When people are starving?
"Food aid did not become an ingrained element of U.S. foreign policy and diplomacy until after the Second World War. In the mid-1940s, U.S. agricultural contributions were increasingly incorporated into multinational responses through such entities as the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) and the UN Food and Agricultural Organization (Organization (FAO). However, the unilateral donations that characterized pre-1945 efforts remained and were strengthened. The U.S. Government initiated several short-term programs to provide food supplies to war-wrecked countries after 1945, including the Government and Relief in Occupied Areas (GARIOA) program and the Marshall Plan.
Post-war global recovery and the rise of a bi-polar Cold War world led to new U.S. initiatives in food aid. Earlier efforts to staunch the incursion of Communism were resurrected and enhanced by an accumulation of agricultural surpluses (thanks to agricultural innovation and increased output). On July 10, 1954, President Dwight Eisenhower signed the Agricultural Trade Development and Assistance Act of 1954, Public Law 480, creating the program which became known as Food for Peace. This program sought to divest the United States of accumulated agricultural surpluses, improve the domestic market, and stimulate new markets overseas.
The Food for Peace program authorized three categories of food aid."