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The Soon Coming Judgment Of God Upon America and How To Escape It 119
the U.S.S.R. and China. These were a dramatic plunge in production with resultant famine and
millions of deaths.
The authors of World Hunger: 12 Myths also reveal that the US makes “conditional”
grants and loans to nations. That is grants or loans are made available only if certain conditions
are met by the nation. As is explained in the book:
Making a grant or loan conditional on some action being taken by the
recipient is called “conditionality.” Conditionality works by “tranching”
economic assistance packages-that is, dividing the total sum to be donated or
loaned to a recipient country into a series of smaller disbursements to be made
over time, called tranches. Before each disbursement is made, the recipient must
make policy changes spelled out in the “covenants” of the aid agreement that they
must sign with USAID
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This sounds innocent enough. As a tax payer, who wouldn’t want conditions put on our
hard earned money that is handed out around the world. Only when you look at some of the
conditions, one can only conclude that they are designed to destroy the local economy of these
nations. World Hunger: 12 Myths gives the example of Costa Rica:
Between 1982 and 1990 nine U.S. economic assistance packages provided
to the Costa Rican government contained a total of 357 “covenants” that made
disbursement conditional on more than twenty structural changes in the domestic
economy. These included eliminating a grain marketing board that assisted small
farmers; slashing support prices for locally grown corn, beans, and rice; allowing
more imports from the United States; easing regulations on foreign investment
and capital flows; and complying with specific clauses in similar agreements
signed with the World Bank and the IMF.
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What altruistic purpose can be achieved by demanding that a nation quit assisting its
farmers in the marketing of their crops? And how can the US insist that a poor nation slash its
price supports of local crops when the United States pays out billions to its own farmers?
According to World Hunger: 12 Myths, the answer is that much aid is aimed at opening
up markets for US exports. Rather than supporting farmers of poor nations by purchasing needed
food aid from local farmers or from surpluses of farmers of nearby nation, food aid bolsters US
grain exports. The authors explain that US food aid “helps shift consumer tastes in recipient
countries away from locally grown crops toward wheat products like bread and pasta” made
from American supplied wheat. “Much aid to Africa, for example, has been in the form of wheat,
even though wheat grows well in very few parts of the tropics.” A 1996 USAID report on food
aid bragged that “nine out of ten countries importing US agricultural products are former
recipients of food assistance.”
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As revealed by the authors of World Hunger: 12 Myths this can
devastate a nations agricultural industry as their local market shifts to products they are not
capable of growing. The authors write:
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