The process has been monitored at FAO by an internal Reading Committee, composed of staff selected ad personam and established to ensure that the whole collection meets appropriate quality and consistency criteria. While grateful for the contributions received from all reviewers, the FAO Secretariat bears responsibility for the content of the document. Executive summary Improving nutrition is an issue of supreme importance to many millions of people throughout the world who are suffering from persistent hunger and malnutrition and to others who are at risk of doing so in the future. There is general consensus today that a complex set of factors determines hunger and malnutrition. Important causes are related not only to food and agriculture, but also to people's knowledge and behaviour.
Policies have a strong influence on all causes.
The aim of this paper is to examine the relationships among food security, agriculture and nutrition and to outline nutrition-improvement policies that offer the promise of bringing about rapid and sustained improvement. There are powerful arguments for all three perspectives and, in terms of considering specific actions, the three are certainly complementary. In order to design effective policies, it is necessary to gain a clear understanding of the linkages among food security, agriculture and nutrition as well as all determinants of nutritional well-being. Food and the security of its supply are preconditions for nutritional well-being. In addition, food insecurity and hunger in a number of countries are caused primarily by armed conflicts or are actually used as instruments to conduct such conflicts.