International Best Practice in Food Policy: Reflections on Food Policy Analysis

It has been more than 25 years since Food Policy Analysis (Timmer et al. 1983) was published, and more than 30 years since the initial outline for the book was circulated among the authors. It is fair to say that the volume has been very influential in the way food policy issues have been looked at, and it remains in use as a textbook for a number of university courses2. Its academic success is a bit surprising because the target audience was not primarily university faculty (for whom the book seemed too simplistic in methodology and too anecdotal in presentation). Instead, it was mainly aimed at practitioners, an ill-defined group of analysts in need of an understanding of how a complicated and interconnected food system actually works. Training these practitioners was the main mission of the book.