commodity prices were offered as justification for the subsidies. With prices now hitting record highs, the argument for artificial price supports is gone.

It has been so long since the world faced food shortages - since the early 1970s - that some wonder if we are mentally prepared for such a crisis. Jacques Diouf, the head of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation is doing all he can to raise the alarm. He says there is now "a very serious risk that fewer people will be able to get food".

Wealthy countries are better able to adapt, through technology and more efficient production and delivery. Poor countries, however, inevitably come last to the rice bowl and will soon likely find it either empty, or crammed with goods they cannot afford.

In India and China, eating habits have been transformed by rising prosperity. Consumers who once shopped at small local stores and markets now graze down the aisles of supermarkets, loading their trolleys with frozen ice cream, yoghurts and milk, which were once far harder to come by. For

the first time in its history, India is no longer self-sufficient in milk, and the consumption of dairy products is expected to treble in the next four years. Even Hinduism, with its insistence on a vegetarian diet, has suffered as Indian meat consumption has risen by 40 per cent in the past 15 years.

The high price of energy has also taken its toll, driving up the price of feed and fertilisers which are made using oil and natural gas-related products.

In the United States, the environmentalists must also shoulder some blame. Millions of acres of American farmland are now subsidised by the federal government to produce corn for ethanol, a clean bio-fuel, rather than for food, even though Brazil makes ethanol far more cheaply from sugar cane. Just to complete the insanity, the US places a heavy tariff on Brazilian ethanol to protect its farmers.

From now on, though, the protectionists will have to act with the sound of the world's stomach growling in their ears.