Food Aid Essay

When disaster strikes or people are in need, the reaction of countries and individuals is to help. Whatever the situation or motivation almost always, someone is ready to help. This begs the questions: are these actions helping or hurting? Is donating funds the most effective way to help? Is volunteering overseas helpful or harmful? Is US food aid solving or creating a problem? These are all questions that ought to be addressed when considering how to best help those in need. When people think they are helping, quite often they are doing just the opposite, one problem may have been solved but it is very likely another has been created. Oftentimes, the best of intentions end in the worst results. History has shown that often times individuals, corporations, and governments go into a situation with the intentions of helping, remedying a situation, or filling a need, but when they remove themselves from the situation they have only left behind a larger problem. As author Daniel Jean-Louis expresses in his book “From Aid to Trade,” the fact that people …show more content…
Take a look at US food aid. The US is the most significant supplier of food aid in the world, supplying $1 billion, one-third of the World Food Programme’s 2010 budget, in food aid in 2010 (Stabler 505). But is this the best way that the US can help these countries in need? As many examples demonstrate, the answer is no. In the documentary “Poverty Inc.” focus is placed on Haiti and the subsidized American rice, which has been flooding the Haitian market for years. Bill Clinton himself has stated that, “food aid was a mistake,” and many rice farmers and Haitians attest to how this flooding of the market removed the demand, and put rice farmers out of business (“Poverty Inc.”). Rather than solving the crisis in Haiti, food aid has destroyed farmers’ means to provide for themselves and their families, and it has created a dependency on said