Here are two personal stories about foreign aid.
Some 20 years ago when Slow Food asked me to be part of the U.S. delegation attending the International Slow Food Convivium in Turin, Italy hosted by Carlo Petrini, I went with Michael Pollan. Every time I wasn’t speaking, I attended presentations by a delegation from an African country.
Every single one started with something like this: “We have plenty of resources. We can feed ourselves. You western countries need to leave us alone. Your cheap food dumping displaces our farmers by lowering prices to the point our indigenous agriculture can’t compete. These displaced entrepreneurial farmers and food system folks then get bored and become warlords and gang leaders.”
I was stunned. It was such a blanket indictment, over and over again, that I spent the entire multi-day stay apologizing for being an American. It made me realize this “aid” was about empire-building leverage, creating dependency, and just about anything except real help. It also made me paranoid about traveling abroad to give advice. Since then, we invite folks from there to our farm and give free admission to some of our educational seminars. That way they can see it in our context and adapt it to theirs. Much better.
Story number two. After Chernobyl blew up and rained radioactivity across the dairy region of Belarus, the country faced food and economic deprivation because they couldn’t drink their milk. The radioactivity settled in the mammary glands of the cows.
The U.S. sent hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign aid to help. How kind. A couple of months later, a delegation from Belarus came to Washington D.C. to meet with U.S. officials. A former deputy ambassador who was friendly with me asked if he could invite them to Polyface to see a non-chemical farm. A couple days later three black limousines arrived at our house bearing the three top officials from Belarus: their equivalent to our Speaker of the House, Secretary of Agriculture, and a third I can’t remember. They were all number two under the Prime Minister.
I took them on a farm tour and they were completely engaged, interested, and gob-smacked. In short, they got it. We ended on the porch with hot tea and homemade zucchini bread. Here is what they said: “The day the U.S. aid landed in our bank, every hotel in the capital filled with U.S. corporations selling equipment, seeds, chemicals and material. We spent all that money in a couple of months on equipment we didn’t need, seeds that wouldn’t grow, and material too expensive to keep up. It was a circle: all the money went straight back to U.S. companies. If we had spent that money on what we’ve seen here at Polyface, not only could we have fed our people, we would have had enough left over to export.”
I could tell more stories, but these are average. U.S. foreign aid is all about enriching big corporations with taxpayer dollars. Ultimately, it impoverishes the peasants by enriching the lords of the culture. Meanwhile, it hurts the countries getting the aid.
As I’ve traveled the world and interacted with people like this, I’ve come to the conclusion that the U.S. should not send any foreign aid to anyone anywhere anytime for anything. Period. Even to Israel? Yes, even to Israel. They can buy stuff. So can Ukraine. Bring all of these meddlesome outfits home; disband them. As Paul Harvey used to admonish, why don’t we hoe our own garden instead of hoeing others?
No military aid. No food aid. No construction aid. No nothing. Enough already. Close down all foreign military installations. Become like Switzerland. Don’t give a penny to a single NGO. Let them raise their own money. This doesn’t mean philanthropy stops; it means charity won’t come from coercion. Try not paying your taxes and see how voluntary that deal is. You can’t build charity on a foundation of coercion.
How do we stop government foreign aid?
Reprinted with permission from The Lunatic Farmer.
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