AILSA CHANG, HOST:
Last night, Chief Justice John Roberts paused a lower court ruling that said the Trump administration must release about $2 billion in foreign aid while the court reviews the case. This pause and the final decision could affect Food for Peace. That's the government's longest-running permanent program for international food assistance. It dates all the way back to the post-World War II period when American farmers found themselves with a surplus of grain. President Eisenhower signed it into law in 1954.
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DWIGHT D EISENHOWER: In the interest of reinforcing peace and well-being of free people throughout the world - in short, using food for peace.
CHANG: Food for Peace is now part of USAID, and with USAID's future tied up in litigation, the program's future is in question. And so, too, is the outlook for American farmers who benefit from the program. Our colleagues, Wailin Wong and Erika Beras from The Indicator, report.
WAILIN WONG, BYLINE: In 2020, the federal government bought around $2 billion worth of food aid from American farmers. These commodities were then distributed internationally.
ERIKA BERAS, BYLINE: That $2 billion represents less than a percent of the income farmers make from their crops. Still, for some industries, the government purchases are crucial.
WONG: Michelle Erickson-Jones is a fourth-generation farmer in Montana. Michelle says USAID food assistance programs are vital to her state.
MICHELLE ERICKSON-JONES: Well, it's not like we're just giving this aid for the sake of giving dollars. We're also building those relationships.
WONG: Michelle cites Japan and South Korea as examples of this policy working well.
BERAS: These countries were some of the earliest recipients of food aid. Then, as their economies grew, they went from being recipients of donated food to being paying customers.
ERICKSON-JONES: So the root of the program allows Montana to successfully export as much wheat as we do.
WONG: This deliberate effort to cultivate new markets was like a large-scale international trade version of when you get a free sample of something at the grocery store and then decide to buy it.
BERAS: The national security rationale for food aid is that people who get this American-sponsored assistance are less likely to develop anti-U.S. sentiment. And Michelle says to also think of food aid as a border strategy. If people don't have to worry about going hungry, they're less likely to leave their home country and migrate to the U.S.
ERICKSON-JONES: You know, there's this saying, like, you have 99 problems until, like, your one problem is food, and then you have one.
WONG: Michelle says it can be hard to make the case to farmers to support programs like USAID. One reason for this is the supply chain that connects growers with the ultimate recipients of food assistance.
BERAS: Typically, farms don't sell their crops directly to USAID. Instead, they sell to a company like Cargill or Bunge. So farmers might not even know that they're participating in a program like Food for Peace.
WONG: Michelle says loss of that revenue from the closure of USAID might not be immediately felt.
BERAS: But lawmakers in agriculture-heavy states are moving with urgency. Kansas Senator Jerry Moran, along with several other lawmakers, has proposed a bill to move Food for Peace from USAID to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
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JERRY MORAN: USDA has boots on the ground and the infrastructure already in place to support the logistics for food assistance.
WONG: Moran says under the current system, foreign aid was being mismanaged. He pointed to an example of a Syrian national who was accused of selling USAID food kits on the black market to leaders of a terror organization. Jordan Schermerhorn is one of the many contract workers with USAID who was furloughed.
BERAS: She's skeptical whether USDA has the right expertise in staffing in each country to distribute food aid. Still, she believes some USAID programs will survive.
JORDAN SCHERMERHORN: Every senator wants to protect USAID's investments in their state. It turns out USAID funds a bunch of different things in a bunch of different states.
WONG: We contacted the State Department, which is now running USAID. We asked about the department's long-range plans for the agency. We also asked what role Secretary of State Marco Rubio believes American agriculture should play in food security and U.S. foreign policy.
BERAS: A spokesperson told us via email that the State Department is reviewing foreign aid and that, quote, "programs that serve our nation's interests will continue. However, programs that aren't aligned with our national interest will not," end quote. Erika Beras.
WONG: Wailin Wong, NPR News.
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