Since 2007/2008, when global food prices spiked to unprecedented levels, awareness of the scope of the world's food security challenge has grown. Not only are nearly a billion people undernourished today but also an additional 2 billion will need to be fed by 2050. Henk Bakker adds his own perspective on what must be done to address this challenge. He principally focuses on more productive use of land and water resources, and direct engagement of farming populations in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia to devise appropriate strategies to increase production (broadly equated with food security). He assigns responsibility for achieving change to ‘national and international agencies’ but argues that farmers themselves must ‘own’ the change. Bakker suggests that using a ‘soft systems methodology’ will help to improve the performance of agricultural interventions. More consideration of the role of markets and economic incentives, the empowerment that information technology has brought to rural villages, and issues of property rights and resource governance would have strengthened his framework. Acknowledgement of the evolution in political attitudes towards agricultural development and food security that has occurred since 2000 (e.g. the Comprehensive African Agricultural Development Program or the G8 agreement in L'Aquila, Italy) would have made his 2011 publication fresher, and more up-to-date. International donors continue to develop and fund projects, but the language defining ‘aid effectiveness’ has already gone beyond the approaches that Bakker advocates. Among the concepts missed are ‘country ownership’ of assistance, experimental design, innovation platforms and the involvement of both civil society and private investors in shaping national agricultural policy.