The Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET), a mainstay of international relief efforts for four decades, has gone dark after widespread cuts by the Trump Administration. The website that once served up detailed, color-coded maps of hunger hot spots around the world now bears a stark message: The site and its data are "currently unavailable."
That data included aerial photography from NASA and climate data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. NOAA, as well as information about food prices and agricultural productivity. Run by a private contractor and funded by USAID, FEWS NET synthesized all that information and shared it with governments and aid groups worldwide.
Those entities use FEWS NET to forecast famines and other humanitarian disasters. Now those who rely on the network say they are flying blind.
"It's a bit like if you are running a hospital and you have patients coming in with a whole range of different ailments and symptoms, and suddenly all your X-ray machines and diagnostic systems are shut down," says Alex de Waal, a professor at Tufts University and head of the school's World Peace Foundation.
It is unclear whether the shutdown of FEWS NET is intended to be permanent, and the U.S. State Department did not respond to NPR's request for comment. But aid groups say the outage is already impacting their ability to head off food crises.
Born from the Ethiopia famine
FEWS NET was just about to turn 40 years old. The network was born in 1985 in the wake of massive famines in Africa and especially in Ethiopia, where nearly one million deaths shocked the world.
"Rock stars got together, and there was 'Band Aid,' there was 'Live Aid.' And President Reagan was deeply embarrassed, and he challenged the U.S. government and USAID: How come I didn't know this was about to happen? W\hy weren't we warned that this famine was coming?" says de Waal.
The U.S. responded by creating a system to predict famine before it happens.
"FEWS NET was born of that era. And it was absolutely unique and innovative," says Dave Harden, who oversaw FEWS NET during the Obama administration.
His tenure included another dark period for Ethiopia, when FEWS NET forecast a major drought there in 2016. Harden says that early warning is what was missing during the country's disastrous earlier famine.
"We were able to send a disaster assistance response team to Ethiopia in advance and pre-position food and other aid. So the result is dramatically different than what you had in the mid-'80s when millions of people died. In 2016 in Ethiopia, nobody died," Harden says.
FEWS NET has recently raised alarms in places like Sudan and Mali — often providing the first high-profile warnings of food crises in those areas.
"This is the key intelligence system of the global humanitarian system. And that prop has just been knocked out from one day to the next by the Trump administration for no good reason," says de Waal.
'Taking the steering wheel away'
FEWS NET is designed to give forecasts 6-to-9 months out, allowing preparation and coordination to head off starvation. Its level of geographical detail showed aid agencies where lifesaving assistance is needed the most.
Losing FEWS NET is "like having a truck full of grain but taking the steering wheel away," says Andrew Natsios, a professor at the Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M and head of USAID during the George W. Bush administration. "The FEWS maps are the steering wheel for the aid programs. They tell you where to go."
Natsios's old boss was a noted supporter of FEWS NET. President Bush and his USAID chief had an unofficial "no famines on my watch" policy.
"President George W. Bush was famous for wanting to see the colored maps that FEWS NET produces. He used to look at these every month and say, are we responding? Are we preventing the famine from occurring?" says de Waal.
President Trump has been far less enamored of FEWS NET and had floated cutting it during his first term.
Natsios says the early warning system costs a pittance compared with the savings it delivers, both in money and lives. Federal records show the contract cost USAID about $64 million last year.
"We spend $15 billion a year on humanitarian assistance, a lot of that is food," says Natsios. "The notion that we can't [spend] a couple of million dollars analyzing the areas of the world that we should be sending the food, doesn't make any sense to me.
"It's silly. I don't know what they're thinking."
Much of that food assistance is still on hold following President Trump's suspension of foreign aid. The State Department has said emergency food aid is exempt from the freeze, but a February 10 report by USAID's inspector general found that $489 million worth of food aid was stuck "at ports, in transit, and in warehouses at risk of spoilage, unanticipated storage needs and diversion." The day after the report was published, the inspector general was sacked. A staff member of an international charity that responds to famine says that there are still numerous disruptions in the delivery of critical food supplies, citing issues with ground transportation and warehouse access because drivers and guards were laid off due to the initial USAID stop-work order. The source asked not to be identified so the group's programs would not be targeted for retribution.
Alex de Waal says even if the aid is released, getting it to the right places depends on a network like FEWS NET.
There is one other famine forecasting system: the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, or IPC, led by the United Nations.
But de Waal says FEWS NET had some key advantages over its U.N. counterpart, including speed, rigor and, until recently, its apolitical status. In Sudan, for instance, the government stopped cooperating with the U.N. system last year. FEWS NET, which doesn't depend on local governments to produce its reports, "took the lead in identifying the nature of the crisis, specifying the levels of need and blowing the whistle on famine," says de Waal.
"And so FEWS NET was the essential resource for identifying the areas most in need, the children most needing to be saved from starvation. That system has now gone dark."
A good track record despite some criticisms
Specialists say FEWS NET, like the broader international aid system it supports, is far from perfect. In 2020 it largely missed signs of a coming famine in South Sudan. Last year, FEWS NET issued a famine alert for the Gaza strip, which it then retracted under criticism from the U.S. ambassador to Israel.
But FEWS NET still has a good track record overall. One 2021 study found it was about 84% accurate in predicting food insecurity in Africa.
And if the goal is to make foreign assistance less wasteful and more efficient, analysts say, you need a good picture of where the needs are.
"It's a huge self-inflicted wound on those who would want to rationalize the system. And the system, I'm the first to argue, definitely needs reform. But this is certainly not the way to do it," says de Waal.
FEWS NET had hummed along under six presidents, reflecting a long-held political consensus in the United States that preventing famine, and the displacement and unrest that go along with it, are in the national interest.
"There was broad and consistent bipartisan support [for preventing famine] for almost 100 years," says Chris Newton, a senior analyst at the International Crisis Group. "There certainly was a moral imperative to a lot of that thinking, but ultimately that support was established and sustained because there was continued agreement that it really mattered for the safety, security, and prosperity of the United States."
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