USDANEWS VOLUME 58 NO.4 - MAY 1999
by Heather Page, FAS Export Credits Staff
You’ve seen the haunting images on television: hundreds of thousands of desperate refugees fleeing--or forced out of--the Serbian province of Kosovo in southern Yugoslavia.
But what you may not know is that USDA is helping to feed them.
Even before the massive surge in refugees and the beginning of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s strategic bombing campaign in March, USDA was already providing badly needed assistance. To help alleviate some of the pending hardships in the region, USDA already had several programs in place in Albania, which borders the Serbian province of Kosovo to the southwest. Under “Food for Progress” authority, USDA was able to authorize distribution of dry whole milk, vegetable oil, and bulk wheat to be milled into flour for bread. These commodities will be available to feed the ethnic Albanian refugees who have fled over the southwestern border of Kosovo into northeastern Albania.
“Because of the unrest,” advised Mary Chambliss, deputy administrator for export credits in the Foreign Agricultural Service, “farmers in Kosovo Province experienced severely disrupted planting with little chance of any real harvest yields that could support the population.”
“So USDA helped to secure a safe food source for many hungry refugee families.”
Chambliss emphasized that USDA’s goal in this region of the Balkans is to make sure that enough food is available to feed the increasing number of refugees fleeing or forced out of Kosovo. “USDA hopes to coordinate its assistance very closely with the European Union and others that are providing food aid and other forms of help,” she said. “We’re working closely with the World Food Program and private voluntary organizations.”
Ron Croushorn, FAS’s export credits area manager for Eastern Europe/Former Soviet Union, explained that the World Food Program--which is the food aid agency of the United Nations--and some private voluntary organizations currently have food stocks in the region. “The administration of the U.S.’s food aid programs is shared by USDA and the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID,” he said, “in providing assistance to needy people around the world.”
“Of the more than half a million refugees currently in need of assistance,” Chambliss noted, “USDA--working with relief organizations of the United States--plans to provide at least half of the food needed, with the anticipation that the European Union and other donors will also assist in this massive relief effort.”
She added that USAID is providing specially formulated food, such as high protein biscuits, to Kosovo refugees. “The food supplies already available are sufficient to meet the immediate needs of that region,” she said. “But USDA has stepped in to ensure the World Food Program and the other organizations can provide the needed wheat flour for those refugees for the rest of this year and into the year 2000, should the need be necessary.”
Six loaves of bread could be quite a
handful for most people, but this young Kosovo refugee in Kukkes, Albania seems
happy to give it a go. The bread was made using USDA wheat flour. In fact,
three bakeries in Albania are using wheat flour like this to produce 35,000
loaves of bread a day for the refugees. Providing wheat flour to this region of
the Balkans is part of USDA’s goal to make sure that enough food is
available to feed the increasing number of refugees fleeing or forced out of
the Serbian province of Kosovo. |
Amy Harding, the Farm Service Agency’s manager of P.L. 480 Programs, said that, to help ensure the continued availability of food sources for the refugees, USDA is planning to ship approximately 10,000 metric tons of wheat flour per month to the region beginning in July. The wheat flour will be donated to the World Food Program or to private voluntary organizations for direct feeding operations in Macedonia, Albania, and possibly other countries in the Balkan region. “This will supplement other food aid efforts by the United States,” she advised.
Grant Pettrie, acting director of FAS’s Export Credits, Program Development Division, added that this wheat flour will be a direct food donation administered by FAS under Section 416(b) of the Agricultural Act of 1949. “The Department uses this Section 416(b) program,” he explained, “to provide overseas donations of surplus food commodities owned by the Commodity Credit Corporation, to carry out food commodity assistance programs in developing countries and countries with emerging markets for U.S. agricultural products.”
Surplus commodities acquired by the Commodity Credit Corporation may be made available under Section 416(b) if those surplus commodities cannot be sold or otherwise disposed of without disruption of price support programs or at competitive world prices. “These donations,” Pettrie said, “do not reduce the amounts of commodities that traditionally are donated to USDA domestic feeding programs or agencies, and they do not disrupt normal commercial food sales.”
The U.S. donates more food aid around the world than any other country. Over the years, donated U.S. food aid has often made a life-or-death difference to victims of earthquakes, floods, droughts, and civil strife.
In fact, on April 28 Secretary Dan Glickman signed a new agreement to provide for continued donations of agricultural commodities, via USDA food aid programs, to the World Food Program. “This agreement,” he said, “paves the way for further USDA food donations to needy people around the world, including Kosovo refugees, and famine victims in North Korea.”
At present, according to Pettrie, USDA is shipping food to more than 50 countries this year under its donation and long term credit sales programs. “USDA food aid,” he noted, “is helping Russians weather the economic crisis, victims of Hurricane Mitch in Central America, and people facing chronic food shortages in countries like Sudan and Bangladesh.”
But USDA’s food aid programs often do more than supply food to hungry people. They also support a wide variety of development projects, including the rebuilding of needed infrastructure in recipient countries.
“For example, under one program in hurricane-damaged Guatemala,” explained FAS agricultural economist Debbie Seidband, “U.S. commodities are given to private voluntary organizations for distribution in the local market and sold at market value. The proceeds then are used for developing agricultural and market development programs such as creating improved irrigation systems and bringing electricity to rural areas.”
That process is called 'monetization,’ and, she noted, it is an assistance tool FAS uses to help residents create and/or maintain food security in their communities.
“Our assistance, therefore, helps to spur business development and improving living conditions for many rural families in Guatemala,” Seidband said.
“With large U.S. surpluses of major commodities on hand,” affirmed Chambliss, “USDA won’t stand by and ignore the millions around the world facing natural and human-created disasters, or suffering chronic hunger.”
“Our USDA food aid programs allow us to use the abundant food supplies--generated by American agriculture--to help relieve hunger and suffering abroad.”
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