ABSTRACT
By the early 1960s food aid had become an important part of bilateral development assistance. Food surpluses were produced, notably in North America, and were made available as food aid, mostly in the form of bilateral programme aid to food-deficit countries. The food thus supplied was sold on the domestic market and the sales proceeds - the counterpart funds - were made available for development expenditure. At the time, such food aid was clearly additional to other development assistance, and this helped to ease the macro-economic problems of the recipient developing countries. The impact of this kind of food transfer on the nutritional conditions of the very poor, however, was at best indirect. Yet it was recognised that, if differently organised, food aid could also be used more directly to feed undernourished people, most urgently under emergency conditions and also in areas and situations of recurrent or permanent food shortage and undernourishment.
