ABSTRACT
The term ‘food for wages’ describes projects in which food aid is given to workers as full or part payment for some kind of activity. In many projects, known collectively as ‘food for work’, the beneficiaries provide unskilled or semiskilled labour on a public works scheme. However, food for wages also covers settlement schemes and projects in which farmers are encouraged to innovate or extend their activities. There is no widely accepted generic term for this second group but ‘food for farmers’ will serve as a convenient shorthand description. The distinction between these two types of food for wages is an important one because it will be argued that, at least in respect of the four countries studied, while food for work provides employment for the poor (if not for the poorest), productivity tends to be very low, and by contrast that although productivity rates with food for farmers projects are much higher, they do not reach the poor.
