The Decline of Food Aid: Issues of Aid Policy, Trade and Food Security

After the ‘world food crisis’ of 1972–4 international agreement was at least partially obtained on measures to increase the developmental effectiveness of food aid and to strengthen international food security. But changing circumstances since the mid-1980s, in particular the ‘African food crisis’ and its aftermath, raised questions about the effectiveness of these international arrangements to cope in future with an extremely serious and widespread period of food insecurity. Coping with shortfalls in local food supply was made more difficult by sharp price variability in world markets for cereals and other foodstuffs and by barriers to food security imposed on developing countries by the world agricultural trade regime. The combination of the volatile cereal markets and budgetary tightening in the late 1980s, especially in the United States, underscored the real opportunity costs of food aid as a developmental and humanitarian resource transfer. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.