The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has decided to reduce funding for sixty-seven international development projects, the Wall Street Journal reports.

The affected projects represent 80 percent of all the international development work financed by the government agency's Food for Peace office, which donates cash and American-grown commodities such as wheat flour, corn, soybeans, lentils, and peas to various humanitarian groups. Food for Peace's budget will shrink by at least 13 percent, to $1.4 billion, during the fiscal year ending in September, and the Bush administration proposes to cut its budget by an additional 33 percent, to $964 million, in fiscal 2006.

Charitable groups rely heavily on the Food for Peace program for their hunger-fighting work in the poorest parts of the world, the Journal reports. Catholic Relief Services, for example, said USAID is withholding $1.6 million of the $4.4 million in Food for Peace support promised for its work in Angola. As a result, the humanitarian group has shelved plans for everything from farming classes to food-for-work projects. "How can a country as wealthy as the United States break these sorts of commitments?" said Marianne Leach, director of government relations in Washington for CARE, which has lost about half of its U.S. funding for development programs in Mozambique and Tajikistan.

USAID officials say it is all a matter of priorities. Given the budget constraints on the Food for Peace program, they are raiding development projects for commodities and cash to respond to immediate food shortages in places like Ethiopia, northern Uganda, Chad, and Darfur. "We have a budget crunch," said USAID administrator Andrew S. Natsios. "Our first priority is to save peoples' lives."