Food Aid and Agricultural Cargo Preference

This paper uses an unprecedentedly rich data set to estimate the cost of agricultural cargo preference (ACP) restrictions on United States food aid programs, and to document some of the programs' competitiveness and national security impacts. ACP cost U.S. taxpayers $140 million in 2006, 46% more than competitive freight costs would have. This roughly equals the cost of non-emergency food aid to Africa. Furthermore, 70% of ACP vessels did not satisfy the criteria that deem them militarily useful, a large share were ultimately owned by foreign corporations, and no ACP vessel crew has been mobilized for national service.