Sustainability, Food Security, and Development Aid after the Food Crisis: Assessing Aid Strategies across Donor Contexts

Abstract: The most recent global food crisis has forced development agencies in the global North to rethink the nexus between agricultural development, food aid, and food security, and how development assistance strategies can enhance food security to more effectively respond to or prevent such crises in the future. Central to this rethinking is the concept of sustainability, though the term has shifting and imprecise meanings across different institutional and strategic contexts. Analyzing the strategic response of major state and multilateral development agencies to the global food crisis, this paper examines the diverse and slippery meanings and uses of sustainability in the post-crisis development assistance architecture.