FOOD AID 'NOT ENOUGH ON ITS OWN'!

Food aid 'not enough on its own'
By Mark Kinver Science and nature reporter, BBC News.

Food security requires more than food aid, the FAO report says. Unless food aid reaches "the right people at the right time" it can lead to food insecurity, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) warns.
A report by the UN agency suggested alternative measures, such as cash or vouchers, could be more effective.
Poorly targeted aid often depressed local market prices, the report added.
But a spokesman for the World Food Programme (WFP) said an increase of natural disasters meant that more people required immediate food aid.
"It is very clear that food aid saves lives," Terri Raney, author of the FAO's State of Food and Agriculture 2006 report, told BBC News.
"Our concern, though, is that in some cases, physical distribution of food aid can undermine longer term security."
Right place, right time
The report, launched in Rome by FAO director-general Dr Jacques Diouf, recommended a number of "fairly simple" reforms.

Countries suffering a food crisis.
Ms Raney explained: "Some of the ways food aid is managed reduce the efficiency of the timing and targeting.
"We think that it ought to be separated from the tie-in requirements many donor nations put on their food aid."
These requirements included the stipulation that the food had to be purchased and processed in the donor nation, and then shipped on vessels registered in the donor nation.
"These kinds of things not only reduce the efficiency of the food aid, but they are very costly," she observed.
This approach meant that it could take up to six months or longer before the food arrived where it was needed.
"Secondly, we recommend providing food aid only in very targeted ways. About a quarter of food aid is sold in local markets; we are not talking about black markets, this is just the standard way it is distributed.
"That sort of aid is not targeted at people in need, it is just likely to depress local market prices and more likely to have negative long-term consequences."

See how cereal prices have affected food aid shipments

The UN's World Food Programme, the globe's largest aid agency, said the increasing number of natural disasters were dictating how its own resources were allocated.
Neil Gallagher, WFP's director of communications, said: "The frequency of natural disaster in the 1990s is about three times the level experienced in the 1960s, and this has generated huge demand for emergency assistance.

Higher cereal costs... affect your tonnage, and this translates into not having as much food as we would like
Neil Gallagher,World Food Programme"Eighty-five percent of our food aid is emergency food aid, and only 15% is going to address chronic hunger among malnourished children.
"From a certain perspective, this can look bizarre because nine out of 10 deaths that can be related back to hunger occur outside of these emergencies."
But, he added, the scale of the natural disasters meant that there were very few resources for other programmes, such as feeding pregnant women and school children.
The main staple of the WFP's food aid packages are cereal crops, which have seen prices recently reach a decade high.
The price hike was a result of poor harvests in key producing nations and the growing demand for biofuels, the FAO's Food Outlook reported in December.
Mr Gallagher said these developments were making the agency "nervous".
"It really affects the number of people we can feed because you have higher shipping costs because of higher fuels costs," he told BBC News.
"You then compound that with higher cereal costs that affect your tonnage, and this translates into not having as much food as we would like."
'Social safety nets'
Paul Harvey, a research fellow at the Overseas Development Institute (ODI), said over the past 20 years food aid had been the largest part of international responses to emergencies.
"Food aid has traditionally dominated because it is an available resource. Developed nations have used it because, in part, they have had surpluses and because it can be tied to their own interests," he said.
You may need to provide food aid but it is only part of a social safety net
Terri Raney, FAO
"If it means that the most appropriate resource is not being delivered, if you should be delivering cash but are delivering food aid because that is what available, then that is problematic."
Terri Raney said the FAO supported a "twin track" approach to food security: "That includes food aid, but it should also include other social safety nets, such as cash or vouchers, where food is already available.
"Food aid may be essential but it is never enough, people always need other things to go along with it."
She added that the report was trying to promote the concept of "food utilisation", which refers to the body's ability to absorb nutrients.
"It is affected by your health status, access to clean water, access to sanitation facilities," Ms Raney explained.
"If you are ill or have diarrhoea, you can't absorb the nutrients. Yes, you may need to provide food aid but it is only part of a social safety net.
"We have to look at the entire system: the physical infrastructure, how well the markets are functioning, and how people are earning their livelihoods."

BBC NEWS REPORT.