The people of the United States have played an important role in stanching the tide of world hunger for the past 70 years.
Given primarily in the form of in-kind gifting of agricultural commodities, the $2.5 billion annual donations comprise 6 percent of total U.S. development assistance. Initially, this in-kind gifting was utilized to effectively distribute the excess food production that the U.S. has enjoyed for nearly a century.
However, now inefficiencies have grown up around the production, packaging and distribution of food to hungry nations around the globe. These inefficiencies, encouraged by arcane and self-serving legislation, now threaten to limit the ability of well-meaning people to assuage the hunger that menaces much of the developing world.