Less than a decade after winning World War II, the U.S. government was losing the battle against price-depressing crop surpluses. Government silos were overwhelmed with agricultural commodities, forcing the Eisenhower administration to cram excess grain onto a derelict “moth-ball fleet” of rusty ships from the Second World War. By 1954, the government's reliance on unorthodox storage facilities led one journalist to jest, "If you should see corn bulging out of old airplane hangars or wheat seeping from abandoned movie theaters, don't be surprised.”

To solve this crisis of overabundance, Congress in 1954 passed the Agricultural Trade Development and Assistance Act, better known as Food For Peace. The law created a framework to dispose of America’s bulging food stocks by donating surplus food to the third world. In the words of President Eisenhower, the program would "lay the basis for a permanent expansion of our exports of agricultural products with lasting benefits to ourselves and people of other lands.” 

In 1961, President Kennedy appointed Congressman George McGovern to oversee Food For Peace activities within the Foreign Service, Department of Agriculture, and the newly created Agency for International Development. McGovern disdained the pigeonholing of the program as mere “surplus food disposal” and desired a greater focus on the program’s humanitarianism. He also envisioned Food For Peace as a tool to shape foreign policy and fight against communism, remarking that “if Russia’s Khrushchev had our surplus food, you can be sure he would use it as an arm of Soviet foreign policy.” During his two year tenure as Director of Food For Peace, McGovern transformed the program from a surplus disposal scheme into an inventive approach to diplomacy.

Cooperation between diplomatic and agricultural entities within the government formed the backbone of Food For Peace. Aid agreements were negotiated by the Foreign Service with recipient nations. These agreements could take a variety of forms, such as discounted sales, emergency food shipments, and Food for Work programs that supplemented workers’ wages with payments of food. Once an agreement was negotiated, the Department of Agriculture withdrew from its stored surpluses and supervised the shipment and disbursement of aid. The Agency for International Development was responsible for overseas activities, including implementing food assistance programs and developing agricultural infrastructure in the target country.

The response of Food For Peace to relieve India’s food crisis during the Johnson administration in the 1960’s created a paradigm of interagency cooperation that benefited both the United States and India. After its liberation from the United Kingdom in 1947, India was suffering from frequent bouts of famine. India’s population was rapidly expanding at a rate of 10 million per year, but agricultural production remained stagnant. The result was a food crisis diametrically opposed to the U.S. surplus problem. While American farm incomes were being crushed by overproduction, food scarcity in India created “steadily soaring prices” that forced ostensibly middle class Indians to ration their food consumption.

These chronic food shortages plunged the country into disorder. Mass hunger riots were met with deadly force by Indian police as protesters were jailed by the thousands. Large discrepancies between official counts of rioter arrests and claims from socialist opposition groups revealed fissures that had developed in Indian politics. For example, in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, the government claimed that it arrested 4,500 rioters, while the opposition alleged that the true number was closer to 10,000. It was clear that the Indian government was widely distrusted by its citizens.

This political upheaval provided fertile ground for communism to spread. As rioting intensified in 1964, Time Magazine reported that Indian communists were plotting “‘mass agitation’ to exploit the food shortage.” This jeopardized U.S. interests, since India functioned as a bulwark against communist expansion in South Asia. The United States government feared that a communist takeover in India would create instability and allow communism to spread to nearby countries. To emphasize the threat posed to U.S. foreign policy, Deputy National Security Advisor Robert Komer said that, “If India goes communist, it will be a disaster comparable only to the loss of China.”

The Johnson administration sought to use Food For Peace to solve the root cause of communist expansion in India: food scarcity. According to an investigation by the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, this scarcity was the result of the “backwardness of its agriculture” because of the use of “ancient techniques” and “poor seed.” To revamp India’s antiquated agriculture, officials from the Foreign Service, Department of Agriculture and the Agency for International Development devised the “short tether policy,” which called for using short term stop-gap food shipments in lieu of conventional multi-year contracts. By expanding upon McGovern’s vision for food diplomacy, the plan gave the Foreign Service leverage to push the Indian government to modernize their agricultural system.

Results of the “short tether policy” were promising: in 1965, negotiations between U.S. diplomats and the Indian government produced the Treaty of Rome, which stipulated that India invest nearly 5 billion dollars in agriculture over the following five years—more than doubling India’s previous agricultural spending. The agreement also established targets for fertilizer utilization and mandated that 32 million acres of land be planted with high-yield seed varieties. While India was revitalizing its agriculture, the Department of Agriculture shipped over 15 million metric tons of Food For Peace shipments to alleviate existing food shortages. As American aid was sold to consumers, the Agency for International Development reinvested the proceeds in India by funding valuable education, research, and infrastructure. Prime examples of the Agency’s achievements included the Uttar Pradesh Agricultural University, the Indian Agricultural Research Institute, numerous fertilizer factories, and the Nagarjunasagar Dam, which irrigated millions of acres of farmland.

This combination of short term hunger relief coupled with long term guidance towards self-sufficiency sparked a “Green Revolution” which, by 1972, gave India a surplus in wheat and rice. Emergency Food For Peace shipments were also successful in averting at least two famines, saving countless lives. While it would be deceptive to claim that Food For Peace fully eliminated India’s hunger problem, it was clearly an important step forward in overcoming the physical shortage of food that was once prevalent. Food For Peace also played a part in thwarting communist expansion. Severe food rioting was “met head-on” by U.S. food assistance, fostering pro-American sentiment in India. By the end of the Cold War, the CIA reported that “the United States is widely admired by the Indian public” and that “the Communists have no groundswell of anti-U.S. feeling in India to use against the prime minister.”

The triumph of Food For Peace in India provided a case study into the benefits of interagency cooperation in promoting peace and prosperity around the world. It proved that, when harnessed, food is a powerful force for good. John F. Kennedy championed this ideal when he said, “Food is strength, and food is peace, and food is freedom, and food is a helping hand to people around the world whose goodwill and friendship we want.” Food For Peace embodied this philosophy to provide aid and cultivate self-sufficiency in developing nations. By combining their individual strengths, the Foreign Service, Department of Agriculture and Agency for International Development have together made Food For Peace successful. Sixty years since its inception under President Eisenhower, Food For Peace still upholds its enduring principles of cooperation and continues to help the world today. 

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