US food aid programme criticised as 'corporate welfare' for grain giants

[alp227]

This discussion thread was locked as off-topic by Ruby the Liberal (a host of the Latest Breaking News forum).

Source: The Guardian

Two-thirds of food for the billion-dollar US food aid programme last year was bought from just three US-based multinationals.

The main beneficiaries of the programme, billed as aid to the world's poorest countries, were the highly profitable and politically powerful companies that dominate the global grain trade: ADM, Cargill and Bunge.

The Guardian has analysed and collated for the first time details of hundreds of food aid contracts awarded by the US department of agriculture (USDA) in 2010-11 to show where the money goes.

ADM, incorporated in the tax haven state of Delaware, won nearly half by volume of all the contracts to supply food for aid and was paid nearly $300m (£190m) by the US government for it. Cargill, in most years the world largest private company and still majority owned by the Cargill family, was paid $96m for food aid and was the second-largest supplier, with 16% of the contracted volume. Bunge, the US-headquartered global grain trader incorporated in the tax haven of Bermuda, comes third in the list by volume, and was paid $75m to supply food aid.

Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/2012/jul/18/us-multinationals-control-food-aid

[woo me with science]

1. Does any of this surprise us anymore?

The denial needs to stop.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1014&pid=146626

[russspeakeasy]

2. This has been going on for about 40 years.

[mountain grammy]

3. 40% for the food and 60% to the corps.

Oh yes, contract out everything, even charity.. it works so well! Really? It's worked for a long time for American corporations, especially health insurance companies.

[BamBamBane]

4. Republican socialistic corporate welfare

as usual....Republicans steal from the poor and give to the rich.

[freshwest]

5. I hope this was not news to anyone. Been going on for over 60 years.

Grains are the traditional food for surviving famine, but not the optimum diet. There is a reason why people getting food stuffs over the last few decades, and also the groceries, emphasize this kind of thing. It's the highest profit with the longest shelf life, for the least cost and now people are getting educated and rebelling against it. The food pyramid and medical guidelines have been distorted by commercial interests.

At one time, the subsidies yielded benefits in a variety of food stuffs, from milk, butter, cheese, grains, sugar, flour, eggs, meats, tubers to fruits and vegetables. These were the staples of the school cafeterias when I was growing up, prepared in large kitchens. Fresh bread and other things, all from scratch, basically home cooking with a lot of variety and probably good nutrition. The government sent those commodities to the school to keep the prices up so farmers could stay in business. And to carry them for resting the land, crop rotation, to prevent soil depletion, pollution and erosion. No one seems to know anything about this anymore.

Over time, people that had no relationship to farming found ways to get the money for themselves. We had Farm Aid concerts to put the band-aid on a system that was eating up the people these programs were set up to nurture and protect. This has not stopped.

Many who would farm, were also run off their land not by the banks as usual, but by the developers who saw their land as easy pickings for subdivisions. They got with 'leaders' and zoned them out, some made bogus claims under the guise of protecting the environment against the farmers to get them to sell.

As subdivisions met the borders of the existing farms, the ones that were holding out were harassed for being a nuisance. As higher income people moved in, they wanted all the small businesses that formerly supplied the farmers zoned out, working for gentrification. The pressure on farmers is high.

What the GOP teabaggers did in this last vote, really showed they sided with the corporations, and didn't even side with farmers. Real farmers, that is. They not only set about starving the part of the program that was created to end hunger by giving cheap food to public institutions to distribute at schools and other places, but to save the farming communities.

These agribusinesses are not good stewards of the land, and they don't answer to the communities where they use mechanized means and chemicals and altered crops to simply give them all profit and nothing else. They mine the land, either for minerals or grains, but it's all about their money. I don't know what good this information does, other than serve as another statistical marker. The problem is that America is eating itself.

[Odin2005]

6. This isn't news to us folks in fly-over country.

[4th law of robotics]

7. Not in the least surprising

bio-ethanol, food stamps, ag-subsidies in general, all go to benefit the well connected food producers.

[Ruby the Liberal]

8. Locking - analysis piece, not LBN

Please consider reposting in GD.