Is it because the warning bells ring so loudly that no one seems to hear them? What with elections and the euro crisis, there are plenty of distractions.

But there will be 200,000 more mouths to feed around the world tomorrow – literally. To meet demand, we will need to produce the same amount of food in the next 40 years as we did in the past 8,000. But global wheat production is expected to fall more than 5 per cent this year, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) says.

The challenges of food security – of providing a lot more, with a lot less – are complex, immense, frightening and urgent. They are urgent because our task is not only planning for 2050, when we will need to feed an extra 2bn people. We also have to act for today, when 870m people will go to sleep hungry.