Foreign development assistance (aid) takes many forms: financial, technical, food. The rationale for aid rests on humanitarian, political, and economic grounds . The effectiveness of aid to agriculture is empirically assessed using a production function approach with cross-sectional-time-series data for 98 countries. Results indicate that aid to agriculture has had a positive and significant impact in Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa, but little effect in the Middle East and Latin America. Debt problems may be influencing the effectiveness of aid in Latin America. Aid effects did not differ across countries by income level or by importance of the agricultural sector .