How country policy actors understand sustainability of food and nutrition security policy

Sustainability is important for food nutrition security policies (FNSP) that require long-term processes for impact. We examined how country policy actors understand sustainability of FNSP after 7 years of adoption by using qualitative grounded-theory methods in Guatemala, sampling purposefully 52 policy actors for interviews and 39 policy documents for content analysis. We coded interview data on the emergent understandings of sustainability that captured variability. Country actors vary in understanding sustainability. Participants reported understanding sustainability by describing drivers like attitudes, social norms, transferred capacities, shared commitment, resilience, ownership, empowerment, livelihood, self-functioning, and coherence. They also described processes of accumulating, adding up, reaching, and maintaining. Meaning of sustainability in documents aligned with and complemented (although environment and governance drivers emerged) understandings reported by actors but did not do so fully. Sustainability advocates will succeed by acknowledging that country policy actors vary in understanding of sustainability and by bridging collaborations toward compromise.