Too often strategies to reduce food insecurity have been operationalized that considered only the first three components of the food security definition. In emergency or relief interventions, there is an obvious priority on getting food to those with immediate need. The challenge, however, is to address the needs of households that may be food secure today but are using coping strategies that may compromise their food security tomorrow. Emergency and relief actors operate within time-frames and institutional settings that constrain them from considering the long-term impact of emergency interventions on development activities. On the other hand, development actors do not always consider the ability of households to manage future risk, especially in shock-prone areas. The perspective that both emergency and development actors are missing is vulnerability. Vulnerability is defined here as the ability to manage risk. Vulnerability can be lessened by 1) reducing exposure to risks from shocks that affect many (e.g., drought) or shocks that affect individuals, households, or communities (e.g., the death of the household head); 2) increasing the ability to manage such risks; or 3) both. Drawing on recent empirical literature on trends in food security location and causes, this paper argues that: 1) the operationalization of a fuller definition of food security—one that pays explicit attention to risk and vulnerability—will strengthen programs that aim to reduce food insecurity; 2) relief and development programs both play important roles in meeting current food needs and reducing risks of losing the ability to meet needs in the future; and 3) an explicit recognition of the pre- and post-shock continuum, i.e., that a post-shock environment at some stage becomes a pre-shock environment, will promote the ability of relief and development programs to collaborate more effectively.  (excerpt)