It's basically just the same problem as with the predatory pricing strategy called "dumping". You price your product below your cost to produce it to make your competition go out of business, then you can raise prices to exploit your monopoly position.

In kind food aid is essentially unintentional predatory pricing.

Yes, it's almost exactly the same mechanism.

I think the big difference is that people, intending wholeheartedly to do good and help these countries, instead cause significant damage.

Things like this are one of the reasons I find the Gates Foundation's way of working so interesting. They spend a lot of time and effort, supported by a lot of money, to help entire societies to improve. Things like enabling women to take control of their own reproduction, which has a huge stabilising effect on an economy. Moving the needle on that issue takes a significant amount of work, and is much harder than simply sending aid.

The problem with this is of course, that it is expensive and takes time.

Often countries really do need aid, and fast. If people remain willing to send aid, it's a hard sell to say "actually, we don't want that free food, thanks", not least of all because they might need more aid in the future!

Ah, so that's sort of like what I've always heard about using bird feeders -- that the birds will get dependant on it, and if you stop filling them, a lot of birds will die off.