The prevailing definition of food security, agreed upon at the 1996 World Food Summit, is "a situation that exists when all people, at all times, have physical, social and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active...

Food security is inherently unobservable and difficult to define, but both intrinsically and instrumentally important. Humans have a physiological need for the nutrients supplied by food. Food is therefore a crucial input into performance and well-being. Many development programs, projects and...

Discussions on food aid and dependency often draw on what appears to be a broad body of evidence, but closer inspection reveals that much of this does not in fact demonstrate a causal link between the two. This desk review has three objectives: (i) to identify the pathways through which negative...

Food aid is no longer the only, or even the dominant, response to widespread food insecurity. Donors, governments, NGOs and recipient communities exhibit rapidly growing interest in and experimentation with cash-based alternatives, both in the form of direct cash distribution to food insecure...

Recent evidence on malnutrition and poverty raise important questions on the role of food assistance policies and programs. In this review article, we examine evidence on the economic and nutritional impacts of international food assistance programs (FAPs) and policies. The returns on...

Globally, over 800 million people are food insecure. Current methods for identifying food insecurity crises are not based on statistical models and fail to systematically incorporate readily available data on prices, weather, and demographics. As a result, policymakers cannot rapidly identify...