The sending of food aid can be questioned, because food aid often does not get to the areas of greatest need, it is frequently stolen en route by the military, and organizations are too slow to respond to need.
Food aid has been historically a major element of development aid to support longer-term development and the primary response to help countries and people in crisis. Doubts about food aid are arising because there is a growing mismatch between the new circumstances produced by rapid political and economic change and the international arrangements and institutions for food aid that are predicated on an earlier reality.
In an environment of risks, uncertainty and rapid change, prevailing in the early 1990s, food aid and other assistance have increasingly been organized as part of efforts to assure human security in terms of livelihoods, food, health, a sustainable environment, personal and political security. However, to what extent is this multiplicity of goals realized in practice? To what extent do the modalities and institutional arrangement for aid permit them to be realized? It is on institutional questions that this examination of food aid focuses in particular.

Food aid is historically a major element of development aid to support longer-term development, and the primary response to help countries and peoples in crisis. This examination of food aid focuses in particular on institutional questions.