Food aid isn’t usually just about helping the hungry.
From the start, the United States’ flagship food aid program, Food for Peace, has served dual purposes: humanitarian relief and domestic economic interests. The $2 billion annual initiative buys surplus American commodities and donates them abroad, sustaining a crucial market for U.S. farmers, and especially wheat growers. In fact, if U.S. food aid were considered an export market, it would rank among the top 10 destinations for American wheat.
Now, as the Trump administration dismantles USAID, a new bill in the U.S. Congress aims to save Food for Peace by shifting it from USAID to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, or USDA. The move, backed by Republican lawmakers and a coalition of farm industry groups, is being framed as a win-win: Keeping aid flowing to food-insecure countries while protecting American farmers.
But not everyone’s convinced it will work. “USDA has only six agricultural attaché offices across 53 sub-Saharan African countries,” one expert tells me. “They do not have the people on the ground to provide proper oversight for a program as large and important as Food for Peace.”
There’s also concern about USDA’s lack of humanitarian expertise. While it manages international food trade and domestic farm policy, it doesn’t handle large-scale emergency response — and certainly not at the scale of expertise that USAID had built up over decades. The U.S. State Department doesn’t have that technical know-how either. But humanitarian aid advocates tell me that transferring the program to USDA is still better than letting it die.
Ultimately, Food for Peace is a test case: Can food aid survive in a reshuffled U.S. aid bureaucracy? Or is this the first step toward making U.S. aid more about business than relief? If the goal is efficiency, starving one agency to feed another may not be the best recipe.
Read: As USAID is dismantled, Republicans fight to save a food aid program
See also: WFP to resume food aid delivery after halt due to US stop-work order
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Earlier this month, U.S. officials moved to strip references to diversity, equity, and inclusion and “gender ideology” from UNICEF’s work plans in Colombia, Ethiopia, Iraq, Paraguay, and Rwanda — marking the administration’s latest effort to reshape U.S. foreign aid in its own ideological image, writes my colleague Colum Lynch.
The move, which failed to gain support, signals a broader push by the administration to roll back what it sees as a progressive U.N. agenda. It also raises the specter of financial cuts to UNICEF, which runs nutrition programs for women and children in more than 130 countries. It’s one of the most widely supported U.N. agencies, and one traditionally led by an American. In a rare break from precedent, the U.S. forced a vote on the plans rather than approving them by consensus. The final decision passed 31-1, with only the U.S. in opposition.
Washington’s stance has put it at odds with key democratic allies while aligning it with autocratic regimes and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, which has also opposed DEI language in U.N. documents. “The United States cannot agree to country program documents that contain terms and concepts that conflict with U.S. policies,” said Jonathan Shrier, the acting U.S. representative at the session.
Meanwhile, at the World Food Programme, the U.S. is taking a similar approach. In a statement at a recent WFP Executive Board session, the Trump administration made clear that U.S. funds “will not be used to promote gender ideology” and that all U.N. agencies should follow Washington’s lead in eliminating DEI initiatives. The U.S. also hinted at further “correction” to climate-related programming, reinforcing that its foreign aid agenda is being rewritten in real time.
Exclusive: The Trump administration takes war on DEI and gender global
And don’t miss: UN migration agency expunges website of DEI catchphrases
Our global team is tracking the impact of the foreign aid freeze and the Trump administration’s policy shifts. Here’s a roundup of this week’s biggest stories:
In a contentious court hearing, a federal judge has ordered the Trump administration to release millions of dollars in frozen foreign aid by midnight today, saying that it has provided “no evidence” of complying with the court’s two-week-old directive to do so. One segment of USAID partners is owed $700 million, with major development contractor DAI owed $150 million. WFP alone is owed more than $820 million, according to The Washington Post.
With U.S. foreign aid frozen for 90 days, climate and national security experts are worried about how terrorist activity — both locally and internationally — could surge as extremist groups capitalize on a sudden dearth of leadership and a slew of struggling farmers dealing with the increasing effects of climate change.
USAID’s funding freeze is worsening conditions in Rohingya refugee camps in Bangladesh, threatening the closure of essential health, food, and sanitation programs. With aid levels already declining, community volunteers warn that further ration cuts could fuel violence, domestic abuse, and a deepening mental health crisis.
As the world’s largest donor crumbles, many organizations have followed close behind. Devex is tracking the groups that cut, furloughed, and suspended workers.
And in non-USAID news: The Cali Fund launched yesterday in Rome at the resumed session of the United Nations Biodiversity Conference, or COP16, with a goal of raising up to $1 billion annually for biodiversity protection. It calls on companies to voluntarily contribute 1% of profits or 0.1% of revenue for the commercial use of genetic resources, known as digital sequence information, though donations are unlikely to start this week.
Since 2006, AGRA has evolved from a focus on creating better seeds to become a broader force in African agriculture, integrating fertilizers, markets, and policy reforms to reach 11 million farmers.
In 10 years under its outgoing president, Agnes Kalibata — a former Rwandan agriculture minister and the daughter of farmers — AGRA has expanded from 100 to over 300 staff members, operating in 15 countries with a $1 billion budget. But for Kalibata, who wraps up her tenure this week, the work is far from over.
She tells Dish editor Tania Karas that she has a vision for an Africa free of hunger that produces its own food. “The biggest challenge of food security in Africa is not production. It’s failure of trade because of a lack of infrastructure,” she says. As for the work that awaits her successor Alice Ruhweza, who takes the reins March 1, Kalibata says she’ll have to keep supporting African governments while creating space for the private sector, too.
She also had some words for the agricultural movement on which AGRA, formerly known as the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, based its name before it rebranded to just its acronym in 2022: “The Green Revolution ship has sailed.” Now, she says, it’s time to pick what works for Africa, with a focus on transforming food systems.
Read: Beyond the Green Revolution — how AGRA evolved under Agnes Kalibata
See also: AGRA appoints Alice Ruhweza as new president
This week, as Paris hosts its annual Salon de l’Agriculture, a major showcase of France’s farming and food culture, attention is turning to the Nutrition for Growth, or N4G, summit. On the sidelines of the fair, the French development agency AFD and agricultural research group CIRAD co-hosted a miniconference Monday on the One Health approach, looking ahead to the global nutrition gathering next month in Paris.
The quadrennial N4G summit garnered $27 billion in commitments in 2021. Devex Deputy Managing Editor Fiona Zublin tuned in Monday as Perrine Geniez, a nutrition expert, highlighted this edition’s focus on continuity with past and future summits, calling N4G “a real will to anchor these summits in the international ecosystem.”
Other priorities include integrating nutrition into broader sustainable development efforts, tackling all forms of malnutrition — including obesity, which was not a focus at the previous summit in Tokyo — and ensuring strong political and financial commitments.
ICYMI: This French diplomat thinks nutrition is a ‘magic wand’ for development (Pro)
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The United Kingdom will slash billions in aid spending to fund a larger military. [Devex]
Nearly 12,000 seed samples from 19 genebanks — including climate-resilient crops from war-affected Sudan — are being deposited in the Svalbard Global Seed Vault this week to safeguard biodiversity against conflict, disasters, and climate change. [CropTrust]
Food insecurity in Somalia is set to worsen from April to June this year, with 4.4 million people, or 23% of the population, expected to face crisis-level hunger due to poor rainfall, high food prices, conflict, and flooding. [IPC]
Médecins Sans Frontières suspended operations in Sudan’s Zamzam camp due to escalating violence, forcing the closure of its field hospital, which was critical in addressing malnutrition in an area where famine had previously been declared. [MSF]
Burundi has expelled two WFP officials, after saying that a staff message advising food and supply stockpiling was alarmist, amid escalating conflict in neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo. [SOS Media Burundi]
Fiona Zublin contributed to this edition of Devex Dish.