119. Letter From the Deputy Director of the Office of Food for Peace (Symington) to the Administrator of the Agency for International Development (Hamilton)0
Dear Fowler: Your secretary will bear me out that I made some manful attempts to return your call last week.
Right now I am off to the Latin American Regional Operations Conferences which will give me a brief opportunity to regale Ambassadors and USOM Chiefs on the obvious advantages of food assistance versus, [Page 264] say, purely good old dwindling dollars. I will be returning around October 19, and hope to have a chance to see you shortly thereafter.
I understand you had an interesting luncheon yesterday with George McGovern, Secretary Freeman and others. There are market development aspects to certain Title III operations which perhaps serve as one basis for Agriculture’s interest in taking them over. Indeed, one of the most effective school lunch programs I have seen is the one being conducted in Lima by the Great Plains Wheat people. However, I don’t think it would be feasible for Agriculture to take over such an important aspect of Foreign Aid, driving an illogical wedge into what would otherwise be AID’s jurisdiction.
Due to the dual nature of food assistance—that is its economic effect and political importance both at home and abroad—there is an understandable interest on the part of Agriculture which must constantly be recognized, if not always satisfied. That is one of the reasons, I think, why the President created the Food For Peace office, namely to help resolve the divergent approaches of ICA, State, and Agriculture toward PL-480 operations.1
Last spring when legislation was being prepared to create the new AID Agency, there was considerable pressure to remove the Food For Peace office from the White House and merge it into your Commodities Division. This would certainly have compromised our effectiveness as a go-between, and we hope we can still serve that function.
On the other hand, our effectiveness in “narrowing the gap between abundance at home and near starvation abroad” depends on the emphasis AID is willing to place on food assistance as an adjunct to economic development. We have gained the impression that State and ICA people both in Washington and in the field prefer to deal with dollars than with food. This is due to a combination of factors including the suspicion they have shared with foreign critics that Food For Peace is a “dumping operation”, plus the relative simplicity of handling dollars versus food. But we hope that increasing attention will be given to food aid because, properly administered, it does “reach people”, and help to create an inflation-resistant stability that dollars do not always create. I am enclosing a copy of the talking paper which will be the point of departure for my presentation to the conferees—and which shows what’s on our minds these days.2
Sincerely,
- Source: Washington National Records Center, RG 286, AID Administrator Files: FRC 65 A 481, Food for Peace, FY 1962. No classification marking.↩
- P.L. 480 was formally entitled the Agricultural Trade Development and Assistance Act, enacted on July 10, 1954. For text, see 68 Stat. 454.↩
- Not enclosed and not found.↩