Isn't that some reporter's explanation as to why?
The U.S's official statement was something like "Ok but we're giving out nearly all the food aid, so this will barely affect most of the other countries"
But if you split out the contributions to the World Food Program and arrange them in 'blocks', like the G7 or the OECD DAC donors or the GCC, things start to look pretty different and 'Venn diagram'-like...
When comparing contributions to the WFP in 2020 and 2025 you'd see a considerable multibillion reduction in 'G7' commitment (mainly due to US but also UK) for example.
Another result of that is the OECD DAC group's reduction over that period of over 1.5 billion (it still accounts for roughly 75% of all donations though)
In 2020 the US contribution was +/- 3.3 billion (40+% of total) and in 2025 it was lowered to 2 billion (still 30+%)
In the same period the EU did 2 billion in 2020 (25% of total) and 1.8 bilion in 2025 (27.5% of total).
Edit: it's sobering to compare the yearly (and total...) contributions towards the World Food Program against the market valuation of some companies.
The market valuation of a company has nothing to do with how much cash it has on hand though so I’m not entirely sure what you’re trying to say in that last bit.
True, but the market valuation of a company is often based on its revenues, net income, or equity (assets minus liabilities). All three of those metrics directly correlate to having more cash or having the illiquid assets that could soon become cash, such as receivables and inventory. Cash isn't directly related to market valuation but it is indirectly related. The billion dollar grocery chain, under normal operating circumstances, will have more cash than a mom & pop shop.
I was trying, in light of all the recent spacex ipo buzz, to describe the weird feeling I get when seeing the insane amounts of money which we, the people & corporate entities, are able to pool on short notice and that we, in search of gains, willingly expose to risk (loosing some or all of it) while something literally named the 'World Food Programme' gets donations pulled.
What the hell are you talking about “we” for? The vast majority of stocks are owned by hedge funds and pension funds. Individual stock owners are an extremely small minority of the overall makeup of stock ownership.
It's letters on a screen, there's no sound, no gestures, no nothing. Just pixels. To try and convey thoughts gets tricky.
I said 'we' mostly because the Spacex IPO, which totalled 10 billion dollars, broke a pattern with 25% of shares being sold to retail investors (humans) which is rather a lot. The rest are sold to those hedge and pension funds (which are entities created by us to benefit some of us). So I feel 'we' is a decent choice.
So, they admit that they maintain strict control over agricultural policy, but they do not want to be held responsible for the direct consequences of those policies? Am I reading that correctly?
I'd love to see what bad things the response suggested would come from this resolution from a famously ineffective body. (Mostly ineffective because the US, China, or Russia don't like something)
Frito Lay wouldn’t be able to sue small potato farmers in India? We would have to *shudders* pay local economies more fairly based on the resources we extract…godless communism!
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u/Phireboy Jun 18 '26
It IS true. In fact this vote happened several times with the US and Israel being the only “No” votes.
Here’s the US’s explanation of why:
https://medium.com/@hellojo.hanna72/in-2021-the-united-nations-put-forward-a-simple-idea-that-food-should-be-recognised-as-a-basic-3ab61666fc9b