Science and Education Publishing Journal of Food Security 2372-0107 4 6 2016 12 12 Half a Century of Consensus and Controversies about Food Security 138 146 EN Patrice Zidouemba Rural Development Institute, Polytechnic University of Bobo-Dioulasso, Burkina Faso JFS2016463 10.12691/jfs-4-6-3 2016 8 7 2016 11 11 2016 12 10 Food Security is now recognized as a concept centered on the individual. This is the result of an evolution, in the last half century, of the economic thought and the place of food security in that thought. Today, the consensus is that the improvement of food security goes mainly through the reduction of poverty. However, the policies to be implemented to achieve sustainable food security remain controversial. This is mainly due to the complexity of the mechanisms involved in determining the food and nutritional status of individuals: many variables are nested at different levels (macro, meso, and micro) with direct and indirect effects, while natural resources play a major role. In this context any attempt to generalize a policy is doomed to failure. The identification of bottlenecks in each context is the prerequisite for the success of policies intended to fight against food insecurity.