Despite swelling populations around much of the globe, the enormous expansion of agricultural productivity, the rapid development of transport facilities, and the establishment of globally interlinked market networks have made it theoretically possible to provide adequate food for all. Yet famine and hunger still persist and, indeed, proliferate in some parts of the world. Their durable character represents a perplexing and wholly unnecessary tragedy (Drèze and Sen 1989;Watts and Bohle 1993b). Although the extent of hunger in the world will never be known with precision (Millman 1990), it has been estimated that in the early 1990s, more than 500 million adults and children experienced continuous hunger and even more people were deemed vulnerable to hunger, with over 1 billion facing nutritional deficiencies (WIHD 1992).

The community concerned with world hunger is far from unanimous in its understanding of the situation. S. Millman (1990) likens the situation to the parable of the elephant and the blind men, whereby hunger is perceived differently by those encountering different aspects of it. It is significant that these varying perceptions correspond to particular disciplinary or professional orientations, leading to different diagnoses of the nature of the problem and its underlying causes and implying distinct foci for policy interventions.

Problems of food supply, then, are among the most bewildering, diffuse, and frustrating of humankind’s contemporary dilemmas. Within the lifetime of each of us, official views of the world food situation have oscillated from dire predictions of starving hordes to expectations of a nirvana of plentiful food, then back to impending doom. One expert states that famine is imminent, whereas another declares that our ability to adequately feed the world’s people is finally within reach.