PDM Project Design & Management

PDM Project Design & Management

When should food aid be the priority relief response?

Bernard Broughton
Project Design & Management Pty Ltd
19 December 1996

Contents

1. Food aid in emergency situations

1.1 Characteristics of an emergency - the need for food
1.2 Displacement
1.3 Food aid or income transfer?
1.4 Unconventional forms of food aid
1.5 Criteria for form of food aid
1.6 Complementing people's coping strategies
1.7 Nutritional impact
1.8 Where to locate food aid
1.9 Equally important non-food priorities

2. Food aid in protracted relief situations
2.1 Distinction between emergency and protracted operations
2.2 Phasing out food relief
2.3 'Productive' inputs
2.4 The use of choice
2.5 Addressing underlying causes

3. When is food not appropriate?
3.1 Checklist
3.2 Dependency

4. Type and source of food
4.1 Acceptability to beneficiaries
4.2 Sourcing criteria
4.3 Australian commodities

5. The future
5.1 Increased AusAID focus on humanitarian food aid
5.2 Entitlements
5.3 Regional food security

Note

This paper is one of a series of six background papers written on contract to AusAID to inform its 1996-97 Food Aid Review. It does not necessarily reflect AusAID policy. The paper includes a review of the relevant literature on when food aid should be the priority relief response and a discussion of the circumstances under which provision of other goods such as water, shelter, sanitation or medical services have greater, equal or lesser priority, differentiating between emergency and protracted relief situations. There is also a discussion of the relative merits of alternative types and delivery mechanisms for food aid, and the relative benefits of food aid compared with mechanisms for increasing food production even in the short term.

Summary

Food is clearly the right response when people are in immediate need of food for their survival. But the provision of food-in-kind may not be the only or the best way of providing people with immediate access to food, and food may not be the only response required - water, medicine, shelter and protection are likely to be equally important.

In protracted relief situations the focus quite rightly shifts from food aid to local production and the restoration of incomes. Non-food inputs (e.g. seeds and tools, animal vaccines, credit) can to varying degrees begin to substitute for relief. The key to making this transition is offering the choice between food and non-food inputs to beneficiaries. People in protracted relief situations where ongoing food aid is uncertain will frequently choose to forego food relief, undergoing considerable hardship, in exchange for an investment in longer-term food security.

1. Food aid in emergency situations

1.1 Characteristics of an emergency - the need for food

Humanitarian emergencies are, in the most basic sense, any situation in which people's lives are threatened. The most common reasons for such a threat are lack of access to water, food, medicine, shelter, and (frequently) protection. Refugees and displaced persons are normally immediately at risk in all of these ways.

Less immediate, but also constituting an emergency, are situations which seriously threaten people's livelihoods, eroding their ability to gain access to water, food, medicine and shelter. This may be characterised by a period of increasing indebtedness or of asset depletion (consumption of food reserves and planting seed, distress sale of livestock to purchase grain, etc).

1.2 Displacement

Emergencies frequently involve the displacement of people from their homes, whether they are forced to leave because of conflict, floods, etc or finally decide to leave in search of assistance in the case of successive droughts. If people had any food (e.g. as in the case of conflict) they will have had to abandon it. People are sometimes able to take something of value with them (e.g. some cash, some livestock) and they may be able to obtain some assistance from others (e.g. distant relatives, other communities). But this will usually only put off the day when their survival is immediately threatened by a few weeks, possibly a couple of months.

People who end up in displaced persons or refugee camps are more dependent on food assistance from their governments and from the international community than people who are able to disperse themselves within host communities, labouring in exchange for cash or food, engaging in petty trade, etc. The latter situation is preferable provided people are safe, but food aid needs will be harder to assess and targeting of assistance will be difficult.

1.3 Food aid or income transfer?

Emergency food aid immediately brings to mind convoys of trucks, large aircraft and stacks of bagged cereals stamped with the logo of the donor. Food aid often takes this form but it is not always the best form. To reduce the influence of this paradigm of food aid on emergency planning, agencies must focus on people's access to food, rather than on food itself, and think laterally about how to solve the problem of access rather than jumping to considerations of the logistics of bringing in food. Agencies should start by considering whether the problem is the absolute absence of food (a supply problem) or people's inability to purchase food or trade something for it (a demand problem).

To provide for refugees there may be no alternative to establishing a food aid pipeline. Local resources are likely to be overwhelmed. But for people who are not gathered in camps there may be alternative or complementary strategies. For example, if a nutrition survey reveals that 20% of the rural population are badly malnourished and in need of food aid it implies that 80% do have access to food and it begs a number of questions: What characterises the 20%? Would an income transfer enable them to buy or barter food from others?

1.4 Unconventional forms of food aid

Income transfers can be effected by the provision of cash, or alternatively high value inputs such as fishing twine, basic animal drugs, salt or cloth which people can barter for food. Interventions of this kind, however unconventional, can be extremely effective forms of food aid. They can constitute very quick responses. High value items can be chosen which incidentally have an impact on production (e.g. fishing twine for nets, cultivation tools). Transport costs can be dramatically reduced - a kilo of fishing hooks carried by hand or bicycle can be bartered for a truckload of food. A small vehicle loaded with salt and soap can transport the equivalent, once bartered, of a cargo plane of maize grain or rice.

The delivery and distribution of food aid in its usual form is enormously expensive and can eat up the greater part of an emergency operation budget, crowding out interventions in health, water, food security, etc. Anything that can be done to ameliorate food aid costs should be explored.

Food aid is normally conceived as grain, but livestock can be an appropriate form of food aid. In southern Sudan following the ‘Bor massacres' and the exodus of people across the Nile, a local chief saved many lives by organising the slaughter of cattle for the displaced. The international community was not able to get food to any of these displaced people and could only provide food to camps in distant Equatoria for the survivors. Whole families perished. Agencies could have underwritten the chiefs in the purchase of larger numbers of cattle, and saved many more lives. Only the paradigm, the usual approach, stood in the way.

Destocking programmes premised on preventing the collapse of stock prices in times of distress sales can provide an ideal food aid resource, or complement more conventional interventions.

1.5 Criteria for form of food aid

In determining what form food aid should take, best practice must surely be to establish criteria relevant to the context, think laterally and list all the possible options, and then rank options on the basis of the criteria. The criteria would normally include timeliness, cost-effectiveness and acceptability to beneficiaries. For example, if speed is of the essence the immediate provision of an intervention that relies initially on income transfers to the most destitute should rank highly - the establishment of a food pipeline may also be necessary but it might not be in place fast enough to save those in immediate danger, particularly in dispersed rural settings.

1.6 Complementing people's coping strategies

People who die during a famine are not passive victims. We may not know their stories but we should assume that they have struggled long and hard for their survival and the survival of others. If the stories of such people could be told they would be truly epic. It is also true that most of the people who survive famine, displacement and destitution do so without any assistance from humanitarian relief agencies. In most emergencies, particularly in the early stages, people would perish if they were to sit back and wait for help from the international community. The food aid that finally arrives is often too late for many and becomes compensation for those who managed to survive.

At the very beginning of an emergency it is vital for agencies to find out who has access to food and who doesn't, what those without food are currently doing to try to obtain food, and what other strategies they are likely to adopt in the short term. What are their options? Agencies should try to determine the positive and negative impacts their intervention will have on these strategies and on people's vulnerability. All interventions have their ‘down side'.

For example, in a dispersed rural setting food aid can disrupt a finely balanced struggle for survival, based on coping strategies. Centralised food distribution points are easier to deal with for an agency but if people are widely dispersed gathering wild foods, caring for vital livestock in riverine areas, seeking assistance with distant relatives, labouring in towns, etc. the agency can do more harm than good by attracting everyone to one location in the hope of assistance. People are immediately more vulnerable and more dependent on assistance, placing an enormous responsibility on the agency. There have been many cases of people leaving their homes, carrying their last food, only to arrive at a distribution point exhausted, with no food remaining, to find that the food has failed to arrive or that the distribution is over. At that point they can only camp under a tree and wait.

It is generally the poor, those without savings, assets, influence or bargaining power, who are unable to obtain food in times of general scarcity. In some circumstances income support can provide emergency relief more efficiently and effectively than food-in-kind.

1.7 Nutritional impact

The primary objective of humanitarian food aid is to counter a threat to people's survival and emergency food aid programmes must therefore be judged on the basis of nutritional impact. Accordingly there is no point providing food aid to address famine or food insecurity if it is unlikely to have any nutritional impact. This is very elementary but it does happen - food aid programmes costing millions of dollars do sometimes fail to meet this most basic of objectives.

For example, it happens when an intervention is premised on targeting a segment of a dispersed rural population (vulnerable groups, female headed households, children under fives, etc.) when there is really no way of effecting this targeting. In such circumstances the food will be dispersed amongst the population, with a bias towards those with influence and who least need it. It is naive to expect otherwise but agencies usually choose not to look too closely at the reality of final distribution.

Distributions to dispersed populations, which attempt to target particular groups, are extremely problematic and far more attention needs to be paid to the efficacy of targeting. This has to start with project design and underlying assumptions. Agencies and organisations seeking access to emergency food aid for distribution should clearly specify:

Targeting is discussed in more detail in another paper, Needs Assessment and Targeting.

1.8 Where to locate food aid

An agency or donor will often need to make a strategic choice about who to assist and where to assist them. For example there may be a decision to be made about whether to support internally displaced persons or refugees. The evaluation of the international response to Rwanda [1] concluded that there had been an over concentration on assisting people in refugee camps and more assistance should have been provided to people remaining in Rwanda.

As a general principle, it is better to avoid the formation of camps, whether of IDPs or refugees. Food aid is a magnet and agencies have to carefully consider its placement. People are in some respects more vulnerable in camps - they are at the mercy of disease and the will of the international community to provide for them. Concentrating assistance on the people who initially gather in centres or on borders accelerates displacement. If protection is an issue every effort should be made to address this in situ and ways and means should be devised of establishing a decentralised relief distribution network to stabilise the affected population.

1.9 Equally important non-food priorities

In sudden onset emergencies involving the massive displacement of people the immediate establishment of a food pipeline, and complementary means of providing access to food, is critical. Only protection (where relevant) is likely to be more immediately important than the provision of food and drinkable water. But within a matter of days sanitation and medicine become as vital to people's survival. The fact is, people weakened by lack of food and the physical ordeal of displacement tend to die of disease, not starvation. When people end up in camps or reception centres, overcrowding and poor sanitation provide a breeding ground for disease.

Experience has shown, as recently as in Goma, that agencies tend to concentrate on food and shelter but that a point is quickly reached where more lives could be saved by switching attention to the provision of clean water, setting up effective sanitation facilities and conducting immunization programmes.

It is common, particularly in camp situations, for people to sell or exchange up to one-third of their food rations to secure other essentials, including other foodstuffs, water, shelter, medicine, clothing, fuel wood, etc. Thus, if agencies or donors calculate food needs to meet only nutritional requirements, destitute people will become more malnourished because they are foregoing nutritional intake to obtain other essentials. Additional food can be supplied to account for this but it is preferable to provide the other essentials directly. It will be more cost-effective to do so because the camp exchange value of food aid will be very low making the essentials purchased or bartered very expensive. The cost of getting essentials to the camp will therefore be substantially lower than continuing to provide food that is traded in the camp to obtain them from other sources.

2. Food aid in protracted relief situations

2.1 Distinction between emergency and protracted operations

Emergency operations tend to run on into protracted operations. Refugee camps can remain for many years and the food pipeline supplying them may become more or less permanent. Similarly, internal conflicts may remain unresolved and humanitarian operations can grind on for decades. Some protracted operations become relatively settled, others are punctuated by new emergencies. Some operations do not fit neatly into an emergency/protracted relief category and may be described as chronic emergencies, although some assistance including food can still be programmed. Southern Sudan is such a case where the war could be described as a bushfire burning in a vast forest, ebbing and waning, and suddenly changing direction and engulfing groups of people in a new crisis.

There are also protracted operations that derive from chronic food deficits, as in the highlands of Ethiopia and Eritrea where families are farming on such small and degraded land holdings that they produce no more than two-thirds of their annual food requirements. Food relief, often channelled through food-for-work activities, is used to bridge the ‘hunger gap'. In such situations there may be no sensible alternative other than to go on making up the deficit while pursuing longer term solutions. Increased productivity (fertilisers, improved seeds) might reduce the deficit in some contexts but in highland Ethiopia and Eritrea it is likely to finally involve outward migration to the towns and (more ideally) to surplus producing lowland areas in the west.

2.2 Phasing out food relief

In protracted relief operations involving rural communities the focus of agencies and donors shifts from immediate life-saving priorities towards self-reliance and long-term food security. However this is not to say that food should be phased out once an operation becomes protracted. Agencies and donors will look for ways of reducing food aid commitments to an operation, but the need for food may well remain more or less constant. Commitments should not be reduced without evidence of changes in the nutritional status of the population and without evidence of a recovery in people's capacity to access food.

Evidence of these changes is important because the apparent absence of deaths in the face of unmet food aid needs is often used to justify reduced levels of food aid in protracted rural emergencies. People are assumed to be coping. An earlier assessment of food needs may indeed have been wrong, overlooking important sources of food and means of trade and exchange. Nevertheless this should not simply be assumed - the rationale for reduced levels of food aid has to be backed up with sound qualitative and quantitative field research. People will adopt survival strategies which may keep them alive in the short-term, but their options may have narrowed to the point where they are disposing of productive assets, such as breeding cattle. This is not ‘coping'. In these circumstances agencies and donors run the risk of more expensive interventions if they fail to protect people's livelihoods while they are still viable.

The recent review of Operation Lifeline Sudan[2] was critical of the way in which the emphasis has changed in the Southern Sector in recent years from meeting basic food needs to providing productive inputs (tools, seeds, etc.). In the opinion of the review team, there is no evidence that food needs changed over this period and they conclude that the shift in policy was based on changing ‘development fashions'.

2.3 'Productive' inputs

Nevertheless, it is reasonable to look for ways of re-establishing or boosting local productive capacity, or of supporting alternative or complementary livelihoods, with a view to phasing out food relief. Even in the short-term, some non-food inputs can effectively substitute for food aid, including fishing equipment and seeds for fast growing legumes like cowpeas. In the medium to long-term, productive inputs such as tools and seeds for staple crops and animal vaccines can help local production to recover and ultimately remove the need for food aid. Non-food inputs are frequently provided by agencies and organisations as ‘agpaks'.

Agencies involved in relief operations are frequently faced with choices between food and non-food inputs and the issue can become heated when agencies are competing for donor funds or for space on limited transport. In southern Sudan WFP controlled air cargo space and prioritised food deliveries over non-food inputs. This was a source of great frustration for UNICEF and several NGOs trying to get seeds and tools into Sudan in time for the planting season.

2.4 The use of choice

The beneficiaries should be given the final say. Field surveys, using simple ranking techniques, should be conducted to determine their prioritisation between food and non-food inputs. The extent to which beneficiaries will select non-food inputs in place of food aid has surprised many agencies. This is most notable with pastoralists where animal drugs will almost always be of more value to them than food aid. Generally, people in a protracted relief situation will forego short-term food security for medium and longer-term food security. In part this choice is based on people's uncertainty about the continuation of food aid.

Choice is the mechanism which can assist agencies to make the transition from relief inputs to development inputs. A necessary element in offering beneficiaries more choices is transparency: beneficiaries have to understand the mechanics of the operation directed at them and the constraints on the agencies. Choice can be introduced into a relief operation from the beginning, as part of a consultative assessment-cum-dialogue process. This is the point at which people's coping strategies and foreign assistance should come together. People's choices will be about balancing immediate needs and relief opportunities and investments in longer-term viability.

2.5 Addressing underlying causes

The international community should do more to address the underlying causes of a famine, whether it is poverty, environmental degradation, or war. In some cases relief even exacerbates an underlying problem e.g. when food aid is used by warring factions to keep their soldiers in the field.

Agencies and donors have come in for substantial criticism in recent years for failing to address root causes. The evaluation of the international response to the Rwanda crisis in 1994 concluded that:

"... the essential failures of the response of the international community to the genocide in Rwanda were (and continue to be) political. Had appropriate political decisions been taken early on, it is apparent that much of the humanitarian operation subsequently required would have been unnecessary. In effect, humanitarian action substituted for political action. Since key political issues have yet to be resolved, the crisis continues, as does the necessity for massive allocation of humanitarian resources."[3]

3. When is food not appropriate?

3.1 Checklist

Food aid is not appropriate when:

Food aid should be questioned when:


3.2 Dependency

Relief food aid should not be provided to such an extent that it discourages the recovery of local production or discourages internally displaced people or refugees from returning home. Transitional measures can be taken to enable food aid to be phased out. In Cambodia a decision was made by WFP not to extend the 400 days free food aid provided to returnees and food-for-work opportunities were provided in place of the rations. In Afghanistan and Burma WFP has provided returnees with short-term skills training supported by food aid in place of free food, to facilitate resettlement. However, WFP's experience in Liberia is that attempts to ‘graduate' people off relief should not be sought as long as the majority of the population in question faces an emergency situation - general rations must be continued.[4] In humanitarian relief operations, particularly in complex emergencies, attempts to move into rehabilitation and development can distract from primary objectives.

4. Type and source of food

4.1 Acceptability to beneficiaries

Agencies should not assume that the maize, wheat or rice that they have to provide or can readily procure in a region is appropriate. In the evaluation of the Rwanda regional operation, maize grain was singled out as a problem commodity due to difficulties in preparation and lack of acceptability to beneficiaries. The evaluation concluded that "the provision of a commodity unacceptable to many recipients represents a substantial inefficiency on the part of WFP and its donors."[5] Pulses (red beans) were more appropriate because they were part of the traditional diet although some of those supplied were a different variety and took far longer (and more wood) to cook, impacting on the immediate environment.

Wheat, the main commodity provided by Australia, is generally not an appropriate relief commodity and has to be monetised to purchase a more acceptable commodity. Rice however is readily acceptable, even by populations for whom it is not a staple. Pulses are an excellent part of a food basket and hard to purchase in quantity locally or regionally. For as long as Australia has to meet FAC commitments Australia should seek to substitute a substantial proportion of the wheat provided with pulses.

4.2 Sourcing criteria

The criteria that should be used in determining the most appropriate source of food include timeliness of delivery, cost-effectiveness and acceptability to recipients. Support for local and regional production should be a factor as it has potential to impact positively on local and regional food security.

4.3 Australian commodities

Australia is a surplus grain producer and in a position to provide food in kind. However, Australian commodities are relatively expensive compared to local and regional purchase, and often even compared to purchases from other surplus producers, due to the cost of shipping from Australia. Australian commodities are generally also of a higher quality than is required. If it were not for Australia's continued commitment to the FAC convention and perhaps domestic political pressure to appear to be supporting Australian farmers, there would be very few occasions on which AusAID would be justified in providing an Australian commodity to meet a humanitarian emergency.

The rare occasions on which it might be appropriate are those where local and regional purchases can only provide a fraction of emergency food requirements and food has to be sourced from surplus producers. This was the case in Rwanda where 270,000 mt was sourced for 1994 operations. Given the time it would take to ship commodities in similar emergencies Australia could replace food stocks borrowed by WFP from other programmes to respond immediately to the emergency.

Australia is a small player in terms of the tonnages provided and Australia's participation in supplying food aid is not critical, provided other donors don't drastically reduce their contributions. Food aid will frequently be an appropriate response to an emergency but it need not be Australia's response. Wheat is not often an appropriate commodity for immediate distribution and cash contributions will almost always be more appropriate. Moreover, although Australia is a surplus producer, it brings no distinctive competence to the supply of food or of complementary food security initiatives.

5. The future

5.1 Increased AusAID focus on humanitarian food aid

Australia's FAC commitment may well be reduced in 1998 but it is unlikely to be withdrawn completely. At the same time it is likely that there will further reductions within the Australian aid programme of bilateral development food aid. This is likely to result in Australia meeting a higher proportion of its ongoing FAC commitment in the form of humanitarian food aid. (This in turn is likely to increase Australia's reliance on multilateral channels, notably WFP.)

5.2 Entitlements

A growing number of people are calling for ‘food entitlements' (on the basis of provisions in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights). They may well win the day and Australia may find itself a signatory to an international convention recognising food entitlements, at least in emergency contexts. A food entitlements convention could end up replacing the existing FAC regime. Interestingly, it will have one thing in common - an international commitment to provide food aid.

It will be increasingly difficult to tie this commitment to Australian commodities, partly due to the open market/WTO climate and partly because the new commitment will be entitlement (demand) driven rather than supply driven and those speaking on behalf of the hungry will argue for the cheapest source.

In this new world order based increasingly on entitlements, AusAID's primary function will shift from aid delivery to meeting what are essentially human rights commitments, in this case basic food entitlements.

5.3 Regional food security

Food procurement for humanitarian relief operations is increasingly local or regional purchase. WFP proposes purchasing 30,000 mt in Ethiopia this year. This is a very positive development because it supports local and regional food security. Investments should increasingly be made in the capacity of countries in emergency prone regions to market surpluses for use in humanitarian operations. To achieve this WFP has perhaps to be ‘paired' to an agency that can conceive and implement regional food security programmes, including the establishment of the necessary infrastructure (feeder roads, district level storage, transport capacity, etc). This would have to be based on the development of private capacity given the general failure of marketing boards in the past.

[1] The International Response to Conflict and Genocide: Lessons from the Rwanda Experience, Steering Committee of the Joint Evaluation of Emergency Assistance to Rwanda, March 1996.

[2] Operation Lifeline Sudan: A Review, Ataul Karim et al, 1996

[3] The International Response to Conflict and Genocide: Lessons from the Rwanda Experience, Steering Committee of the Joint Evaluation of Emergency Assistance to Rwanda, March 1996, Synthesis Report, p 11

[4] Programme policy evaluation of the 1990-95 period of the WFP-assisted refugee and displaced person operations in Liberia, Cote d'Ivoire, Guinea and Sierra Leone, WFP OEDE, September 1996, p 12.

[5] The International Response to Conflict and Genocide, p 95.