World Food Program Explains, Ukraine Supplied Daily Food Relief for 125 Million People Worldwide

March 15, 2022 (EIRNS)—On March 13 World Food Program Executive Director David Beasley arrived in Ukraine, and from Lviv yesterday said that fully half the grain the WFP buys for its world food relief has come from Ukraine. It feeds “the 125 million people we reach on any given day, week or month,” he said, as reported March 14 by ABC News.

Also on March 14, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack reported that Beasley put the question for how to make up for the lack to a video conference of the Group of 7 agriculture ministers, on March 11. Vilsack, who addressed the Commodities Classic convention in New Orleans, was quoted by agriculture national newspaper The Fence Post: “ David Beasley ... ‘charted’ the world hunger situation for the ministers. Beasley urged the ministers to be ‘aware’ of the Ukraine situation and to be ‘thinking now’ about responses.”

The Fence Post further reported that Vilsack has raised the use of the Bill Emerson Humanitarian Trust (BEHT) to unlock some resources for providing food support, under USDA auspices. Named after the late Congressman Bill Emerson (R-MO), who died in 1996, the Trust’s origins go back to 1980, when Congress set up a Food Security Wheat Reserve, which included up to 4 million tons of wheat, and was renamed after Bill Emerson in 1998; in 2008, the USDA changed the BEHT into a cash reserve for purchase of U.S. commodities in food emergencies. The State Department’s Agency for International Development (USAID) also deals with food aid.