Maintaining food security at the national and household level is a major priority for most developing countries, both for the welfare of the poor as well as for political stability. In order to help assure food security, developing country governments have adopted various strategies including efforts to increase production (often with an explicit goal of food self-sufficiency), government intervention in markets, and public distribution of food and maintenance of national food security stocks. Food aid, both for short-term emergency relief and program food aid, that helps address medium-term food “deficits”, is often a major component of these food security strategies. This essay therefore is going to define the concept of food aid and explain its impact on the development efforts of developing countries drawing practical examples from Zambian experience. It will first start by defining key terms which are food aid, development and the impact of food aid will be looked into and lastly a conclusion will be drawn from the discussion
Food aid, is defined by Maxwell (1982) as external help from foreign governments or originating from a donor country, while Young (1992) views it as “all food supported interventions aimed at improving the food security of people living in poverty in the short and long term, whether funded via international, national, public or private resources.
The purpose of Food Aid is to promote food security of developing countries. This is accomplished by the provision of food or cash for food to save lives, to help people recover from crises and to support nutrition and development in impoverished countries. Since its inception in 1954, more than three billion people in 150 countries have benefited directly from food aid. Currently, in 44 countries worldwide, Food aid provides food and assistance for millions of individuals suffering from hunger and malnutrition (ibid).
The rationalization of food aid is based on three models, namely project food aid, programme food aid and emergency food aid. Each category has its own set of legislation procedures, sources of funding, and methods of operation Abdulai et al (2004).
Firstly, project food aid is defined by Barrett (2001), As food aid meant to support specific identified projects, this type may entail food for work (FFW) projects. It is clear then that this type of food aid is a precondition for sustainable development, nutrition projects for building capital. Cash for food (a related concept to Project Food Aid) is money given to targeted beneficiaries for the purchase of food in the local markets. Money is paid after work on identified development projects. This method of food aid tends to enhance the local market.
Shaw and Clay (1993) observe that Project Food Aid is aimed at transferring cash or income to the poor or satisfying their minimum national needs in normal years. This type of food is often distributed by NGOs and provided on a grant basis to specific beneficiaries selected from a given population. It assists to meet the additional demand for food generated by its support for development initiatives.
Secondly, programme food aid is another method or form of food aid. It can be described as food aid meant to support the balance of payments, government budget and the implementation of structural policy reform. This type is provided as a grant or on a soft loan repayment terms exclusively on bilateral basis (government to government). For the United States of America (US), this food aid becomes a donation or credit sale of US commodities to developing countries and emerging democracies to support the democratization of institutions, and for private sector expansion. Once this type of food aid has landed at the recipient government, it is then sold in local markets and this process is also called ‘monetization’. Monetization is simply the sale of donated food in order to obtain currency for other developmental programmes, including health, water, agriculture, HIV and Aids, microfinance or direct food security (USAID, 2006). The revenue generated through the sale of donated food is used to support developmental programmes and it does contribute meaningfully and positively to food security and long-term development Clay , Riley and Urey (2005). Lastly, emergency food aid is food aid provided in response to a sudden, major shortfall in food production due to natural or man-made disasters such as droughts, floods or wars. Emergency food aid is defined as food used for humanitarian disasters or conflict, it constitutes immediate relief actions by implementers and has become the most important category of total food aid to Sub-Saharan Africa in recent years (Maxwell and Singer, 1979). In Zimbabwe, it has actually been christened Protracted Relief Programmes given the complexity of the hazards facing the country. The country remains in an emergency situation after several years of food aid, hence the term ‘protracted relief operations’. The other term that best describes this type of food aid is ‘In-kind commodity. It is the physical food procured and delivered to vulnerable populations. According to US policy and understanding, emergency food aid means the supply of agricultural commodities to meet emergency food needs. This initiative may be carried out on a government to government basis (bilateral agreements) or through private and public institutions or intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations like UN agencies Tembo, (2006).
The impact of food aid can be said to be two fold that is it is good and bad, the positive impact of food aid on development efforts will be looked at first then its negative impacts. Food aid is important in the development efforts of a country in that the expectation of assistance may induce behavioral responses in so far as prospective recipients anticipate food aid flows in response to an adverse shock, Food aid may fill in holes in social safety nets, providing insurance to those who are otherwise uninsured (i.e., those lacking private support during a crisis). This means that insteed of the country stoping its developmental projects in times of crises the country continues with its projects as aid is provided by other counties or oganizations Clay and Stokke (2005).
The main intended effect of food aid concerns market development, not in the sense of creating future commercial export markets for donors, but in the sense of helping to nurture competitive, efficient channels through which food can flow from producers to final consumers. Market-mediated food aid operations whether on the supply-side through monetization of in kind food aid, or on the demand-side through local and regional purchases using donor cash resources – often have an explicit goal of helping to develop food marketing channels in low-income areas where markets perform rather poorly. For example, food aid sold not through large commercial grain merchants, but rather through small, village based processors and traders may help to stimulate the emergence of a competitive food distribution channel thus leading to development in developing countries Abdulai et al (2004).
Food aid stimulate wealth accumulation and economic growth in poor countries. This occurs chiefly through stimulating accumulation of productive assets human capital being the chief asset food aid can help protect or build and increasing the productivity of preexisting assets.
Program food aid that dominated global flows through the mid-1980s is best understood as in-kind balance of payments assistance from a donor country government to a recipient government. Program food aid was directly intended to relieve balance of payments constraints by reducing current food import costs and or the debt servicing costs associated with food imports, By displacing imports, food aid reduces the amount of foreign exchange spent on food imports thus making the developing countries to focus on developmental projects, The balance of payments gains can also be particularly helpful for stabilizing food availability in poor countries facing foreign exchange constraints Barrett (2001).
Conditionalities tied to food aid distribution sometimes help provide a motivation to reform policies, especially where short-term transition costs might otherwise discourage governments from summoning up the courage to reform failed policies, The use of conditional food aid for pushing policy reforms depends fundamentally, however, on tangible results of the proposed reforms, and a credible exit strategy from the food aid intervention this can lead to the implementation of policies which would greatly lead to development in the developing countries(Hopkins 1984).
When poorly managed, food aid may enable recipient country governments to postpone inevitable and important policy reforms. Food aid is sometimes considered a crutch for governments practicing policies that discriminate against domestic agriculture, causing regular shortfalls in availability that have to then be plugged with food aid. In this view, food aid can not only fail to induce needed policy reforms, it can foster the continuation of ineffective policies, such as highly inefficient food subsidy programs underpinned by food aid shipments that benefit largely middle and upper classes (Barrett and Maxwell 2005). If food aid provides the key resource necessary to maintain an ill-conceived policy, curtailing deliveries rather than providing food aid may hasten necessary reforms.
Clay and Benson. (1990).puts it out that Emergency Food Aid is essential in situations of acute food insecurity to prevent malnutrition and to protect livelihoods. Food aid not only saves lives in crisis situations but also prevents the use of coping strategies that can be damaging for economic recovery such as the consumption of seeds, the slaughtering or the sale of livestock, depletion of capital goods, migration to cities or deforestation. As a result, it not only prevents malnutrition in disaster situations but can also prevent people facing temporary crisis situations from falling into chronic poverty and food insecurity because of this developing nations are able to have healthy human resource which is very important as the people are the ones who bring development in a nation.
Further the benefits of food aid may save substantial national resources and foreign exchange reserves, which can be then spent on essential services and investments instead of being used for food imports. Food aid can be particularly critical for countries such as the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) that are heavily reliant on food imports and that lack financial resources and foreign exchange for food imports. Without a doubt, many food aid recipients, starting with those of the Marshall Plan in Europe after World War II, have managed to use this assistance wisely, integrating it into broader development policies aimed at industrialization and food self-sufficiency, which ultimately boosted living standards and human development. Unfortunately, this approach is not always successful, and for many countries, food aid is integrated into policies leading to structural food deficits and increased dependency on food imports. For the poorest countries, such dependency combined with scarce resources to finance imports has resulted in increased poverty and hunger Commission for Africa. (2007).
Food aid is often criticized for its potential disincentive effects on domestic production because it may lead to reduced market prices for producers and because it reduces government incentives for production enhancing investments and policy reforms. This makes country to have problems in there developing efforts as producers would opt out in the business due to low prices thus making the government lose sources of income in terms of tax from the producers Tembo, (2006).
According to Lentz et al. (2005) food aid brings about dependency he explain that an individual, household, or community exhibits dependency when it cannot meet its immediate basic needs without external assistance and he further explains that dependency arises when meeting current needs comes at the cost of reducing recipients’ capacity to meet their own basic needs in the future without external assistance. Negative dependency typically arises when individuals, households or communities and nations alter their behavior in response to the provision of assistance that inadvertently creates disincentives to undertake desirable behavior (e.g., to grow a crop, or to allocate time to work) this impacts the development of a country country negatively as its people will continue to be dependents thus making the country provide for them instead of channeling the money to developmental projects.
In conclusion the concept of food aid for development is therefore quite questionable, as it implies the withdrawal of small-scale agriculture and directly threatens the livelihoods of family farmers. As a matter of fact, for most LDCs, food aid was never part of any development policy, other than the one in support of export growth for developed countries. Many developing countries and most LDCs depend on the export of a small number of agricultural products for their foreign exchange earnings. However, the real prices of these commodities are volatile and decline over time. The direct consequence is declining and erratic incomes for LCDs and their small producers. This specialization in a few commodities also results in an increased dependence on food imports from developed countries. Developing countries have increasingly specialized in non-food products such as coffee or cocoa, while the subsidized exports from developed countries make imported food cheaper than local products this makes the countries seek for more food aid thus spending more on importing food.

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