not my rice?!

So glad to know that CARE has decided to turn down federal aid in order to support local farmers -- in Africa. Read more at NY Times or at the End Poverty Blog. It has always perplexed me why we continue this practice. It's also perplexing that organizations like World Vision continue to believe in this method... It also becomes tiring having to explain and constantly apologize to my international friends because of the American practice of giving charity, aka ONLY subsidized American farm product, to developing countries, which of course always beats out the struggling farmers in those developing countries. It's like we have no shame in feeding them fish after fish (that we've harvested unnaturally?) without givin them the ability to learn how to fish for themselves. In fact, we're probably grabbing the fishing rods out of their hands and breaking them in half and shoving fish into their hands. Tragic...

The same thing happens in Viet Nam. When there was famine in southern VN, there was plenty of rice in the northern regions, but it was impossible to transport them from north to south. When the U.S. brought in aid, it wouldn't help transport the domestic rice but forced the VN gov't to use U.S. rice instead.