European Food Aid Policy by John Cathie

Author:John Cathie [Cathie, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, General
ISBN: 9780429859809
Google: Ks-CDwAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 43329576
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 1997-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

4.2 EU food aid policy from the 1970s

Community food aid policy in 1974 had three broad categories for its operations, emergency assistance, nutritional objectives and operations for development. The emergency assistance focused upon the Sahel countries, victims of the Nigerian Civil War and Bengali refugees of the war between India and Pakistan. Nutritional operations were mainly through the United Nations Relief Works Administration (UNRWA) to Palestine refugees. Operations for development were aimed at foreign exchange savings from food aid imports, and where the aid was sold on their national markets, providing counterpart funds for the financing of development projects. The Commission published a Memorandum on Food Aid Policy of the EEC (Com (74) 300 Final) to the European Council of Ministers, in which it argued for a coherent Community-wide food aid policy while acknowledging that food aid was not a satisfactory permanent solution to the food problems of developing countries.

The memo cites inter alia a role for food aid in famine relief, and in the building of national food reserves and stocks (both in the short and medium term), as likely to enhance the development of recipients. Food aid as a means of overcoming a foreign exchange constraint within a recipient country is seen as a longer term benefit and maybe as important as other forms of aid. Disincentive effects at the international level, the Memo claims, can be reduced by observation of the principles of surplus disposal and local disincentive effects can also be overcome by the stipulation that food aid should not be sold in open market sales at below normally prevailing internal prices. Food aid could also reduce inflationary pressure in recipient countries by giving balance of payments relief and improve employment within the recipient country. In this theoretical catalogue of potential benefits, the Commission did not however provide any evidence of its programmes having contributed to recipients economic development, as opposed to general food aid emergency assistance.

The 1974 Commission Memo argued for a more purposeful food aid policy' which would comprise of adopting a principle that all future food aid would be in the form of Community actions. The core of this argument rested on the 'coherence, efficacity and close relation between food aid policy of the community and agricultural policies which are of a community character'. The future commercial benefit from (for example) skimmed milk powder would in due time create a commercial demand for dairy plant equipment from the Union, although care was taken in the Memo not to suggest an increase in commercial demand amongst recipients of European milk powder itself.

From 1968 to 1974 EU food aid policy was framed in the thinking that related to the direct linking between agricultural protection and surplus disposal and the channel for EU food aid was predominantly multilateral, namely the WFP. The European Union did not have the operational capacity to establish food aid based on development projects and programmes, and it was therefore pragmatic to channel food aid through the UN system (as well as being less costly).

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