I understand the outrage at some of the BS that has been funded by USAID. I hope that the cuts to its programs are applied judiciously.
The International Fertilizer Development Center (IFDC) is an independent non-profit based here in the Shoals that partners with USAID and other countries to advance research and good farming practices to help feed the world.
Abandoning this effort will do damage to our relations with many developing countries and open the door for China to have greater influence.
I have interacted with people at this organization and they truly are non partisan and only interested in the advancement of good agriculture practices world wide.
I too hope that such programs and charities continue. But the problem is government and the lack of oversight.
We had a similar program, and I'm sure you've also heard about it, where we did something VERY similar...we helped poppy farmers with their irrigation issues. True, it wasn't meant for that purpose but that is where the money went. That helped fund our actual enemies in their efforts to kill American and allied soldiers.
Government sucks at everything they do. It's true that there are some things that we can't allow non-government entities to do (like national security or law enforcement for example) but other things, almost every other thing, is done better when it isn't done by a government.
Also, just so you know, my dad spent almost his entire career in the fertilizer industry (phosphate and sulfuric acid) and programs like the one you just mentioned are destroying, or have destroyed, the American fertilizer industry.
American companies could no longer compete internationally, or even domestically, with companies who produced cheap fertilizer using cheap labor with little or NO EPA/OSHA style oversight. And we taught them how to do it and oftentimes even built their chemical plants and mining operations using American tax dollars.
We have decimated the American chemical industry. Is it kind to help feed the hungry? Yes. Is it in our best economic interests, or even our strategic interests, to decimate American industry like that? Clearly it is not...and the American tax payer is funding that crap? How is that equitable?