By Missy Ryan WASHINGTON, Feb 2 (Reuters) - The Bush administration has revived a proposal to reform food aid for the world's hungry, but it is unclear whether lawmakers will sign on to the plan. "It's a lot of inertia" that blocks proposed changes to U.S. food aid, said Gawain Kripke, a trade specialist at aid and advocacy group Oxfam America. Even so, the way Washington doles out food aid could be reshaped later this year when Congress writes a new farm bill, the umbrella law that sets farm policy every five years. The United States is a giant force in world efforts to feed 200 million undernourished people a year, but currently U.S. food aid comes through a complex set of programs involving multiple agencies and marrying commercial, political, and humanitarian goals. Bush's proposal to improve the system would allow up to 25 percent of emergency "Food for Peace" aid to be bought in the country or region where a food crisis occurs, instead of requiring that U.S. companies ship U.S. crops to famine areas. "The U.S. is slower and has less flexibility to save lives and prevent famine," the administration said in its proposal for the 2007 farm bill, due to be replaced around September. It can take up to five months to ship U.S. aid; sometimes aid comes too late or not at all, officials say, pointing to insufficient help to Iraq in 2003 and to Lebanon in 2006. In a report last month, the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization urged donor countries to end 'tied' aid, saying a third of the $600 million spend on food aid every year went to growers, processors and shippers in rich nations. Reshaping a historic program could be difficult as similar plans from the Bush administration failed in recent years. Kripke, however, suggested the time may be ripe because "people have had time to digest" these ideas. Chris Garza, who directs congressional relations for the American Farm Bureau Federation, a major lobby group, predicted Bush's plan would not pass muster with lawmakers who were more interested in defending their constituents' subsidies. "There is no support on the Hill ... to do this," he said. Ellen Levinson, who heads a coalition of aid agencies that deliver U.S. food aid, wants a pilot program to test the changes before moving forward with larger reform. Her member groups, charities like World Vision and Africare, focus their push on more overall aid for 'chronic' problem countries instead. The plan could also prove contentious because it would allow U.S. aid dollars to go to farmers from other countries. Food aid may also crop up in the Doha round of trade talks, which are moving slowly ahead after a half-year lull as negotiators try to reach consensus on agriculture.
