Pursuit's Take
Since the Food Security Act of 1985, Congress has authorized monetization—the sale of U.S. food aid commodities in developing countries to fund development. In fiscal year 2010, more than $300 million was used to procure and ship 540,000 metric tons of commodities to be monetized by the U.S. Agency for International Development and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
GAO found that the inefficiency of the monetization process reduced funding available to the U.S. government for development projects by $219 million over a 3-year period. In addition, USAID and USDA cannot ensure that monetization does not cause adverse market impacts because they monetize at high volumes, conduct weak market assessments, and do not conduct post-monetization evaluations. Adverse market impacts may include discouraging food production by local farmers, which could undermine development goals.