Those who pay the price for this lack of cooperation are neither the donors nor developing-country governments, but poor people who desperately need to extricate themselves from the debilitating effects of food insecurity. This need not be. There are numerous examples of successful, well-managed food aid programs for the international community to use as models in making more effective use of food aid. As veteran advocates and activists in the international development community, we have witnessed the great increase in confidence that occurs when developing countries, through their own efforts, have been able to significantly increase their agricultural production and stimulate broad-based economic growth. Should that not continue to occur, we can ill afford to look the other way.
Food aid can play a significant role in helping others realize their potential.
It is imperative that donor countries, on moral and ethical grounds, be prepared to continue to assist vulnerable groups in poor, food-deficit countries to close the nutrition gap. We cannot rest, no matter how high the standard of living may be in the industrialized countries, if one-fifth of the world is ill fed and food insecure. Some of our most memorable experiences in developing countries have been as the guests of communities and families who insisted on sharing their very limited food supply with us, just as sharing food with visitors was not an unknown tradition in rural communities in America and Europe. As the Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore once said, For many people in this world, God can only appear in the form of bread. Proper citation is required.