Understanding when and where to use each tool is what matters. According to Webb, governments and the international aid community must build up the capacity of the poor to buy food and to cope with small and large catastrophes. According to Aziz, aid efforts also need to focus on social issues that contribute to poverty, including inadequate health care and sanitation, lack of literacy, and discrimination against segments of the population based on race or ethnicity. Researchers also call on governments and the donor community to be rigorous in seeking out early warning signs of impending hunger or famine. These actions only make families more vulnerable to hunger, and governments must be able to track and act upon them before families and whole communities end up in refugee camps.
Researchers also point out the value in asking the community itself what needs to be done.
In the development community, we have many solutions, but unless the people affected tell us what the right ones are, we'll be nowhere. In the past, according to Zopf, food aid, for the most part, did nothing to prevent the next famine or hunger in the coming years. But this takes ingenuity and creativity. Given the twin pressures of the burgeoning population and a limited natural resource base, poverty is also inextricably linked to the environment. Growing family size and deepening poverty force families to cultivate marginal lands and reduce fallow periods, which only make the next years more difficult.