“Any system that produces enough food for the entire world and yet fails to feed one in seven people, which is subject to rampant speculation and land-grabbing, and where crops and land that could be used to feed people are instead turned into fuel for Hummers, is patently not working,” a Guardian editorial says.

Allowing the market to sort it out or “wailing about population growth” may be solutions, but “there is an answer that lies in treating food security as a priority, rather than as a soft commodity to be traded like any other. Its production and trading should be much more heavily regulated, and protected,” the editorial concludes (6/1).