- Food for Peace, a 70-year-old foreign food aid program, faces an uncertain future after the closure of the U.S. Agency for International Development.
- Kansas Republicans Rep. Tracey Mann and Sen. Jerry Moran introduced legislation to move Food for Peace from the defunct USAID to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
- Food for Peace, with roots in Kansas, has a legacy of fighting global hunger, promoting international trade, and advancing U.S. diplomacy.
A federal foreign food aid program with a Kansas legacy and an uncertain future could be saved by Congress under a bill championed by two Kansas congressmen.
U.S. Rep. Tracey Mann and U.S. Sen. Jerry Moran, both Kansas Republicans, were among lawmakers who introduced legislation to save Food for Peace. The 70-year-old foreign food aid program, which has a Kansas legacy, would be moved from the shuttered U.S. Agency for International Development and into the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
The move announced Tuesday in a news release from Mann’s office comes amid uncertainty about the future of Food for Peace and other foreign aid programs housed at the now-defunct USAID. President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk, who leads Trump’s informal Department of Government Efficiency, shut down the agency earlier this month without congressional approval.
“President Trump made a promise to the country to cut wasteful spending, reduce overbearing federal bureaucracy, and ensure every taxpayer dollar is spent wisely and responsibly,” Mann said in a statement. “I applaud President Trump for upholding that promise and reviewing our federal spending line by line to root out waste, fraud, and abuse while ensuring programs like Food for Peace are in line with his mission and vision.”
Mann, who lives in Salina, and Moran, who lives in Manhattan, both touted the Kansas history of Food for Peace. Both congressmen are on agriculture committees in Congress.
Mann said moving Food for Peace to USDA would mean “the program can continue to equip American producers to serve hungry people while providing more transparency and efficiency as to how taxpayer dollars are stewarded.”
“By moving this program closer to the producers who grow these crops, we can help reduce waste and make certain our farmers have access to this valuable market,” Moran said in a statement. “Food stability is essential to political stability, and our food aid programs help feed the hungry, bolster our national security and provide important markets for our farmers.”
More:Without USAID’s Food for Peace, Kansas grain elevators have no market for sorghum
Agriculture groups support Food for Peace legislation
Mann’s office said that more than 50 organizations support his legislation. His news release had statements of support from the Kansas Association of Wheat Growers, the Kansas Sorghum Producers Association, the American Soybean Association, the National Sorghum Producers and the North American Millers’ Association.
“Kansas farmers take great pride in Food for Peace and the impact the program and American commodities have had on feeding the world,” said Chris Tanner, a farmer from Norton and president of the Kansas Association of Wheat Growers.
Amy France, a farmer from Scott City and chair of the National Sorghum Producers, said that moving Food for Peace to USDA “makes sense and would ensure the long-term viability and success of these programs by continuing to provide a critical market for American sorghum farmers and the ability to move grain from our fields to the hands of those in need around the world.”
While USAID has run Food for Peace, USDA has run two other international food assistance programs, including the McGovern-Dole Food for Education program named in-part after former U.S. Sen. Bob Dole.
Food for Peace uses taxpayer dollars to buy American agricultural surplus to use as foreign food aid. The program is intended to fight world hunger, expand international trade and advance foreign diplomacy.
The bill does not appear to include Feed the Future, another USAID program that has awarded tens of millions of dollars to Kansas State University for agricultural research.
More:Are Trump and Musk ending a Kansas legacy by shuttering USAID’s Food for Peace?
Food for Peace has a Kansas history
Food for Peace is a Kansas legacy dating back to the 1950s.
The Robert J. Dole Institute of Politics at the University of Kansas has outlined the history of the Food for Peace program, as did Mann last summer when celebrating the program’s 70th anniversary.
“Over the past 70 years, Food for Peace has fed more than 4 billion people in 150 countries,” Mann said in a July 2024 statement. “With the world facing a severe hunger crisis due to inflation, natural disasters, and global wars in Ukraine, Israel, and Yemen, Food for Peace is more important now than ever.
“I am grateful for the two brave Kansans who saw America’s ability to answer the noble calling to feed a hungry world and to recognizing it as the morally right, strategically wise, and fiscally responsible thing to do.”
The idea started in 1953 with Cheyenne County farmer Peter O’Brien, who shared it at a local Farm Bureau meeting. Fellow Kansan U.S. Sen. Andy Schoeppel sponsored the legislation, which was signed into law by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, another Kansan, in 1954.
At the time, according to the Dole Institute, “U.S. agricultural surpluses reached alarming levels, and storage of excess grain cost the government millions of dollars per year — even as the food deteriorated and became inedible.”
The program “benefited the U.S. by decreasing food surpluses and by creating new markets for its agricultural products, while also providing many countries with starving populations some much-needed humanitarian aid.”
Dole, another Kansan, authored an amendment in 1966 where American farmers, dubbed the “Bread and Butter Corps,” would travel to developing countries to teach them skills for growing crops. He also pushed for language to exclude communist countries from benefiting. Food for Peace also led to other bipartisan food programs championed by Dole.
“This constructive use of U.S. farm abundance is one of the most inspiring activities ever undertaken by any country in world history,” Dole said in an undated quote, according to the Dole Institute. “The program has helped the U.S. maintain its position as the world’s leading exporter of food and fiber and shares U.S. abundance with friendly peoples abroad, effectively supplementing world agricultural trade.”
At a 2023 farm bill listening session in Saline County, U.S. Rep. Glenn Thompson, R-Pennsylvania, said, “People with full bellies are less likely to engage in war and terrorism. And so that makes all of you and that makes the American farmer a champion for world peace.”
Thompson, who chairs the House Agriculture Committee, signed onto Mann’s bill.
Jason Alatidd is a Statehouse reporter for The Topeka Capital-Journal. He can be reached by email at [email protected]. Follow him on X @Jason_Alatidd.
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