Public Law 480

By 1954, U.S. government-owned food stocks were expanding rapidly, the result of a broad failure in domestic agricultural policy. Not only had it been extremely costly for taxpayers to pay farmers for these unneeded commodities, but the surpluses threatened to destabilize agricultural markets. Congress determined that the subsidized sales of these commodities to overseas customers was a good way to reduce the size of domestic surpluses and passed legislation to sell them for local currencies, which would be reinvested in the recipient countries to spur growth, or to barter them for raw materials the United States needed. At the last minute, a grant program was added to the legislation providing food relief to undernourished people in the world’s poorer countries. President Eisenhower signed the bill in July 1954. This was the beginning of America’s modern international food aid programs.