Now facing a food crisis in a struggling economy, how far should the U.S. go to aid others?

The U.S. faces the rising prices of every day goods due to the oil shock and the fact that the sales of many goods rely on the use of oil and gasoline. But the latest scare is not the $4.00 per gallon it costs to fill our gas tanks, but the $4.00 it costs to buy a medium box of Cheerios (I kid you not). Due to the volatility of crop markets and the overwhelming increasing demand for crops for biofuel, more families around the world are finding it more and more difficult to get access to food intended for consumption. Consumers in the U.S. are beginning to feel the weight of rising food prices on their wallets. Some predictions outline the possibility of drafting farmers and even a decimating worldwide famine.
An article in the New York Times today (5/2/08) discusses how President Bush is seeking more food aid for poor countries. Bush proposed spending "$770 million in emergency food assistance for poor countries" (NYT) yesterday. The proposal emphasized how the food crisis has risen to the top of the agenda, outweighing the conflict in Iraq and the struggling U.S. economy.
President Bush also asked other countries to lift trade barriers on agricultural trades and bans on genetically modified food.
This all sounds well and good, but the proposed increase is a very small percentage of the $62 billion that the government was already expected to spend on domestic food programs. Given that the proposed emergency food assistance amount is relatively small compared to domestic food programs and would only be a temporary fix for poor foreign countries, one must wonder whether the program is worth the government spending an extra $770 million on foreign aid on top of the $9.4 trillion deficit.
If this is a development effort instead of a purely humanitarian act, then the U.S. can benefit from long-term economic growth from these regions. But is this a genuine effort to help poorer countries, or is the President allocating this large (yet relatively tiny) amount of money to foreign aid in order to appease the compassionate masses of American citizens? Shouldn't the President focus solely on domestic food programs at this time? With so many poverty-stricken and starving families in the U.S., why does our President choose to extend the already thin-stretched arm of the U.S. to help starving families elsewhere?