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Food Aid | Glossary (2) Additionality: the extent to which food provided to a recipient adds to total food consumption. Bellmon Amendment: an amendment to Section 401(b) of United States Public Law 480, passed in 1977, intended to address concerns over the potential disincentive effects of food aid on local agricultural production and marketing. Bilateral Aid: aid granted and distributed government-to-government. Bill Emerson Humanitarian Trust: a reserve of grain purchased by the USDA’s Commodity Credit Corporation for distribution to meet emergency humanitarian food needs in developing countries. Until 1998, this was known as the Food Security Commodity Reserve. Blended or Fortified Foods: foods that have been processed to combine different commodities (e.g., corn-soya blend, soy-fortified bulgur), or to which micronutrients have been added so as to create a more nutritious ration for distribution to targeted, vulnerable groups in an at-risk population. Cargo Nets: development interventions intended to build up the productive asset stock of, or improve the productivity of existing assets held by, the chronically underprivileged. Examples include investments in education, technology transfer and land transfers or improvements. Chronic Poverty: the condition of falling below the poverty line for an extended period of time, sometimes also referred to as “persistent poverty.” Commercial Displacement: injecting below marginal cost commodity into a functioning market economy, therefore reducing the market price for the same commodity, to the detriment of local producers. Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC): a division of the U.S. Department of Agriculture that manages export credits, surplus stocks and acquisition of commodities for PL 480 and Section 416(b) purposes. Complex Humanitarian Emergencies (CHEs) or complex political emergencies (CPEs): involve multiple causes, both humanly constructed (i.e., conflict) and natural factors (e.g., drought, flood, hurricanes). (3) Conditionality: conditions on the provision of program food aid. Conditions can take any of a wide variety of forms: from agreeing to negotiate on military and diplomatic matters, to placing the proceeds from the sale of food aid into a “counterpart fund” to be used for particular development interventions, to changing macroeconomic, trade or agricultural policies. Consultative Sub-Committee on Surplus Disposal (CSSD): the international regulatory body established to oversee the issue of global food aid under the Food Aid Convention. Daily Caloric Intake (minimum): total availability per person of 2350 calories per person, as established by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). Dependency: a condition of receiving assistance from external sources, or a state of inability to exist or sustain oneself without assistance or direction from another. Developmental Paradox: the observation that low- and middle-income countries with large agricultural sectors tend to tax agriculture, rather than support it as rich countries tend to do. Domestic Food Supply: the sum of domestic production and commercial and food aid imports. Dumping: occurs when producers resort to selling products abroad for less than their cost of production at home. Dumping has long been outlawed by the WTO and its predecessor, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). Emergency Food Aid: aid in response to emergencies resulting from natural disasters such as droughts, floods or hurricanes, economic shocks, or from civil strife or war. Errors of Inclusion and Errors of Exclusion: programs rarely reach only their intended beneficiaries. Errors of inclusion relate to unintended beneficiaries, while errors of exclusion refer to non-participants who were intended beneficiaries. Farm Bill (1996): Federal Agriculture Improvement and Reform Act. Food Access: ability of a household or individual to purchase, or achieve self-provision of, food. (4) Food Aid: there is no agreed definition of how this term is defined. Some will argue that it involves “all food supported interventions aimed at improving the food security of poor people in the short and long term, whether funded via international, national, public and [sic] private resources.” (5) However, Barrett and Maxwell offer another definition that, rather than focussing on the commodity, establishes that the core characteristic distinguishing food aid from other forms of assistance is the international sourcing of concessional resources in the form of or for the provision of food. Food aid is thus as much an issue of procurement as one of distribution, and it is most fundamentally an entry into nations’ balance of payments. (6) Food Aid Convention: an international legal agreement that establishes food aid guidelines, originally created as part of the 1967 International Grains Agreement and renewed repeatedly since that time. Food Assistance Programs (FAPs): transfers in cash or in kind intended to increase food intake and improve participants’ nutritional status. Examples include school feeding, maternal and child health programs, food subsidies, food price stabilization, etc. Food Availability: the gross supply of food, comprising production, purchases and carry-over stocks. Food Consumption: the total amount of food used both for seed, storage, and human need. Food Gaps (previously called “food needs”): (7) are projected using two criteria:
Nutrition-based Target (NR), where the objective is to maintain the daily caloric intake standards of about 2,100 calories per day—depending on the region—recommended by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). Comparison of the two measures - either for countries, regions, or the aggregate - indicates the two different aspects of food security; consumption stability and meeting the nutritional standard. Food for Education: the use of donated food commodities for school feeding projects. Food Insecurity: the absence of food security, defined by the World Bank (1986) and the 1996 World Food Summit as “access by all people at all times to sufficient food for an active and healthy life”. Food for Peace (FFP): see PL 480; the general term applied to the food-donation program authorized by the Agricultural Trade Development and Assistance Act of 1954 (PL 480); also a specific bureau within the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) with primary responsibility for emergency and project food aid shipments from the United States. Food for Progress: food aid program that allows the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Commodity Credit Corporation to provide agricultural commodities to developing countries as food aid, either in the form of grants or subsidized exports. The commodities come from Title I of Public Law 480 (PL 480) or Section 416(b) of the Agricultural Act of 1949. Food for Work (FFW): a compensation plan for workers who are paid in food rather than cash wages. Food Security: (8) food security for a country is evaluated based on the gap between projected domestic food consumption (domestically-produced plus imported minus nonfood use) and a consumption requirement. Humanitarian Food Aid: see Emergency food aid. Hunger: the physiological phenomenon defined by the United States Department of Agriculture as “an uneasy or painful sensation caused by a lack of food” (used by Barnett and Maxwell interchangeably with “undernutrition”). Import Dependency: the ratio of food imports to food supply. In-Kind Food Aid: the physical commodity purchased and shipped to recipient countries, as opposed to cash allocated to purchase food. Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs): persons who have fled their homes for another location in the same country Local Purchases: purchases made in surplus-producing regions of the countries in which the aid is ultimately distributed. Malnutrition: poor anthropometric status; ill health due to a deficit, excess or imbalance of nutrients consumed. Micronutrients: vitamins and minerals, as distinct from macronutrients such as calories, fats and proteins. Monetization: the sale of donated food in order to obtain currency for other development programs, including health, water, agriculture, HIV/AIDS, microfinance, or direct food security. Multilateral Aid: aid distributed by an international organization such as the World Bank or the World Food Program. Need: in the context of food aid, needs comprise the difference between an adequate amount of food for consumption, and the ability of individuals, households or communities to self-provision that amount of food. Nongovernmental Organization (NGO): a not-for-profit, private organization established for the purpose of charitable or development assistance. Overseas Development Assistance (ODA): international aid issued to low- and middle- income countries from a government. (ODA does not include private contributions). (9) Public Law 480 (PL480): the Agricultural Trade Development Assistance Act. Originally passed in 1954, PL480 is the law that established the primary food aid program of the United States. Private Voluntary Organization (PVO): see Nongovernmental organization. Program Food Aid: foreign aid provided, in the form of food, directly on a government-to-government basis, typically for sale on local markets to meet balance of payments and budget support objectives. Project Food Aid: food aid provided on a grant basis to a recipient government, its agent, or NGOs operating in the recipient country for use in development or food security projects. Refugee: an individual temporarily uprooted from his or her home, who has crossed an international border because of a well-founded fear of persecution. Safety Nets: development interventions intended to protect against permanent asset loss associated with a collapse into chronic poverty and destitution. Surplus Disposal: unloading excess commodity into either global markets or countries that cannot efficiently absorb it. Targeting: the act of attempting to direct transfers (e.g., food aid) to one or more specific group(s), at a specific time or place, or in a specific form. Tinbergen Rule: the principle advanced by Nobel Laureate Jan Tinbergen that optimal policy requires one policy instrument for each objective. Transitory Poverty: the condition of falling below an appropriately defined poverty line for a limited period of time. Transitory poverty can be episodic (e.g., during an unemployment interlude), periodic (e.g., every “lean season” before the harvest), regular but aperiodic (e.g., during droughts that recur routinely but not on a set schedule), or it can be associated with steady growth out of poverty from a low starting point. (10) Triangular Transactions: food aid shipments paid for by one country (the donor), sourced in a second country (the supplier) for distribution in a third country (the recipient). Undernutrition: malnutrition caused by insufficient intake of nutrients and commonly accompanied by the sensation of hunger. United States Agency for International Development (USAID): the arm of the United States government, located within the Department of State, with the mandate for development and emergency assistance. United States Department of Agriculture (USDA): the arm of the United States government whose mandate is to promote American agriculture. Uruguay Round Agreement on Agriculture (URAA): signed at Marrakesh, Morocco, in April 1994; under Article 10, World Trade Organization member countries that are international food aid donors are prohibited from tying food aid directly or indirectly to commercial exports of agricultural products to recipient countries. Usual Marketing Requirements (UMR): the average of the preceding five years’ commercial imports for the particular recipient country and commodity with regard to the analysis of food aid; used to determine a “normal” level of commercial food imports in order to prevent displacement of trade resulting from food aid. World Food Crisis of 1973-74: unprecedented large-scale food shortages caused by drought, sharp oil price increases and global economic downturn, which led to famine in the west African Sahel and in Ethiopia. The ensuing World Food Conference of 1974 subsequently set out to establish more effective means to address future fluctuations in world food supplies and food prices so as prevent further acute large-scale food shortages. World Food Program (WFP): an agency of the United Nations, established in 1961, with primary responsibility for multilateral food aid flows. World Food Summit: the November 1996 international conference hosted by the FAO at which countries made public commitments to halve hunger by 2015.
2. This section relied heavily on Barrett and Maxwell’s book because this is the most current and comprehensive glossary on food aid. The book is available at: http://aem.cornell.edu/faculty_sites/cbb2/Books/foodaid.htm 3. C.B. Barrett and D.G. Maxwell Glossary, Page 2, Food Aid After Fifty Years: Recasting Its Role. 4. C.B. Barrett and D.G. Maxwell Glossary, Page 3, Food Aid After Fifty Years: Recasting Its Role. 5. Berlin Statement definition, 2003. 6. Barrett and Maxwell, Chapter 1, p. 2. 7. Economic Research Service, USDA, May 2004. 8. Economic Research Service, USDA, May 2004. 9. C.B. Barrett and D.G. Maxwell Glossary, Page 5, Food Aid After Fifty Years: Recasting Its Role. 10. C.B. Barrett and D.G. Maxwell Glossary, Page 6, Food Aid After Fifty Years: Recasting Its Role. |  |
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