Record high food prices have occurred over the past 2 years. Environmental factors have created local shortages, while food policies, such as export bans and restrictions on genetically modified foods, have sometimes exacerbated the impacts of these environmental effects, contributing to political instability in several developing countries. Food production is vulnerable to increased environmental variability predicted with climate change, a new strain of wheat stem rust threatens global wheat production, and mycotoxins threaten food safety in vast areas of the low-income world. Global and local food policies can and have exacerbated the impact of the environmental factors. The science, economics, and politics of addressing risks in the global food system are both complex and have high stakes. This symposium will evaluate the impact of some of the most important environmental factors (climate change, plant disease, mycotoxins) on local and global food availability. It will address means by which academics, policy-makers, philanthropists, and societies must collaborate globally to meet the massive challenges to providing food and clothing for a rapidly growing global population. The response of markets and political systems to these disruptions has an almost independent impact, and the symposium will also explore how science policy, food policy, and politics can help or hinder global food security.