We are paying more for it in the supermarkets and it is costing farmers more to provide it, but experts say humanity is not even close to paying the true price of producing food.
They have warned the environment is "subsidising" food production globally by more than $3 trillion in externalities — an economic term for the costs or benefits of production that was not reflected in the market price.
World Business Council for Sustainable Development chairman Sunny Verghese said recent food crises associated with war and natural disasters showed how vulnerable food systems were to shocks.
"This is the first food price crisis that we've all confronted where 90 per cent of the world's countries have got high food price inflation," he said.
"Are food prices too high? Food prices are not high enough to induce changes in behaviour, because Mother Nature's back office is not set up.
"It is not issuing us those invoices for the ecosystem benefits that we are deriving from nature to produce and consume the food, feed [and] fibre that we consume."
Referring to a joint study by market data company Trucost and the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations that looked at the world's top four food crops and protein sources, Mr Verghese said passing on the true costs would be catastrophic for consumers, but eventually someone would have to pay.
"Already 819 million people are going to bed hungry every day, 345 million people [are in] acute food insecurity, they can't survive without external food assistance," he said.
"If Mother Nature's already subsidising us by $3 trillion, what will happen if you pass that real cost on to farmers, to the consumers?
"There are policy questions that we need to answer, and policymakers are not waking up and are not coming to the party."
Too cheap and too expensive
National Farmers' Federation president and Commission for International Agricultural Research chair, Fiona Simson, said truly sustainable food systems would require collaboration.
"We need to be moving towards a lower and lower carbon economy, but we also need to do that in the knowledge that we have people who are starving across the world," she said.
"In Australia, just last year alone, two million households [were] identified as incredibly food insecure, now that's in a country where we produce way more food than we should be able to eat.
"So clearly, it's not just production, and it's not just climate change and sustainability … it's a problem that we need to solve … and we need everybody to put their shoulder to the wheel."
Chief executive of the International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology in Nairobi, Kenya, Segenet Kelemu, has dedicated the past 30 years to solving both the climate and hunger challenge.
She said without food security, there cannot be action on climate change.
"I can't think of anything more agonising, more degrading, than people who are constantly food insecure begging for food," Dr Kelemu said.
"Any country that is constantly on the receiving end of persistent food insecurity cannot focus on or address any other human development challenges effectively."
But she said sustainability development goals had become detached from the people who were suffering the impact of food shortages and malnutrition.
"The measure of poverty eradication, for lifting people out of poverty, it's a ridiculous number — $1.90 a day," she said.
"Who lives on $1.90? My cat doesn't live on $1.90."
Historically, the answer to food shortages was to lift productivity, but Claudia Sadoff from the global research consortium CGIAR said increasing climate pressure meant that was becoming harder to do.
"It's not just the productivity in tonnes, it's nutrition," Dr Sadoff said.
"We need to be thinking about the productivity of nutrients, not just calories, and balance those nutrients and calories against our natural resource constraints.
"I believe that the next transformation of food systems really needs to be one that is framed squarely in the solution space of the climate crisis that we face today.
"Our farmers, in particular small scale farmers, are really on the very front lines of adaptation, the most vulnerable and feeding the most vulnerable."
Farmers as the solution
Ms Simson said Australian farmers could help provide the expertise to solve some of these "vexing" problems, but they needed to be connected to the science.
"We certainly don't envisage that Australian grain producers are going to grow double the crop, we've sort of done that here already," she said.
"I think some of the most successful innovations we've seen in Australia … [are] because we've been able to connect up the scientists with the people who are actually there solving the problems."
Mr Verghese said, ultimately, transformational change would take new thinking from scientists, governments, farmers, and individuals.
