procured in developing countries in 1995 (WFP, 1996b).

4.28 Providing food aid through triangular operations and local purchases has generally compared favourably with delivering food commodities from donor countries in terms of speed and timeliness (Neils, Reed and Lea, 1992). In addition, when food is sourced near to where it is consumed, the food is likely to be closer to the normal diets of the recipients and thus more socially acceptable. Such arrangements also increase participation of developing exporting countries in providing food aid.

4.29 Most triangular transactions and local purchases have been carried out in regularly exporting developing countries. Care should be taken, however, that food aid transactions do not result in adverse development effects such as dependence on food aid to stimulate increased food production and trade; inappropriate pricing leading to distortions both in resource allocations in supplying countries (or regions) and in protecting production programmes that would not be sustainable when food aid ends; trade diversion that would work against comparative advantage; and inconsistent and damaging interventions in local community and transport markets in supplying and recipient countries (FAO, 1985).

5. Food assistance needs

5.1 Despite successes in many countries, absolute levels of chronic undernutrition and poverty continue to rise. While structural food deficits, weak market infrastructure, inappropriate economic policies and armed conflict continue to cripple growth in many countries, there will always be a role for food assistance. This role will be two-pronged, based on direct humanitarian interventions as well as on programmes that effectively channel food (and non-food) resources directly to the very poor, laying the basis for economic growth in which the poorest, more marginal regions will be able to participate.

5.2 To make the best use of resources currently available, it will be necessary to rationalize the use of food assistance by:

• providing more cost-effective national food assistance programmes to respond to the immediate needs of the chronically hungry;
• ensuring that food resources are effectively delivered into the hands of people who have most responsibility for household food security, typically women;
• shifting current food aid allocations from less-poor recipient countries towards the most needy cases (LDCs and LIFDCs, of which there were 82 in the developing world in 1996);
• achieving greater stability in food aid supplies, at least for interventions designed to help the most hungry, particularly in years of high world food prices;
• regularly and rigorously evaluating food assistance programmes with a view to identifying lessons that can be learned and applying these lessons in future project designs.

5.3 Additionally, there is a need for a greater mutual support between food and non-food resources. Food resources alone cannot adequately address the scale of hunger that will face humanity in the decades ahead. Efforts aimed at increasing food and agricultural productivity and output as well as purchasing power among hungry people need to increase. Closer partnerships are needed between food and non-food resources to ensure that hunger is treated as a mainstream development problem, and its elimination becomes an achievable political objective. Recent efforts to improve the integration of international food aid and domestic safety-net programmes into recipient countries’ food-security and nutrition strategies have to be broadened and strengthened. Furthermore, the programming of food assistance of all kinds has to be better integrated into national agricultural and rural development strategies, so that action taken to eliminate current hunger also contributes to the prevention of future hunger. Government, donor, NGO and private-sector partners all need to be present and effective in the regions and among the households most affected by hunger to maximize the potential impact of food assistance and other investments on hunger.

PROJECTIONS OF FUTURE FOOD ASSISTANCE REQUIREMENTS

5.4As the debate surrounding the future of food assistance (particularly food aid, but also some forms of national assistance programmes) continues, so does the need to estimate future levels of food assistance, for it is certain that some form of food assistance will continue to be required.

5.5 FAO’s recent study analysing the prospects for world agriculture to the year 2010 (FAO, 1995a) contains detailed long-term projections of the consumption, production and import gaps of 93 developing countries, covering 98.5 percent of the total developing-country population, for principal food products. The study projects that there will be 680 million chronically undernourished people in the year 2010, only a very small decline from about 840 million in 1990-1992 (Table 4).

5.6 These figures, describing the current and anticipated situations, take into account the results of efforts undertaken to improve the food situation, i.e. the positive impact of direct and indirect policies and actions to reduce poverty and its consequences; they therefore show the dimension of the remaining task. However, to the extent that they show neither the widespread incidence of malnutrition other than chronic undernutrition, nor the prevalence of seasonal or temporary food inadequacy or emergency-related malnutrition, they underestimate the true scale of the task ahead.

5.7 To bring the approximately 800 million currently malnourished people up to minimum nutritional standards, assuming perfect targeting of food assistance and local absorptive capacity, these hungry people would need access to an additional 30 million tonnes of cereals and over 20 million tonnes more (in cereal equivalent) of other food commodities. The value of this additional food assistance amounts to US$13 per hungry person per year (in 1994 United States dollars). This figure represents only one-tenth of what the United States aid programme spent per person (US$134) in Egypt alone in 1994.

5.8 Using three thresholds based on basal metabolic rate (BMR),⁽²¹⁾ additional food needs by 2010 would amount to about 13 million tonnes in cereal equivalents to reach the level of 1.2 BMR, about 30 million tonnes to reach 1.4 BMR and about 50 million tonnes to reach 1.54 BMR.

5.9 Assuming, however, that hunger can be reduced to the extent that by 2010 no country has an average DES below 2 300 Calories (equivalent to just over 1.54 BMR), the number of hungry persons in 2010 would be 438 million, and additional food requirements for the chronically hungry would be nearly 33 million tonnes.

5.10 Additional food needs now and in the future can, of course, be met by incremental national food assistance or incremental food aid, or a combination of both. The extent to which external aid is important depends on the proportion of chronically hungry people in the total population of a country, as well as on the average DES. Most countries with average DES of more than 2 700 Calories have a relatively small proportion of their populations undernourished and can be assumed to have a better capacity to redistribute domestic resources to benefit the hungry. National food assistance programmes are probably sufficient for such countries, as well as those with DES between 2 500 and 2 700 Calories. Countries with DES between 2 100 and 2 500 Calories need a combination of both domestic resources and external aid, with those close to 2 100 Calories requiring more food aid than those close to 2 500 Calories. Incremental food assistance funded from domestic sources is unlikely in countries with widespread undernutrition represented by DES below 2 100 Calories. Food aid will be more important than national food assistance programmes for such countries.

5.11 With existing levels of food assistance – the status quo scenario – countries with DES of over 2 700 Calories are expected to reduce their proportion of undernourished from about 13 percent in 1990-1992 to under 5 percent in 2010. On the other hand, the proportion of undernourished people would increase from about 47 to 49 percent for those countries with DES below 2 100 Calories. Here is seen the importance of external support for the latter countries.

MOBILIZING SUPPORT TO MEET FUTURE FOOD ASSISTANCE NEEDS

5.12 It is clear that the need for food assistance, both chronic and emergency, will remain for the foreseeable future. The effort required to eliminate hunger both now and in the future is far beyond the resources currently being devoted to it. The level of food assistance should therefore increase, since present levels are far too low with respect to needs. To rise to the challenge of increasing food assistance, both national governments and major donor nations will have to make the alleviation of mass food insecurity, in times of peace as well as in times of crisis, an explicit and urgent priority.

5.13 An effective three-pronged strategy should be developed: providing emergency food assistance for humanitarian relief; providing direct food assistance to vulnerable women and children at critical times of their lives; and providing food and cash transfers to alleviate chronic hunger and enhance the developmental prospects of the direct beneficiaries.

5.14 With political will, it should be possible to mobilize the resources needed to eliminate hunger from the world. Governments, in collaboration with NGOs and civil society, should use available resources for food assistance more effectively and garner more resources to combat hunger where a mere rationalization of the currently available resources does not prove sufficient. Countries unable to finance food assistance programmes from their domestic resources need the support of the international community. Donor countries have a strong moral imperative as well as self-interest to assist the low-income countries in reducing their poverty and ridding the world of hunger. A poor, hungry world is a world less secure for everybody.

5.15 In conclusion, the world community has both the knowledge and the resources to eliminate hunger. It is in the interest of all humanity to realize that better-targeted food assistance both saves and enhances lives and is a potent means of reducing future food insecurity and poverty.

5.16 It matters little to the hungry whether additional food needs are funded from external or domestic resources, but given the responsibility national governments have for ensuring food security for the entire citizenry, national food assistance programmes will continue to be the key to world food security.

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Notes

¹ See WFS companion paper 14 Assessment of feasible progress in food security.

² This section is heavily based on the paper Tackling hunger in a world full of food: tasks ahead for food aid, prepared by the World Food Programme (WFP, 1996a) for the World Food Summit.

³ See WFS companion paper 1 Food, agriculture and food security: developments since the World Food Conference and prospects.

⁴ See WFS companion paper 5 Food security and nutrition.

⁵ The prevalence of hunger in the United States and in other industrialized countries is measured by the number of participants who use food assistance programmes, household surveys and anecdotal descriptions, as opposed to clinical and statistical measures used in developing countries.

⁶ For example, Article 25 of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights of the United Nations, and Article 11 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1966.

⁷ Except where the capacity of national governments to establish food assistance programmes has been impaired by civil war or other emergency situations.

⁸ See WFS companion paper 5 Food security and nutrition.

⁹ See WFS 96/05.

¹⁰ It should be noted that such programmes are effective at compensating for short-term transitory declines in incomes of certain groups of low-income people. Of course, if the income declines are expected to be of a longer-term nature, it is important that transfer programmes be accompanied by measures that will assure a self-sustaining enhanced capacity of the poor to generate more income.

¹¹ Some food price subsidies are linked to income transfer programmes. For example, they are linked to food stamps targeted to selected population groups in the United States and to food commodities in Sri Lanka. In such cases, food price subsidies form part of direct income transfer.

¹² Food reserves can be regarded as part of food price subsidy programmes when used as stabilization reserves; emergency reserves can form part of direct feeding programmes if used as such during emergencies, or part of food price subsidy programmes when released onto the market at a price lower than that at which consumers would ordinarily buy the food.

¹³ Global cereal stocks as a percentage of trend utilization reached a record level of 27 percent in 1987, fell to 24 percent the following year, fluctuated between 18 and 21 percent during 1990-1995 and are forecast to decline further at the end of the 1995/96 season to only 14 percent of trend utilization in 1996/97, well below the 17 to 18 percent range that FAO considers the minimum necessary to safeguard world food security.

¹⁴ Local food market systems refer to the specific areas to which food assistance has been targeted. They do not necessarily correspond to the domestic food market which, as a whole, may be little affected by events in a small localized part of the country.

¹⁵ Box 6 is based on a briefing note prepared for the World Food Summit by World Vision.

¹⁶ National food assistance here refers to food assistance programmes funded from national resources, as distinct from food aid. It should be borne in mind that some such programmes may, in fact, be indirectly funded by resources obtained through other forms of external assistance, including in some cases programme food aid provided to support general government programmes.

¹⁷ Cereals comprise the bulk of food aid disbursements. In 1995, cereal food aid represented over 88 percent of the total.

¹⁸ This subsection is heavily based on WFP, 1996a.

¹⁹ The analysis of trends of food aid availability in this paper is based on the traditional definition of food aid as having a grant element of at least 25 percent below the commercial price. Using a different line of analysis (see e.g. Singer, 1996), the trend would be the same (downwards), but the actual volumes of what constitutes food aid at any point would be different from what is reported here.

²⁰ Regression analyses linking the magnitude of programme and project aid to a complex time trend and prices of cereals, for the period 1971-1993, indicate that nearly two-thirds of the annual variation in the former can be explained by these two factors alone, with the world market prices making the greatest contribution to the explained variation. These results broadly indicate a slowdown in the underlying trend of programme and project food aid provided as well as a counter-cyclicity in its movement in response to changes in international prices. It must be stressed, however, that there may be significant differences in the nature and strength of the relationship between the same variables when the analysis is disaggregated either to country (donor) or commodity level (see FAO, 1985).

²¹ The basal metabolic rate is the minimal rate of energy expenditure compatible with life. It is measured under standard conditions of immobility in the fasting state, with an environmental temperature of 26º to 30ºC, which ensures no activation of heat-generating processes (e.g. shivering). It corresponds to energy expenditure during sleeping. A level of 1.2 times the BMR is the minimum required for survival; i.e. it represents energy requirements necessary to sustain life with minimum food-gathering activity. This is comparable to the activity level for a refugee; it does not allow for play, work or any activity other than food gathering. A level of 1.4 BMR, the maintenance requirement, corresponds to the lowest limit set for any usual requirement; it allows for the energy cost of being up and about in a state of energy balance, but performing little physical work apart from intermittent moving about for a total of three hours per day. A level of 1.54 BMR corresponds to involvement in light activity such as sewing and weaving. A life that involves moderate or heavy work requires a higher level of energy expenditure than 1.54 BMR.