Caution over food aid plan

Date: 01/10/1998

By Myles Neligan

THIS week's decision by EU farm ministers to support French proposals to relieve pressure on Europe's agricultural markets by increasing food aid to crisis-torn Russia has prompted calls for caution from humanitarian agencies.

Aid workers say the plan, which would involve shipping surplus pork and beef to deprived regions in Russia, runs the risk of undercutting the local food industry and creating a culture of dependency in rural areas.

“Experience has shown that much the better way to meet the needs of the food-insecure is to take measures to develop and promote their own production,” said Clive Robinson of UK-based charity Christian Aid. “The major problem is not inadequate food supplies, but lack of access to food, or the inability to earn enough to pay for it.”

Officials within Tacis, the European Commission programme designed to provide technical assistance to the former Soviet Union, are also strongly opposed to the plan.

“It would be outrageous if the EU were to dump its surplus production on to the Russian market,” said one, pointing out that many economically viable farms and processing plants would be made bankrupt if the country were flooded with free or heavily subsidised food products.

Humanitarian organisations also question whether food aid is an appropriate response to the Russian crisis, which they see as primarily a macroeconomic one. Oxfam, the EU's largest non-governmental aid organisation, says that North Korea and Bangladesh are currently the countries most urgently in need of emergency shipments of food.

But humanitarian workers do not rule out the need for limited food aid to Russia in the winter.

The Commission stresses that it will not ship any food supplies unless it receives a formal request for assistance from Moscow. “We would also require assurances that the aid is properly targeted and that adequate distribution channels are in place,” said a spokesman for Farm Commissioner Franz Fischler.

Proposals to send food aid to Russia also require the approval of EU foreign ministers, who will debate the issue at their meeting next Monday (5 October).