Following the 2007-2008 food crisis, improvements of world food governance was at the centre of international discussions, leaning towards a new Global Partnership for Agriculture, Food Security and Nutrition. In this process, the issue of the management of various streams of knowledge appeared a central element to allow for better policy coordination, and led to the creation of the High Level Panel of Experts on food security and nutrition (HLPE). Here we describe the genesis and unveil the rationale underneath the creation of this expert process aiming at a better shared understanding of food insecurity of its causes and of potential remedies, and at helping policy-makers to look forward to emerging issues. Drawing lessons from other international expert processes at the interface between expertise and decision-making, we describe the internal rules of the expertise process, as well as the "boundary rules" that frame relations and exchanges between the expert body and decision makers, and show how critical the "fine-tuning" of those rules is not only for the expert process, but also, for the political negotiation platform itself.
