Effective Public Investments to Improve Food Security

The world has made significant progress in reducing hunger over the past decade. But hunger remains a major challenge. This policy brief identifies the most effective and efficient ways to invest in improving food security.

It is derived from a longer peer-reviewed article entitled: Can interventions in the agricultural sector improve food security? A Systematic Review of Available Evidence.

A key message is that context matters. Where interventions had no or negative impacts on food security, the reason for failure was often the lack of consideration of broader community challenges, gender inequality and wealth inequity – whereas the successful interventions stressed the importance of prior analysis or a baseline assessment. Improved food security is often the result of multiple, well-designed interventions. The focus is less about finding the right intervention, and more about ensuring that interventions are designed and implemented with the particular context in mind. An important research gap exists regarding evidence on the efficiency of interventions relative to their costs.