USDA says to donate 200,000 tonnes wheat to Sudan

WASHINGTON, Dec 3 (Reuters) – The United States will donate 200,000 tonnes of wheat from a federally-owned grain reserve to Sudan to relieve severe food shortages there, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said on Friday.

Displaced Sudanese women collect grain airlifted by WFP aeroplanes.

USDA said the wheat, to be taken from the Bill Emerson Humanitarian Trust, will be distributed mainly through the United Nations-run world Food Program and will arrive in Sudan “over the next few months.”

A USDA official said the 200,000 tonnes of wheat will be soft white wheat. The official also said USDA was not currently considering additional withdrawals from the grain reserve.

“Through this release of the Emerson Trust, the United States will provide urgently needed food to meet the needs of 2.5-to 3-million Sudanese over a five-month period who are displaced inside Darfur, or have fled to neighboring Chad,” said Andrew Natsios, administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development.

U.S. AID coordinates food aid efforts with USDA. The wheat will be shipped under the PL 480 Title II program.

Tens of thousands of people have been killed by violence, starvation and disease in Sudan, where rebels have been fighting government forces and Arab militias. The latter have been accused of widespread human rights violations.

In recent months, the Coalition for Food Aid and other groups have been calling on the Bush administration to withdraw grain from the government reserve to ease a global shortage of emergency food aid.

U.S. Wheat Associates, which promotes exports of American wheat, joined in that effort.

U.S. Wheat Associates President Alan Tracy called the donation “exactly the action we had hoped to see.”

The Emerson Trust is allowed to hold up to 4 million tonnes of any combination of wheat, rice, corn or sorghum. Prior to the release of 200,000 tonnes of wheat for Sudan, the reserve held 1.6 million tonnes of wheat.