85. Memorandum From Manning H. Williams of the Operations Coordinating Board to the Executive Officer of theOperations Coordinating Board (Smith)0
SUBJECT
- Food-for-Peace through Development
In his memorandum of January 24,1 President Kennedy said he has asked the Food-for-Peace Director to conduct an intensive review of uses of U.S. agricultural products abroad and possible improvements in them.
Immediate attention should be given to focusing on the “food for development” aspects of Food-for-Peace. This is the realistic focus for advancing U.S. interests and also the interests of the impoverished countries.
Although “food for development” is already an integral part of the President’s general Food-for-Peace program, it seems to have been pushed to the background by the idea of “helping provide a more adequate diet for peoples all around the world.”2 If our program is too broad, it will arouse expectations abroad we cannot fulfill, and seem unrealistic to our own people.
"Food for development,” however, is a promise we can readily fulfill. We can3 use our tremendous food production capacity to help other people prepare to feed themselves better. What is involved can be easily explained. For example, if we send steel rails and engineers to help country [Page 193] X build a railroad, we also send enough wheat to feed and pay the wages of the local workmen who clear the jungle and lay the rails.
This has been done already to a limited extent; we need to stress4 the concept “food for development” and popularize it.
Yugoslavia has been an excellent example. Large quantities of American food made available to the Yugoslav government and sold for local currency have not only averted hunger in Yugoslavia but have generated the funds necessary for important development projects. One of the results has been that Yugoslavia no longer needs American food imports, which can be diverted where they are more needed. Another result is that Yugoslavia is making better progress toward meeting the present and future needs of its people than it could as a member of the Soviet bloc. Use of food for development on a limited scale has also been successful in India.
In Europe after the war, our agricultural products helped prime the pump. In many parts of Asia and Africa today food can help build the pump. The example of building a railroad was used above. Wheat can also generate funds to build universities, pay teachers, and subsidize students.
Generous and kind as the American people are, in the long run they will probably give much more enthusiastic support to a food program geared to developing a foreign country than they will to an appeal to feed the hungry. (This does not apply, of course, to disaster relief, or to other emergency measures, when the American people will of course want to help.) Food for development programs have the extra advantage of promising an eventual end, and a happy one, even if a long way off.
I am not suggesting that the slogan “Food for Peace” be abandoned. I do suggest that consideration be given to emphasizing that “Food for Peace” means primarily food for development. The slogan might even be expanded to “Food for Peace through Development.”
- Source: Kennedy Library, National Security Files, Departments and Agencies Series, Food for Peace. No classification marking. Attached to the source text is a newspaper clipping from The New York Times, January 25, 1961, summarizing a task force report, chaired by Murray D. Lincoln, President of Cooperative for American Remittance Everywhere, Inc. (CARE), which recommended among other things discarding the concept of “surplus disposal” legislation in favor of increased funding for 5-year contracts with foreign nations wanting U.S. farm products. This report is also summarized in Department of State Bulletin, February 13, 1961, p. 217.↩
- In this memorandum to department heads and agencies, the President explained the centralization of government oversight of the movement of agricultural commodities and products abroad under the Director of the Food for Peace Program, who was directed “to exercise affirmative leadership and continuous supervision over the various activities in this field, so that they may be brought into harmonious relationship.” Accompanying the memorandum was Executive Order 10915, January 24, 1961, which provided the legal authority for the Director’s assumption of these additional coordinating responsibilities. For text of the President’s memorandum and Executive Order, see Department of State Bulletin, February 13, 1961, pp. 216-217.↩
- The quotation is from the President’s January 24 memorandum.↩
- The word “can” has been inserted by hand.↩
- The word “broaden” has been crossed out and “stress” has been inserted by hand.↩