The gift-giving season is a perfect time to reflect on our nation's commitment to alleviating hunger around the world. The U.S. government spends on the order of $2 billion each year on humanitarian food aid, which makes us the largest donor on the planet. By far. For this, we should all be proud.

But it is also a fitting moment to examine how well this money is being spent. After all, few of us would purchase a $100 present if we could get the same one for $20. Further, we would never give a gift that had the potential of causing more harm than good for its recipient. Let us then examine the U.S. taxpayers' gifts to the world's poor.

In the main, our international food aid policy works like this: The government purchases food in the American market, predominantly from large agribusinesses like Archer Daniels Midland. In 2004 more than half of food aid came from four companies. During emergencies, the government pays for this food to be delivered to stricken countries. During most non-emergencies, the government sends American-purchased food to nongovernmental organizations based in a target country. The NGOs then turn around and sell the goods in the marketplace, using the profits to fund their own vital development projects, a process called monetization.

This system is rife with inefficiency. According to the Government Accountability Office, only 35 percent of the U.S. food aid budget is spent on actual food. The figure for Canada is 70 percent.

Huge sums of U.S. aid are expended to bag, store and transport the goods, enriching the large agribusinesses and shippers that lobby hard to maintain these policies. The GAO calculates that rising costs for these services have contributed to a 52 percent decrease in the average tonnage of food delivered between 2001 and 2006. This represents a national scandal.

In addition, the delivery of emergency food takes more than four months, on average, which means that the United States can do little to respond to the immediate needs of suffering people. This fact has led the Bush administration to propose that some food aid be converted to cash grants allowing for the quick purchase of goods within or near the effected country. But shippers and agribusinesses strenuously oppose the idea, and their patrons in Congress ensured that the current Farm Bill, which authorizes food aid funding, only includes a tiny pilot program that delivers cash grants.

Sound objections also have been raised to the U.S. policy of having NGOs sell non-emergency American food in the marketplaces of poor nations. It is argued that the introduction of foreign goods in a poor nation's economy retards the development of its free market. These countries, after all, will require healthy, functioning economies if they hope to sustain a push out of poverty.

The United States Agency for International Development, which oversees the bulk of American food aid, says that monetization is conducted under strict guidelines to ensure its efficacy. Participant NGOs like Catholic Relief Services and World Vision point to the importance of the health, education and agricultural programs funded by monetization. But others see this as risky and, in the words of the GAO, "inherently inefficient." The United States is the only donor nation in the world to monetize its food aid.

Even so, a provision in the Farm Bill that will reach President Bush's desk next month will almost certainly increase the amount of food aid distributed through the monetization process. But that's the least of its problems, according to some critics.

The bill includes a so-called "safe box" -- containing $600 million in the Senate version, $450 million in the House's -- reserved exclusively for non-emergency use. Catholic Relief, World Vision and other NGOs say that this "hard earmark" would ensure the funding of programs that would prevent future assistance in food emergencies. Others say it would sometimes force the United States to halt food deliveries in the midst of devastating droughts, wars or famines.

Getting additional emergency money would require the lengthy process of congressional appropriation. The USAID itself is opposed to the safe box, with one USAID official calling it "a pine box for some poor people around the world." Christopher Barrett, a food aid expert who teaches at Cornell, called it "shameful."

President Bush is threatening to veto the Farm Bill early next year. He should. Our nation needs to reform how it gives gifts to the less fortunate. It's the perfect season to do it.