Dehydrated Potato Flakes included as approved “Food for Education Program” Allocations

On May 17, US Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) will award more than $346 million in international assistance grants, which includes transportation and freight costs, under the “Food for Progress” and “McGovern-Dole International Food for Education and Child Nutrition” programs in fiscal year 2011, benefiting more than 5.2 million people.

Out of the newly approved fiscal year 2011 allocations, two McGovern-Dole Food for Education (FFE) applications, awarded to International Partnership for Human Development (IPHD), included US dehydrated potato flakes (dehy). These programs are for school feeding programs in the Congo and Guinea-Bissau.

IPHD has been programming dehydrated potato flakes in their Guinea Bissau school feeding program since last year, utilizing approximately 480 MT (approximately 69,000 cwt fresh weight equivalent) per year. The inclusion of dehy in the Guinea Bissau school feeding program is a direct result of the April and October 2009 USPB trainings for private voluntary organizations (PVOs), where staff members were convinced dehydrated potatoes would work well in their school feeding programs in Africa. The USPB helped make the necessary changes to the McGovern-Dole Food for Education applications to include US dehydrated potatoes.

About 3 million metric tons of food products, valued at more than $1 billion, are procured each year to distribute throughout the world. If even ½ of 1% were to go to purchase of dehy, it would represent more than $10 million each year.