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The Documentary: Feeding The World

The Documentary: Feeding The World: Feeding the World

A farmer holds some grain and pulses JEAN-SEBASTIEN EVRARD/AFP/Getty Images

13/08/2013 GMT

Feeding the World

Feeding The World

BBC World Service - The Documentary, Feeding The World, Feeding the World

Can Obama's international aid reforms of sending money rather than grain be implemented?

President Obama's international emergency aid reforms propose sending of money to buy food locally, rather than shipping grain from the US. Will it work?

Since the end of World War II, America's Food for Peace programme has shipped American-grown food in sacks across the world to feed the world's starving people. Virtually all experts agree it is an inefficient way to send aid, and the EU stopped doing it decades ago. Former head of USAID Andrew Natsios says 'I've watched people die in front of me waiting for food to arrive.'

Now President Obama wants to reform the system to send more of emergency aid as money, and to buy food locally. But there is opposition to his plans for change and it looks likely the reforms will go nowhere.

BBC international development correspondent David Loyn travels to Afghanistan and meets farmers who say they stopped growing wheat and changed to opium poppies when American wheat flooded the local market during a time of plenty. And he travels to Kenya to look at pioneering efforts to deliver aid in a way that helps the local economy and puts power back in the hands of the poor.

(Picture: A farmer holds some grain and pulses. Credit: AFP/Getty Images)

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David Loyn looks at America’s "Food for Peace" programme, its effects in Afghanistan, and a new way of delivering aid in Kenya.

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