As WTO giants bicker on food aid, thousands die: UN

By Sophie Walker

HONG KONG (Reuters) – Europe and the United States should
be throwing their efforts into increasing food aid instead of
arguing about the form it takes, a top U.N. food aid official
said on Friday. A long-simmering row between Washington and
Brussels boiled over at a trade meeting in Hong Kong this week,
with ministers exchanging barbed comments about whether
humanitarian aid should be in the form of commodities or cash.

“What is disgraceful and outrageous is that 18,000 children
die of hunger every day, every one of them a preventable death.
That’s what the controversy should be about,” said John Powell,
deputy executive director of the United Nations’ World Food
Programme.

“We need more food and more cash,” he told reporters.

The United States currently sends donations to developing
countries in the form of its own domestic corn, wheat and other
commodities. The European Union argues that cash is quicker and
least likely to affect the direct balance of local trade.

Trade ministers from rich and poor countries have converged
on Hong Kong to try to push forward much-delayed talks to lower
global trade barriers and try to lift millions out of poverty.

Reaching agreement on how to overhaul rich nations’
agricultural supports is seen as the key to unlocking other
deals in services and manufacturing sectors but the United
States and European Union are at loggerheads.

EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson said earlier this
week the U.S. programme was a subsidy for U.S. farmers which
must be radically reformed before Brussels will consider
requests from Washington and other countries here to set a date
for scrapping its export subsidies.

“GRAIN OF SAND”

Powell said the U.N’s World Food Programme was grateful to
both the U.S. and European communities for their generosity but
its needs continued to outstrip the availability of resources
and rows over cash or commodities were missing the point.

“Global food aid amounts to 0.3 percent of the world’s food
production. This is like going to the beach and focusing on a
single grain of sand,” he said.

On the EU’s charge that Washington’s programs are designed
to prop up prices and get rid of surplus stock he replied:
“There are few ways that are more expensive to get rid of
agricultural surplus than to provide it through a U.N. food
programme.”

About 40 percent of the cost of a humanitarian or emergency
relief operation is the cost of food, Powell said, while around
60 percent was the cost of getting food to beneficiaries.

In other words, “You will pay about $1.50 for every $1 of
food you move,” he said.

Powell also defended a U.N. newspaper advertisement,
running all this week, which pictures hungry African children
and says that restrictions on donations of food could take food
out of their mouths.

Mandelson said on Tuesday he was shocked that the U.N.
should be financing an advert supporting U.S. trade-distorting
policies, but Powell said it had been provided pro bono and the
intent was to bring attention to the issue of hunger.

“We want to ensure that the ability of the World Food
Programme to meet the needs of those in need is not
inadvertently limited by this round of trade negotiations,” he
said.