Bart L. Fischer and Joe Outlaw
The United States has a long and storied history of providing food aid to those who are in need around the world. One of the earliest examples dates to 1812 when the U.S. government sent $50,000 of wheat flour to Venezuela following a devastating earthquake. U.S. international food aid efforts were formalized with passage of the Food for Peace Act in 1954, which sought to alleviate global hunger while also disposing of domestic agricultural surpluses. In total, the U.S. has consistently spent in excess of $4 billion per year on international food aid and is, by far, the world’s largest contributor.[1] That funding results in more than 1 million metric tons of U.S.-grown agricultural commodities—including corn, sorghum, rice and wheat— being shipped to recipient countries each year, serving as a consistent source of demand and helping to stabilize domestic prices.
Over the last 200 years, policymakers have regularly debated the appropriate role of the U.S. government in providing international food aid. For example, during Congressional debates in 1847 about whether to send aid in response to the Irish Potato Famine, President Polk threatened a veto, arguing that it was his “solemn conviction…that Congress possesses no power to use public money for any such purpose.” For decades, policymakers have also debated the appropriate balance between food aid and development assistance—the proverbial “give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” Both featured prominently in the development and passage of the Food for Peace Act over 70 years ago, and both remain a prominent feature of American global food security efforts today.
More recently, the debates over international food aid have been more technical in nature, largely focused on the efficiency of food aid (or the perceived lack thereof) and the impact of that aid on the recipient country. On the latter, an amendment to the Food for Peace Act from Senator Henry Bellmon (R-OK) in the International Development and Food Assistance Act of 1977 required the U.S. government to assesses whether the recipient country has adequate storage facilities and whether assistance would interfere with the recipient country’s agricultural economy before shipping aid.
Despite these efforts, criticism of in-kind aid (i.e., U.S.-grown commodities) has resulted in a push for procurement of food aid in local/regional markets and for cash transfers for people to use in local shops. In 2010, the Obama Administration introduced a cash-based assistance program known as the Emergency Food Security Program (EFSP) that was designed to complement U.S.-grown commodities by allowing local/regional purchases along with cash transfers. Since then, the use of cash-based assistance has rapidly expanded, now accounting for more than half of international food aid provided by the United States. This has led to growing concerns among policymakers about a lack of accountability with cash-based assistance and the ease with which it can be misappropriated in recipient countries.
This brings us to Spring 2025. As part of their efforts to improve government efficiency and ensure U.S. international efforts are yielding promised results, the Trump Administration eliminated the U.S. Agency for International Development which oversaw Food for Peace, absorbing those efforts into the broader State Department. In December 2025, USDA entered into an interagency agreement to take over the administration of Food for Peace. In March 2026, the Committee on Agriculture in the U.S. House of Representatives marked up its farm bill proposal—the Farm, Food, and National Security Act of 2026—which would permanently transfer the authorities of the Food for Peace Act from USAID to USDA while reserving 50% of Food for Peace resources for U.S. grown commodities, returning the program “to its original intent of addressing the global hunger crisis through the purchase of U.S. grown commodities.”[2]
For many in the agricultural community, the shift to local/regional procurement and cash-based food assistance—however well intentioned—was undermining the historic mission of Food for Peace. Moving Food for Peace to USDA presents an opportunity to refocus the program, helping ensure that it can survive another 70 years in fulfilling its dual mission of using domestic agricultural surplus to help feed those in need around the world.
[1] https://www.gao.gov/international-food-assistance
[2] https://agriculture.house.gov/uploadedfiles/final_2026_ffp_onepager.pdf
Fischer, Bart L., and Joe Outlaw. “The Future of Food Aid.” Southern Ag Today 6(14.4). April 2, 2026. Permalink
