The P stuff is going to run out in the foreseeable future.

There is considerable scope for P recycling as they have done for millennia in China (Farmers for 24 centuries etc.) by diverting human effluent streams back to agriculture.

Interestingly, the rock phosphate used in organic agriculture contains radioactive elements Uranium and Thorium…

Check out the Feb 2009 UTSspeak “Eating the earth”, particularly Dana Cordell’s talk [halfway through the video]
http://phosphorusfutures.net/news#Future_of_Phosphorus_workshop

The P story is also published as: Dana Cordell, Jan-Olof Drangert, Stuart White. The story of phosphorus: Global food security and food for thought. by Global Environmental Change 19 (2009) 292–305

High food prices are often linked to lower output volumes, as food demand is generally fairly stable. If they are not, high prices are often due to price developments in other sectors (fuel and fertilizer industry, processing industry, retailing). So farmers don´t see a penny from the higher food prices.

Also, most farmers have to buy a large part of their food from the market. Many farmers are not self-sufficient, or sell at one moment and buy back at another, due to liquidity problems.

Landless rural people are even harder hit by high food prices.

I don´t think there is a dilemma in concrete situations and separating short term and long term developments. The real challenge is to increase the percentage of the food price that goes to farmers, not increasing food prices per se.

(Yes, I simplify a bit.)

What’s a poor policy-maker to do?

Higher production needs to be combined with more and better rural labour opportunities, for instance in agro-processing, or non-agricultural rural industries. Rural areas are still where the most poor people live in many countries and urban growth is a problem in itself.

Market access is a real issue, too. However, I often have the impression that the focus is too much on how to produce for high-end markets (the capital, rich countries), because “that´s where the money is”.

But what about rural-to-rural market exchange and complementarity/specialization between different rural areas? This is an aspect of market access that needs to be studied much more in my opinion. Stimulating rural-to-rural exchange could help to avoid the urban bias in development.

Think about the Andean barter markets (which moreover very biodiverse). That setting up rural markets controlled by farmers is highly political issue shows how much is at stake.

As it happens, quantity is related to availability & affordability. The more food is produced, the lower the food prices. And low food prices is a great recipe against hunger for people who buy their food.

You seem to focus entirely on farmers. A lot of hungry people are farmers (how many?); and they have land and produce (some of) their own food. Whether better markets, GM, drought tolerance or other use of agricultural biodiversity could help them produce (and consume) more is an important question. But for all the other people without enough to eat (or having to spend their money on food at the expense of other essentials), lower prices would do just fine.

Low food prices are also thought to be an essential ingredient for economic growth, that can create the opportunity for children of poor families to leave the dreadful misery of borderline-subsistence agriculture.