Last updated on August 7, 2011
I wanted to blog this when it first came out at the beginning of July, but I did not get a chance to listen to this Center for Global Development (CGD) podcast until this past weekend, when recurrent eye problems forced me to spend time (looking) away from my computer. The current famine in the Horn of Africa makes this still relevant.
In it, Lawrence MacDonald talks to Connie Veillette and Ben Leo (all three are from the CGD) about the structure of US food aid and the way the World Food Program procures the food it then dispatches to disaster areas — and how the WFP’s procurement mechanism could be improved via hedging.
This reminds me — my dissertation adviser wrote an entire book on food aid while I was in grad school. When it came out, I set it aside in the name of being too busy with my dissertation. I think it’s time I read the whole thing.