USAID expands food aid prepositioning
The U.S. Agency for International Development has initiated a major expansion of its global food aid prepositioning program to respond more rapidly to global food emergencies.
Stockpiling food aid supplies in or near regions of the world with historically high emergency food aid needs allows USAID to respond quickly when disasters occur. For example, when floods struck Pakistan in July, USAID was able to dispatch food aid from its prepositioning warehouse in Djibouti, which allowed aid to get there in two to three weeks instead of three months by vessel from the United States, the agency said.
USAID has awarded contracts for six prepositioning sites, valued at up to $50 million over five years to further expand this program.
The contracts were awarded to:
' Jacintoport International for a site in Jacinto, Texas, to expedite aid to Latin American and the Caribbean.
' Damco USA for a site in Sri Lanka for use in Asia.
To address large emergency food aid needs in different parts of Africa, USAID awarded contacts to:
' Bahrain Maritime and Mercantile International for a site in Djibouti.
' SDV (USA) for a site in Kenya.
' Damco USA for a site in South Africa.
' Fettig and Donalty for a site in Togo.
This expansion was made possible by authorities provided by Congress in the Food for Peace Act.
Additionally, USAID uses its global prepositioning program as part of a modern supply chain management system. The agency procures U.S. commodities that are most often used in emergencies and ships them to prepositioning sites. When food aid is needed somewhere, USAID first uses commodities from the global prepositioning system — either in warehouses or in transit to them — then reorders commodities to replace them.
USAID is the world’s largest provider of food aid, with the Food for Peace program providing more than 2.5 million tons of food, valued at more than $2.5 billion, in fiscal year 2009, benefiting about 56 million people in 49 countries.