Office of the Historian

240. Memorandum From Richard Levine of the National Security Council Staff to the President’s Deputy Assistant for National Security Affairs (Poindexter)1

Washington, February 15, 1985

SUBJECT

  • Food for Progress Update

At my request, Dan Amstutz, Under Secretary of Agriculture, chaired a meeting today to finalize cost figures for the four “Food for Progress” funding options, consistent with the Administration’s 1985 farm bill. State, OMB, Treasury and I participated. The final funding costs are as follows:

Four-year Budget Cost
(1) Keating option: takes food from existing CCC stocks2 under expanded 416 program; fund transportation with new money. $405M
(2) AID option: seek all new money for food and transport. $391M
(3) NSC option: take food from Title I program, fund transport with new money. $160M
(4) OMB option: take food and transport money from Title I program. 0

These numbers are authoritative and consistent with the Administration’s farm bill. Bob Keating’s assertion of zero budget costs for his CCC option3 stems from a misunderstanding of how the Commodity Credit Corporation functions financially and the central theme of our new farm bill which is to remove the USG from rebuilding government food stocks.

The month I have spent on this study I feel has been time well used because it will allow us to choose far more efficient funding [Page 644] options. It has taken this long to come up with solid numbers because these derive from the farm bill’s policy effects.

I expect the full “Food for Progress” implementation papers will be ready late next week, including sections on funding options, country selection criteria to be applied (there is interagency consensus on this) and administrative options.4 Also, my work on the Bonn Summit papers5 on food aid initiatives are now part of the Sherpa team papers.

  1. Source: Reagan Library, African Affairs Directorate, NSC: Records, AF Famine: [02/05/85–11/05/85]. Confidential. Sent for information. Copies were sent to McMinn and Ringdahl.↩
  2. CCC must be reimbursed for food given away that it otherwise could sell. [Footnote is in the original.]↩
  3. See footnote 4, Document 236.↩
  4. See Document 244.↩
  5. Not further identified.↩