The TV channels are littered with food and cookery programmes. Despite the fact that obesity is reaching crisis proportions in the western world. Food ingredients are featured whose environmental footprints are unsustainable.

On the flip side, climate change has resulted in flooding and droughts on a global scale.  The poor and vunerable both in the west and  developing countries are the first to be compromised. The Euro crisis, the fuel crisis and the world water shortage are all impacting on the cost and availability of staple food items. The abandonment of a low paying agricultural life style in favour of a congested city life has led to a change in eating habits, further demands on urban resources and an exponential growth in urban populations worldwide. The sight of children and adults begging and scavenging for food in bins and at city dumps are testomtomy to a society failing to cope with a food shortage .

As recent history has shown, market forces respond to currency depreciation, crop failures, flooding and droughts.  They don’t care about regional catastrophes. The overnight increase in market price reflects the products high supply and demand status and the ability of the better-off sector to pay the asking price.

Look at Dublin, the capital of the Republic of Ireland. Plans are afoot to pipe water from the River Shannon all the way across the country to the city as the reservoirs cannot cope with the increased demand. Vegetables are been imported while market gardeners are forced out of business. The sugar industry was closed down and now we pay through the nose for impoted sugar.

The World Trade Organisation and the European Union have a lot to answer for.