ABSTRACT
Nearly all food aid programs have been inextricable from donor agricultural, trade and geopolitical objectives at one time or another, as was just argued to have been true of US food aid programs as a whole over the past fifty years and is typically true of overseas development assistance more generally. But the balance between enlightened self-interest that is truly oriented toward responding to recipients’ basic human right to food and that which exploits images of food-insecure peoples to serve other policy objectives has varied over time for most donors and among donors at any given point in time. In recent years, all donors have made some movement in the direction of food aid systems based on (i) the recognition of recipients’ basic human rights (or at least the “food needs” of vulnerable populations); and (ii) the need to situate food aid within a broader strategy for reducing poverty and vulnerability to hunger. The degree to which reforms have been substantive rather than merely rhetorical has nonetheless varied a great deal and reforms remain at best partial among all donors.
