The United Nation’s World Food Program claims that allegations of a scandal in Somalia are overblown and isolated; but such problems may be far more widespread than reported, and more transparency is needed.

Initiatives to expand regulation of the food industries with the overall goal of increasing competition and commodity prices farmers receive often have the unintended consequence of raising consumer prices and lowering farmers’ prices while reducing the quality and variety of food products available to consumers.

When he was director of central intelligence, Leon Panetta earned a reputation as an energetic advocate for his agency. When he replaced Robert Gates at the Pentagon, it was reasonable to hope that Panetta would continue to play the role of a senior statesman.

We have seen what nearly two decades of timid, supine humanitarian aid has brought the North Korean people: food insecurity without end. Isn't it time to fashion an aid program as if the North Korean people really mattered?

As the international community and the US discovered in the early 1990s, getting humanitarian aid to needy Somalis is not an apolitical undertaking. It may not even be possible without being drawn into conflict in the Horn of Africa once again.

Ah, the power of engagement. New North Korean leader Kim Jong Eun has reportedly agreed to a wide-ranging deal with the Obama administration.

North Korea is testing how much the Obama administration will give to maintain the fiction of diplomatic progress.

The shallow-loss program would give farmers subsidies to bring them up to 90 percent or even 95 percent of the average revenues they have received for any given crop over the previous five years whenever current revenues from those crops fall below those amounts. Anyone who knows anything about American agriculture understands just how implausible that idea is.