World heads into food crises 'blind' as U.S. aid cuts squeeze UN food agency, experts warn

Phil Hogan, former trade commissioner of the European Union, gestured as he spoke during a trade committee debate in the European Parliament's Jozsef Antall building in Brussels, Belgium, on Wednesday, Feb. 19, 2020. Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty ImagesSINGAPORE — Other nations will have to fill the funding gap at the UN Food and Agriculture Organization as Washington pulls back, according to Phil Hogan, a former European Union commissioner who is now running to lead the world's biggest food agency. "It is important to continue to support [the agency] financially ... as the United States pulls back from some of these programs, other member countries of the FAO will have to step in to ensure all the animal disease issues and food safety issues remain in place," Hogan told CNBC in an exclusive interview in Singapore on Wednesday. The Trump administration has drastically scaled back U.S. foreign aid by dismantling the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), once the world's largest humanitarian donor. Hogan, Ireland's former EU agriculture and trade commissioner, is now the frontrunner to become director-general of the Rome-based agency that oversees global rules for food s...