New U.S. Programme For Food Aid

Press, Volume CV, Issue 31001, 5 March 1966, Page 14

New U.S. Programme For Food Aid

President Johnson has proposed to the United States Congress a new programme of aid to hungry nations which, if it becomes law, will reverse a 13-year trend in American agriculture. Farmers who have been encouraged since the Korean war to grow less will be asked to grow more. At first, this means more rice than was grown last year in the United States, more wheat than was planned for the coming spring planting, and more soya beans. Mr Johnson also seeks approval for holding 60 million acres of land, not now being cultivated, as a “ food and fibres “ reserve ”, He told Congress: “We will bring these “ acres back into production as needed—but not to “ produce unwanted surpluses and not to supplant “ the efforts of other countries to develop their own “ agricultural economies ”. This must be good news for American farmers and a relief for developing countries who have seen American farm surpluses running down. Surpluses of dairy products are already insufficient to meet the demand and this must interest New Zealand. The United Kingdom, which is planning to increase beef production, and therefore ~iay one day have more recurrent surpluses of milk supplies may take the opportunity of selling these surpluses, perhaps in the form of dried milk, to needy countries.

An important feature of Mr Johnson’s “ Food for “ Freedom ” programme distinguishes it from the “ Food for Peace ” programme launched in 1954. Food aid. he has argued, should not be a crutch for needy nations. Food shipments should relieve hardship and hunger. In some countries they have also diminished the urgency for stimulating agricultural development and investment resources have been concentrated on other activities. Aid shipments have sometimes upset the commercial markets and have caused farmers to reduce their output. The Johnson programme is therefore designed to stimulate self-help. In future, food will be bought on long-term dollar credits and not, as now, by payments in local currencies. Eventually, the United States hopes to build up cash markets for its products in these countries and they will pay for their imports with export earnings. This must be a distant hope, and, in the meantime, American farms will continue to provide emergency relief where local production falls behind the requirements of population increases. The growth of United States farm production will have to be carefully managed, for excessive growth would have an immediate effect on world prices. This would cost the United States Government money in its farm support scheme; it would damage output in developing countries; and it would imperil other exporters of farm produce.

These are problems which must not be allowed to obscure the duty of all prosperous countries—not just the United States—to help fill the immediate needs of hungry nations and to assist them with the development of their own food production. Such a policy does not assume that all nations will be eventually self-sufficient. The distribution of population and of food-producing capacity does not permit this. But without temporary aid leading to development and trade the world’s wealth will never be fairly shared.