Published on July 21, 2012 at 7:10 AM
The Guardian has analyzed "hundreds of food aid contracts awarded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) in 2010-11 to show where the money goes," the newspaper reports. "Two-thirds of food for the billion-dollar U.S. food aid program last year was bought from just three U.S.-based multinationals," ADM, Cargill, and Bunge, the newspaper notes, adding that "these three agribusinesses sold the U.S. government 1.2 million tons of food, or almost 70 percent of the total bought" (Provost/Lawrence, 7/18). In a separate article, the Guardian writes, "Food aid has also become a valuable business for a variety of smaller food companies," as well as shipping firms and non-governmental organizations (Provost, 7/19). In an interactive feature, the Guardian "[e]xplore[s] which companies sold food aid products to the government last year, what was bought, and where it was sent" (Provost/Hughes, 7/20). And another article describes how the newspaper analyzed the data (Hughes, 7/19).
 This article was reprinted from kaiserhealthnews.org with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente.
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