"During World War II, the U.S. government tied agriculture to foreign policy by using taxpayer dollars to buy food from American farmers and send it to hungry allies abroad. This agricultural diplomacy continued into the Cold War through programs such as the Marshall Plan to rebuild European agriculture, Food for Peace to send surplus U.S. food to hungry allies, and the U.S. Agency for International Development, which aimed to make food aid and agricultural development permanent components of U.S. foreign policy."
"During that period, the United States also participated in multinational partnerships to set global production goals and trade guidelines to promote the international movement of food - including the U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization, the International Wheat Agreement and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. When U.S. farmers faced labor shortfalls, the federal government created guest-worker programs that provided critical hands in the fields, most often from Mexico and the Caribbean."
During World War II the U.S. linked agriculture to foreign policy by buying American food with taxpayer dollars and sending it to allied nations. Cold War programs such as the Marshall Plan, Food for Peace and the U.S. Agency for International Development made food aid and agricultural development formal foreign-policy tools. The United States joined multinational agreements to coordinate production and trade and established guest-worker programs to address farm labor shortages. Postwar American farm prosperity depended on global markets rather than only domestic subsidies. Recent policies dismantled USAID, tightened immigration enforcement affecting farmworkers, and imposed tariffs that provoked retaliation and reduced foreign demand for U.S. agricultural products.
#agricultural-diplomacy #us-agency-for-international-development #trade-tariffs #immigration-and-farm-labor
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