International food aid has rightly been credited with saving millions of lives and is often the only thing that stands between vulnerable people and death. However, it was a serious obstacle in the Doha Round of multilateral trade negotiations and has been sharply criticised as a donor-driven response that creates dependency on the part of recipients and undermines local agricultural producers and traders upon whom sustainable food security depends. This issue of the 'State of Food and Agriculture' report examines the issues and controversies surrounding international food aid, particularly in crisis situations. It considers the ways in which food aid can support sustainable improvements in food security, in order to preserve its essential humanitarian role whilst minimising the possibility of harmful secondary impacts.

This book analyzes the impact food aid programmes have had over the past fifty years, assessing the current situation as well as future prospects. Issues such as political expediency, the impact of international trade and exchange rates are put under the microscope to provide the reader with a greater understanding of this important subject matter. This book will prove vital to students of development economics and development studies and those working in the field.

Food aid is historically a major element of development aid to support longer-term development, and the primary response to help countries and peoples in crisis. This examination of food aid focuses in particular on institutional questions.

Examines United States food aid to Central America, and makes detailed recommendations for changes in its administration

American food aid to foreigners long has been the most visible-and most popular-means of providing humanitarian aid to millions of hungry people confronted by war, terrorism and natural cataclysms and the resulting threat-often the reality-of famine and death. The book investigates the little-known, not-well-understood and often highly-contentious political processes which have converted American agricultural production into tools of U.S. government policy. In The Political History of American Food Aid, Barry Riley explores the influences of humanitarian, domestic agricultural policy, foreign policy, and national security goals that have created the uneasy relationship between benevolent instincts and the realpolitik of national interests. He traces how food aid has been used from the earliest days of the republic in widely differing circumstances: as a response to hunger, a weapon to confront the expansion of bolshevism after World War I and communism after World War II, a method for balancing disputes between Israel and Egypt, a channel for disposing of food surpluses, a signal of support to friendly governments, and a means for securing the votes of farming constituents or the political support of agriculture sector lobbyists, commodity traders, transporters and shippers. Riley's broad sweep provides a profound understanding of the complex factors influencing American food aid policy and a foundation for examining its historical relationship with relief, economic development, food security and its possible future in a world confronting the effects of global climate change.

Food aid has become a contentious issue in recent decades, with sharp disagreements over genetically modified crops, agricultural subsidies, and ways of guaranteeing food security in the face of successive global food crises. In Hunger in the Balance, Jennifer Clapp provides a timely and comprehensive account of the contemporary politics of food aid, explaining the origins and outcomes of recent clashes between donor nations-and between donors and recipients. She identifies fundamental disputes between donors over "tied" food aid, which requires that food be sourced in the donor country, versus "untied" aid, which provides cash to purchase food closer to the source of hunger. These debates have been especially intense between the major food aid donors, particularly the European Union and the United States. Similarly, the EU's rejection of GMO agricultural imports has raised concerns among recipients about accepting GMO foodstuffs from the United States. For the several hundred million people who at present have little choice but to rely on food aid for their daily survival, Clapp concludes, the consequences of these political differences are profound.