Large emergency grain reserves, to have food aid ready for food crises were debated in the 1970s. The USG, the World Bank, and others explored a large buffer stock of grains during years of abundance to release grain during dangerous global shortages. The FAO and Food for Peace worked toward a distributed reserve. The costs were, however, too large. The Food Security Wheat Reserve Act of 1980 authorized a reserve of up to 4 million metric tons of wheat, solely for emergency humanitarian needs in developing countries, and this eventually became the Bill Emerson Humanitarian Trust. In recent decades FFP concluded that it was more effective to have food aid pipelines — continuously moving food around the world – that permit food to be redirected for new crises.
However, because U.S. food aid often arrived too late to mitigate fast‑moving food crises, Congress encouraged Food for Peace (FFP) in 2000 to adopt prepositioning as a strategy to accelerate emergency response. A 2007 GAO review found that U.S. food aid was “generally too time-consuming to be sufficiently responsive in emergencies, requiring 4 to 6 months on average.”
What Prepositioning Is: Prepositioning involves procuring and storing shelf‑stable foods, such as lentils, peas, vegetable oil, and other staples, in either U.S. warehouses or overseas sites near high‑need regions. Rather than waiting for a crisis before purchasing and shipping commodities, stocks are positioned in advance. Prepositioning is also valuable when conditions evolve in complex emergencies and food access changes, and foods need to be offloaded to a prepositioned warehouse (keeping supplies on an ocean vessel is too expensive.). FFP therefore seeks tactical flexibility that doesn’t rely on bulk ocean vessel carriers which cannot redirect routes.
The first overseas preposition pilot site was Dubai, with broader operational stockpiling beginning in 2005.
Delivery Time Improvements: The U.S. GAO estimates from FY 2007–2012 show that prepositioning reduced delivery times by one or more months, which can matter when responding to famines. Timing is particularly relevant in regard to hurricanes, earthquakes and flooding, i.e. short-onset disasters. But whereas short-onset disasters typically require a few hundred pallets of supplies, famine or larger emergencies often require thousands of tons.
Cost Implications: Prepositioning adds significant costs due to warehouse storage, additional shipping legs, and sometimes higher commodity prices. Overseas prepositioning is far more expensive than domestic storage. A 2008 analysis found:
- __* +$23/metric ton additional costs, for domestic prepositioning
- __* +$164/metric ton additional costs for overseas prepositioning (about 7× higher) due to two or more ocean voyages
In FY 2012, USAID spent approximately $8 million on warehouses and $13 million on secondary ocean freight from overseas sites.
Growth of Prepositioning: Prepositioning expanded from ~3% of food aid (2005–2006) to 22–29% in some regions by the early 2010s.
Operational Challenges and Losses
A 2013 Inspector General audit of the Djibouti warehouse found a 0.5% inventory reconciliation gap, far above the 0.02% contractual threshold; Commodities were “infested by ants and tobacco beetles” that were not fumigated; USAID stopped tracking warehouse losses after 2011, despite recording $235,919 in losses in 2007
Poor warehouse management contributed to spoilage. For example:
- * In 2025, $2.9 million of Super Cereal Plus spoiled from insect infestation in Djibouti
- * In Dubai, $1.37 million of unused commodities incurred $919,000 in storage costs over two years—two‑thirds of their purchase value
Food for Peace Changes After 2014 GAO Recommendations
USAID improved data collection on shipment times, procurement costs, storage, and vessel tracking. Additional refinements included:
- * Better inventory management and rotation
- * More site visits and stronger contracting
- * Adjusting domestic/overseas balances based on crisis patterns
Prepositioning sites expanded to include Dubai (UAE), Durban (South Africa), Mombasa (Kenya), Djibouti, Colombo (Sri Lanka), and the Canary Islands (Spain).
During the 2011 Horn of Africa famine, FFP deployed $124 million in prepositioned food:
- _* Djibouti: 57%
- _* Durban, South Africa: 25%
- _* Houston: 10%
- _* Mombasa, Kenya: 6%
A recent 2026 inspection report by the Office of the Inspector General found that during a visit in 2025, the storage of sorghum and vegetable oil in the Durban warehouse generally met the contract requirements and best practices, though with some deviations that may risk spoilage.
Prepositioning has been increasingly paired with strategic local procurement to improve responsiveness. The USG has gained much experience with local purchase of foods in the last 15 years.
FAQR Findings and Recommendations
Tufts University’s Food Aid Quality Review (FAQR) identified prepositioning as essential for rapid emergency response. Key recommendations included:
- * Revising procurement systems to allow 12–18‑month contracts with fixed volumes
- * Supporting prepositioned stockpiles of Fortified Blended Foods (FBFs) and specialized nutritious products
Quality Assurance and Incident Management: The FAQR found recurring quality problems at PREPO warehouses, including improper fumigation. However, incident reporting systems lacked sufficient detail to determine whether damage originated at the manufacturing plant, during shipping, or during storage. FAQR recommended updating Loss and Damage (L&D) reporting templates to better identify root causes and track where contamination or degradation occurred.
One finding: Analysis of 2011–2016 data showed that overseas “transit” warehouses were the third‑largest destination for food aid products, primarily holding prepositioned stocks destined for Ethiopia and Sudan.
Tufts’ FAQR’s crafted a solution, their Commodity Supply Chain Optimization Model (see diagram below), which was created to help donors and NGOs evaluate prepositioning levels, routing, procurement, and transfer modalities to maximize cost‑effectiveness.
In more recent years, FFP has sought to minimize losses during ocean transport due to humidity, shock and high heat. This has used advanced methods for small sensors in shipping containers and better tracking of ship routes, temperatures at sea, and queues at ports of disembarkation.
