The world food aid system has become a very complicated network, evolving from the earlier simplicities of the 1950s and 1960s when it was practically synonymous with the US cereals food aid under PL 480. By contrast we now have a multiplicity of donors, of commodities, of channels, of recipients, of methods of disbursements, etc and a changing regional distribution of food aid flows. Discussion of food aid has not yet caught up with these developments and is still exclusively conducted in terms of the old simplicities.