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In the past twenty years food banks have established themselves as one of the fastest–growing charitable industries in first world societies. As institutionalized centres or clearing houses for the redistribution of donated and surplus food they have emerged as a key frontline response to the growing problem of food poverty and inequality. As welfare states have been restructured and cut back and basic entitlements have been denied, food banks have become secondary extensions of weakened social safety nets. This paper explores the growth of food banking in Canada and analyses its role in terms of advancing the human right to food, its effectiveness in achieving food security and the extent to which it contributes to, and/or counters the increasing emphasis by governments on welfare reform policies informed by neo–conservative ideology. Food banks are examined from the perspective of their origins and purposes, institutionalization, usage, food distributed and effectiveness. The rise of food banks in Canada is concrete evidence both of the breakdown of the social safety net and the commodification of social assistance. As such, they undermine the state’s obligation, as ratified in international conventions, to respect, protect and fulfil the human right to food. They enable governments to look the other way and neglect food poverty and nutritional health and well–being. A possible future role for food banks in countries where they are already established lies in public education and advocacy, but their institutionalization makes this seem an unlikely course. In countries where they are in their infancy, the question of whether to support their development should be a matter of urgent public debate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Canadian International Food Security Research Fund programme supported research and scaling up of nutrition‐ and gender‐sensitive agriculture innovations from 2009 to 2018. Women and girls were identified as agents of change and were targeted as the main programme beneficiaries. Projects were implemented in 25 countries through multistakeholder partnerships among universities, research institutions, public and private sectors, and civil society groups, reaching over 78 million people, mainly women and children. Approaches specific to nutrition included growing more nutritious crops, improving dietary diversity, value added processing, food fortification, and nutrition education. Scale‐up for impact was achieved through a number of pathways that started with evidence through rigorous research, followed by a combination of elements such as understanding local and regional contexts to identify specific bottlenecks and opportunities for the deployment and adoption of successful innovations, selecting politically effective or influential partners to lead the scaling up process, and investing in long‐term local capacity and leadership building. Overall, the knowledge generated in the programme indicate that well‐designed nutrition‐sensitive agriculture and food‐based interventions can have meaningful impacts on pathways that will lead to better health and well‐being of women and children through improving household and individual access to nutrient‐rich foods. Longer intervention times are needed to demonstrate changes in health indicators such as reduced stunting. This overview paper summarises the programme and showcases examples from studies that demonstrate the impact pathway for nutrition interventions that encompass efficacy and effectiveness studies, value‐added processing, cost effectiveness of interventions, and bringing a proven intervention to scale. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]