Your members of Congress are writing the farm bill right now and they need to hear from you! Important international food aid programs governed by the farm bill – such as Food for Peace (PL 480), which was first signed into law by President Dwight Eisenhower in 1954, and which reached over 53 million people last year – are at risk of devastating cuts.
Raise your voice and urge your members of Congress to ensure a place at the table for all God’s people. Tell them to improve international food aid in ways that make the program more efficient through an emphasis on local and regional purchase.
Our colleagues at Bread for the World write:
- Last year’s Senate proposal included common sense reforms to international food aid programs. The bill encouraged purchasing food aid from local farmers, which in many cases is faster, cheaper and would in turn help them become more self-sufficient.
- However, the House proposal cut international food aid quality programs by more than 95 percent. These programs target the nutritional needs of those at risk of life-threatening hunger and malnutrition, including children in the critical thousand-day window between pregnancy and a child’s second birthday.
If these programs are cut, food security for millions of people will be affected.
Bread for the World provides this PDF fact sheet on international food aid.
For more information, read Food aid: Local purchase timelier, less costly, published in the May-June 2013 NewsNotes.
Contact your senators and representative at 800-826-3688 (toll free number provided by Bread for the World) or send them an email today. (Go to www.congress.gov to be connnected to their websites.)
Sample letter:
I urge you to ensure a place at the table for all people by protecting and strengthening international food aid in the farm bill. These programs fight hunger and help lift people out of poverty.
Emergency food aid programs like Food for Peace reached over 53 million people last year and are much more effective when local and regional purchase is emphasized. (For more information read http://www.maryknollogc.org/article/food-aid-local-purchase-timelier-less-costly.)
It is unacceptable in a world of plenty that so many of our sisters and brothers, many of them children, endure hunger. We are a stronger nation when we care for others. Please preserve and strengthen our international food aid programs.
Sincerely,