Emergency food supplies in western Kenya © Peter Armstrong

Rising prices create a pincer movement on food aid programmes by increasing the numbers in need whilst reducing the amount of food that can be purchased with fixed budgets. Although food aid alone is not a sustainable solution to hunger, it has a vital humanitarian role to play in the most critical circumstances. Monitoring the balance of food supply and demand throughout the world is the core mandate of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), delivered by its Global Information and Early Warning System.

Based on this information the World Food Programme (WFP) prioritises regions where the depth of hunger is most serious, typically delivering food aid for school children, expectant mothers, work-for-food programmes and refugee camps. The agency aims to support 100 million people in 2009, requiring a budget of $6 billion, more than double that of 2007. About the same number is assisted by international aid agencies, leaving over 750 million beneath the hunger threshold dependent on highly variable or non-existent domestic safety net arrangements.

The US remains the largest food donor but is the only country which insists that aid should be disbursed as surplus grain from its own stocks - and that the chain of delivery must be handled entirely by US contractors. Development agencies prefer donors to purchase food direct from surplus areas within the beneficiary country. Attempts in the 2008 Farm Bill to reform the US approach were largely blocked by Congress.

Help us to complete OneWorld Guides
Many important development issues are missing from our range of Guides. OneWorld wants to fill these gaps as part of our efforts to improve understanding of the issues faced by developing countries. We receive no funding for the production of our educational resources. Every small contribution helps!