What is food aid?

Food aid is hard to summarize succinctly due to many related issues, but in general it is about providing food and related assistance to tackle hunger, either in emergency situations, or to help with deeper, longer term hunger alleviation and achieve food security (where people do not have to live in hunger or in fear of starvation).

What is the difference between food aid and food assistance?

Food aid refers to in-kind food commodities that are shipped from the donor country to a recipient country. Food assistance, on the other hand, is a broader concept that includes food aid as well as market-based activities that help combat hunger and malnutrition. The US in-kind food aid (Title II) is often used to respond to emergencies where:

What is USAID food assistance?

USAID is the largest provider of in-kind food aid and also one of the largest providers of cash based food assistance in the world. More than four billion people have benefited from USAID’s food assistance programs since 1954. Over 60+ years of operation, USAID’s food assistance programs have operated in more than 150 countries.