This debate was pretty clearly settled after Live-aid.
Food aid organizations were highly critical of Live-aid’s logistics, claimed it would not work because the food just gets looted by the armed factions who will use it to buy more weapons. Live-aid distribute the food anyway, and yes, a lot of it went to the armed factions, but overall food became less scarce and fewer people were hungry.
I think food is one of these things we should just not fuck around with. Wherever people need food, it should be delivered, unconditionally. The food exists, and the distribution networks exist, the only thing preventing people from getting it is most of the time money. Getting food to e.g. Darfur is very expensive (due to bribes etc.), and very few charities can afford it, governments however can afford it, but simply choice not to.
But even outside of armed conflict, where things do get messy, we are still failing people miserably. Many earthquake survivors in Indonesia are now hungry, and food is not being delivered to them. And there is absolutely no excuse why the international society is failing them (except via capitalism).