At Nautilus, Jonathan Katz applies a systems-level perspective to the problem of food aid. Every year, the United States spends billions (although much less than it used to) sending shipments of food to countries where people are going hungry. The problem: That aid doesn’t solve their hunger as a long-term thing, it just creates a stop-gap measure — and we do it in a way that costs more than it would likely cost to support programs that actually help those people change their lives. Why? Katz argues that it’s because food aid evolved more for the benefit of American companies than the long-term benefit of feeding people.