What is food aid?

Because I don't know how to make sidebar boxes in Blogger, I'll add this to a different post.

Two basic types exist:

Food assistance, according to the UK’s Overseas Development Institute, describes the response to a chronic, but mostly short-term, problem. This aid may involve financial interventions and it could be funded internally (in countries like India) or internally financed, such as countries like Bangladesh or Ethiopia.

On the other hand, food aid can be direct food assistance, using agriculture surplus in one country and sending the food (or selling it, sometimes at a reduced price) to another country. Sometimes this aid comes in the form of money – such as food stamps for a country – where food can be purchased on the local or international market. As you can see, the definition of food aid is vague and ambiguous.