Politico yesterday reported a rumor that US food aid programs could see major changes in the next budget. The article frames this move as putting aid “on the chopping block,” but it is not at all clear what is really going on.  Enacting major cuts to food aid programs would be a terrible idea that would cost lives without making a dent in our debt.

But there is another, more hopeful possibility that the administration is about to push for long overdue reforms that would make US aid programs more effective and cost efficient. This could be a very, very good thing.

Let me explain. The US reaches millions of people each year with life-saving aid. From the Horn of Africa to the Sahel to the most recent humanitarian crisis in Syria, US assistance to address hunger and food insecurity is crucial. The US is the most generous donor of food assistance in the world and gets a lot of credit for this.  Cutting aid doesn’t make sense, but why might the Administration seek to fundamentally change this program?

A child in Dire Dawa, Ethiopia stands near a wall made of USAID food aid containers in the flood-destroyed area of Bahere Tsege in 2006. Photo: Liz Lucas/Oxfam America

The reason is that current US food aid programs are excruciatingly inefficient and in some instances counter-productive to helping people build sustainable agricultural livelihoods. Oxfam has been outspoken in its criticism of the way in which the US runs its food aid program. And we’ve offered common sense reforms to make the programs more efficient—reforms that would allow US assistance to reach millions of more people without costing a single extra penny. We applauded Chairwoman Stabenow and Ranking Member Roberts of the Senate Agriculture Committee for their leadership and steps to reform the food aid program as they wrote a new Farm Bill last year.  The bill passed the Senate on a broad bipartisan basis, but floundered in the House.

If the Obama Administration puts forward a proposal to pursue these kinds of reforms, it would mark an effort to break the stranglehold of special interests in the US who profit from the current rules, regulations, and red-tape governing food aid programs. It would be a bold and important step.

Real reforms would give aid humanitarian agencies greater flexibility, including the ability to purchase food from the cheapest, most efficient source. This would in turn reduce costs and speed delivery. It would bring our programs into the 21^st century, in line with most other countries. This is precisely what a recent USDA study of local and regional procurement projects demonstrated. For almost every commodity examined, buying from local or regional sources was cheaper and uniformly faster than shipping it from the US. Many aid groups already do this with their own money and through other emergency aid accounts such as the Emergency Food Security Program out of the International Development Account.  But the primary food assistance program remains essentially outdated, lumbering, and wasteful.

Such a change would also clean up the jurisdictional mess created by current configuration of food aid programs, which are authorized in the Farm Bill, funded through the Agriculture Appropriations bill, but implemented by USAID. Not only would reform rationalize the system, but it would help create a more cohesive approach to the current patchwork of programs to deal with global hunger.

Oxfam America campaigned last year saying that Washington should “stop playing with food aid.” Thousands of people supported us in sending a message to their lawmakers to enact this reform.  If the rumor pans out and the Obama Administration is serious about food aid reform, it would seem the message got through.  Good on President Obama!

I doubt members of the Agriculture Committee thought the eleventh-hour Farm Bill extension would be the conclusion of their year-plus efforts to negotiate a new and improved five-year Farm Bill.

The last-minute inclusion of a one-year extension of the commodity groups’ favorite farm subsidies and rural programs were tucked into the final fiscal cliff bill this week. This means that the debate about the future of US food and farm policy and efforts for real reform will have to continue in 2013.

The fiscal cliff bill does the bare minimum of providing continuing authority for life-saving food aid programs, avoiding most of what could be termed the “food aid cliff”.  The US provides roughly half of all food aid globally. If food aid programs had not been re-authorized, a true cliff would have emerged for tens of millions of people displaced by conflict or whose crops are decimated by floods or rain, and who depend on food aid from the US.

Although the extension of the food aid programs is obviously a relief, it’s a program in desperate need of improvement. Unfortunately the extension was not applied to reauthorization of one of the most promising and successful programs of the 2008 Farm Bill, the USDA Local and Regional Procurement Pilot Program (LRP). LRP ensures the most bang for the food aid buck, because it allows the US Government to purchase food aid from the most affordable and efficient sellers. The LRP pilot has proven to be a highly-effective and efficient way to spend scarce aid dollars to help save lives and build self-sufficiency for vulnerable communities.  As has been well documented, LPR can save time and money, allowing crucial aid to reach more people in need of food assistance. It also invests in communities so they can feed themselves, instead of becoming dependent on food aid in the future.

It is the epitome of irony that a deal designed to tackle some of the looming challenges of government spending allows LRP to lapse, thereby doubling down on the more expensive, inefficient, and outdated models of food aid.  It is a wasted opportunity for Congress, not to mention a waste of money for taxpayers. LPR is the kind of program you would prioritize if your aim was really to make federal spending more efficient and effective.

But that’s not what Congress chose to do, a depressing start to the new year. The National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition issued a press release referring to the Farm Bill extension as “anti-reform” and “a disaster for farmers and the America people.”

Congress must extend authority for LRP, and adopt a host of other reforms to US food aid programs when it reauthorizes the Farm Bill in 2013. The Senate version of the Farm Bill, after much work and compromise, included good provisions on food aid reform that must be the starting point for continued discussions.

We may not have totally fallen off the food aid cliff, but we still have a mountain to climb.

“Wear a dark suit. You’ll be wearing an over-sized cardboard mask.”

This is not a set of instructions I expected to hear in my new job as a writer, but here I was, being asked to play the Senate Majority Leader from Nevada.

As the newbie, what was I going to do? Say no?

The next day, my new colleagues scurried around as onlookers and the Congressional police force carefully eyed what we were doing. The image of the 18 foot high inflatable yellow duck against the backdrop of Congress’ hallowed halls was certainly a site to behold.

As I danced around to Benny Hill music with “Nancy Pelosi”, “Mitch McConnell”, and “John Boehner”, I’d be lying if I told you I didn’t think, “What have I gotten myself in to?”

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5yTYh7pz9A&feature=youtu.be[/youtube]

In the two weeks since my stint as Harry Reid, my time at Oxfam has been less eventful, but no less exciting. I’ve been drinking from a fire hose, manned (and womaned) by a group of intelligent, talented, and committed people in Oxfam America’s Washington DC office that I have affectionately named “The Wonk-tivists.”

As I read my team’s annual plan, it became clear that these are folks who know that people lift themselves out of poverty. That’s why they are focused on making international aid more effective and more responsive, a topic near and dear to my heart.

But first, we must protect the tiny proportion of poverty-reducing aid that is part of the federal budget, hence the need for the lame duck stunt. (Check out some of the media coverage here and here.) Humanitarian and development aid is less than 1% of the federal budget. And although cutting aid won’t prevent Congress from jumping off the fiscal cliff, it will prevent us from upholding our responsibilities to people around the world who are working hard to bring change in their communities.

Before coming to Oxfam, I worked with over 300 grassroots organizations in southern and east Africa. What is undeniable to me, in my decade of service in the international aid and philanthropy sectors, is that assistance to vulnerable families within their immediate locales builds on long-standing African traditions of community-level sharing of agricultural labor, assistance in times of drought and other calamities, and shared child care. In fact, across Africa, the poorest and most vulnerable people set up indigenous and resilient coping mechanisms such as self-help groups, church groups, burial associations, grain loan schemes, and rotating credit and loan clubs (Lwihula & Over, 1995; Mutangadura et al., 2000; Wilkinson-Maposa et al., 2009).

Earlier this year, the Aid Effectiveness Team at Oxfam America conducted research with these local change-makers in seven countries to help describe the experience of people living and working on the ground where US foreign aid is delivered. Their findings and collection of stories show how threats to Congress’ foreign aid budget puts the results accomplished by people like Emiliana Aligaesha at risk.

Emiliana Aligaesha of Karagwe, Tanzania. Oxfam/MaishaPlus2012

Emiliana Aligaesha and her fellow community members are part of a community group that formed a local private company in Karagwe, Tanzania. They sell coffee and beans and USAID and the World Food Programme have been among their clients. Local leaders declare Ms. Aligaesha’s farm exemplary, even though she has had little formal agricultural training. In addition to her farm’s productivity, Ms. Aligaesha has become a kind of researcher and innovator in the village, testing out new agricultural techniques for others to follow. Most importantly to this former teacher, Ms. Aligaesha’s nine children have all been put through college.

I know why I signed up. I’m here at Oxfam to support the people like Emiliana Aligaesha that are making our world safer, more prosperous, and better for us all.

So if asked to impersonate a 72-year-old Senator again at Oxfam, I’ll readily say yes.