Rising food prices are often associated with increased hunger – are higher prices not an incentive for farmers to produce more food? What structural framework conditions (social, political) do farmers need to respond to such incentives?
Pizza or Pasta for dinner? This luxury problem is reserved only to a small number of people. The over one billion people suffering from mal- or under-nutrition have increasingly become a reality that the public, politics and the international community can no longer ignore. Attacking the roots of food insecurity though, is a far more complex and political issue than one could assume. The following paper discusses the major underlying mechanisms of food crises, food insecurity, hunger and poverty. It shows who is affected why by which mechanism, on both the micro and macro level. Referring to the successful example of the Brazilian food policy, ways of addressing the problems are introduced and further elaborated to a guidance of necessary and recommendable conditions that need to prevail and measures that should be implemented in order to achieve food security. We find that the most necessary condition is political will. Without the commitment of politicians to change underlying structural conditions through legal, economic and technological reforms, no improvement of the food situation can be expected. In addition, all stakeholders need to be part of the process and empowered to not only achieve, but to sustainably achieve stability in food security on an acceptable level.