The governance of food security is surrounded by controversy, both regarding what food security entails and how it could be addressed most effectively. Stakeholders have different and often conflicting ideas and interests, and the issue meets all the characteristics of a wicked problem. This wickedness poses severe challenges to policy-makers who are responsible for developing policies that effectively address food insecurity. This paper focuses on how policy-makers on the European Union level, mainly within the European Commission, cope with the wickedness of food security in various policy domains. Based on interviews with EU officials in the domains of agriculture, fisheries, and development cooperation, the paper aims to obtain a better understanding of the extent to which policy controversies enter their daily work, and how they address or overcome these controversies when developing policies. I do so by drawing from the literature on wicked problems, policy controversies, and EU policy-making theory.)
