The Integrated Food Security Programme (IFSP) in Malawi was a complex, multisector activity that sought to improve food security and nutrition in one of the country’s most vulnerable, least-performing regions. Implemented by GTZ (now GIZ) on behalf of the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) between 1996 and 2003 (with a 12-month extension supported by the European Union), the IFSP’s end-line evaluation reported that the intervention had achieved its objectives. It was noted that “the programme made a significant contribution to the food security of the people in the impact area,” and that “the approach taken…was good” (DeGabriele 2004a, p. 4).  
That being the case, why revisit it now? In part, because it is useful to consider whether gains made in the past have been sustained. But more broadly it is because there are lessons to be drawn from this example that may contribute to new thinking on models of integrated, multisectoral programming updated for the twenty-first century. This review comes at a time of renewed attention to food security and nutrition as priority development challenges, on the one hand, and to the potential for integrated programming (that links agriculture, nutrition, and health), on the other hand. A heightened focus on food security, particularly since the upward pressures on food prices globally since 2007, has led to a flurry of responses, including group commitments like those made by G-20 leaders at the 2009 L’Aquila Summit (US$22 billion over three years to agriculture and nutrition), as well as other contributions to food security trust funds like the European Union’s Food Faculty and the World Bank-managed Global Food Crisis Response Facility. It also 
resulted in a reorientation of priorities among some individual donors, such as the US Feed the Future initiative (USG 2010), which puts a premium on tackling low productivity in agriculture and low productivity in people due to malnutrition and ill health. Similarly, the British government recently acknowledged nutrition as an integral element of any actions taken to tackle food insecurity (DFID 2010).  
But how best to “integrate” actions across sectors? Recent efforts to collate empirical evidence of programmatic and policy effectiveness have included the 2008 Lancet series on maternal and child undernutrition, the World Bank’s costing exercises on how to scale up nutrition actions (Horton et. al. 2010), and related nutrition landscaping exercises by WHO, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and the Scaling Up Nutrition alliance (SCN 2010). Additional reviews have focused on agricultural effectiveness (Timmer 2009; IFPRI 2009), the quality and role of food aid programming (Webb et al. 2011), and the potential for leveraging agriculture to support gains in health and nutrition (Fan and Brzeska 2011).  
Each of these increasingly convergent agendas has recognized two core principles: food security can only be effectively achieved through joint, coordinated action that addresses agricultural productivity, nutrition, health, and natural resource management simultaneously; and country ownership and local capacity have to be enhanced if any gains in agriculture or nutrition are to be sustained. As argued by the UN Standing Committee on Nutrition (UN/SCN 2009, p. 1), “food security approaches to nutrition require systemic, multidisciplinary and inter-sectoral approaches.”2
