ABSTRACT
Over the last two decades, two profound changes, one institutional and one conceptual, have taken place in the fight against hunger and poverty. At the institutional level, tens of thousands of new community-based organizations have come into being; they now play key roles in the many facets of the fight to eradicate hunger and poverty. At the conceptual level, the definition of food security, and of the ways to achieve it, has undergone profound changes, away from a technical, primarily food production focus, towards an approach that is at the same time much more holistic and more political, involving empowerment and freedom, health and education, agriculture and off-farm employment. These two processes are linked: new actors propose new definitions, pressure old actors, who are in turn influenced by them. Thus, we now have a much greater institutional and conceptual diversity, providing at the same time new opportunities, challenges, and difficulties in the fight against hunger and poverty.
