The world is running out of food

With Indians now gobbling down pizzas, the Chinese pounding the table for Big Macs, and corn being turned into bio-fuel, the world's food supplies are in their worst shape for 35 years.

Prices of everything from milk and corn to beef and coffee are at record highs. Wheat stores are the lowest they have been since 1980. Add to that the effects of climate change, shifting production around the world, and you have what the United Nations' World Food Programme is calling "the perfect storm for the world's hungry".

Even the not-so-hungry are feeling it. In Britain, the prices of a pint of milk and a loaf of bread have risen by more than 10 per cent in the past year, far more than inflation. It is estimated that the price of the average Christmas lunch in 2007 was 14 per cent higher than in 2006, and only a fraction of that was down to Jamie Oliver sending

people out to buy more expensive organic food.

Italians have been abandoning pasta over the past 18 months in response to the sharp rise in its cost. In Mexico City late last year, thousands marched in protest at the shocking price of the corn they use to make tortillas.

Leading up to Russia's legislative elections in December, Vladimir Putin imposed price freezes on basic foodstuffs to keep a sudden rise in prices from sullying his party's easy victory. In the past few months, food riots have occurred around the world, from Morocco to Senegal and Yemen.

In Europe, the EU has suspended the usual 10 per cent set-aside for 2008. Normally farmers would be paid not to farm 10 per cent of their land as a way of controlling supply and maintaining prices. This year, they must cultivate all of their land.

The rise in basic food prices has also strengthened the case for abolishing the subsidies paid to European, mostly French, farmers. For many years, low agricultural