When Elon Musk took a DOGE chainsaw to the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the shutdown resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths from infectious diseases and malnutrition, according to Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health’s Atul Gawande, a surgeon, author, and distinguished professor in residence at Ariadne Labs, which he co-founded. He previously served in the Biden administration as the assistant administrator for global health at USAID.
Last February, Musk reportedly said, “We spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper.”
USAID included a program called Food for Peace that started in Kansas and provided a financial boon to Kansas sorghum farmers in addition to providing foreign aid. As soon as the program was stopped, farmers lost a major sorghum market and there was talk of restoring USAID or at least Food for Peace under the U.S. Department of Agriculture. A year later, we are again hearing that Congress may take action to bring the program back by using the farm bill to transfer Food for Peace to the USDA. Nick Levendofsky, executive director of the Kansas Farmers Union, said he hopes that will happen, because the move would benefit sorghum farmers.
“It’s my hope that with Food for Peace coming back under the USDA now, that eventually we can build that market back up and get more grain sorghum out to people who need it all over the world. But it’s going to take time. It’s going to take a long time to get the logistics all straightened out and build up all of the capacity that’s needed. It takes a lot of people, a lot of logistics, to get food from Kansas to a port and then on to wherever it needs to go, and everything that goes on in between and after the fact. It’s going to take lots of time to get back to where it was just a year ago,” Levendofsky said.
Food for Peace started in 1953 in Kansas, when Cheyenne County farmer Peter O’Brien shared the idea of using America’s agricultural surpluses to fight world hunger, expand international trade and advance foreign diplomacy. He shared the idea at a local Farm Bureau meeting and then U.S. Sen. Andy Schoeppel, a fellow Kansan, sponsored the legislation. President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed that legislation in 1954.
Kansas is the leading producer of grain sorghum, also known as milo, in the United States. The grain is shipped to places like Africa.
Kansas legislators quickly took steps to save the international food assistance program last year. In February of 2025, Rep. Tracey Mann and Sen. Jerry Moran introduced legislation to move Food for Peace to the USDA. Unfortunately, their bills did not get any traction as standalone legislation in the House or the Senate.
On Feb. 12, the farm bill was unveiled by the House Agriculture Committee. Markup was set to begin Feb. 23 but was delayed due to weather on the East Coast. At last report, the work was scheduled to begin Tuesday afternoon (March 3). This has been described as a bipartisan bill with sponsors on both sides of the aisle. If a program provides humanitarian aid, fosters goodwill, AND puts money in farmers’ pockets, what’s not to like?
Susan Thacker is editor of the Great Bend Tribune. Contact her at sthacker@gbtribune.com.
