The annual report from the Serious Organised Crime Agency, published yesterday, is a mix of self-congratulation and spectacular underachievement. While the rhetoric from politicians has been to get tough on organised crime, the reality is more humbling: we still don’t have a clear idea of the scale and nature of the problem. Read the rest here

Pretty much everyone is unhappy with the agency. Sean O’Neill, The Times’ Crime Editor has been trailing the publication of the annual report for the past week. According to his sources police officers have been leaving in ‘droves’, while the agency’s hit list has been shelved. The allegations were swiftly dismissed in a letter to The Times by Bill Hughes, SOCA’s Director General. He is now having to manage some internal strife at the Agency and has rounded on some officers who have chosen to take their problems to the media and not the management (which is odd given the top heavy nature of the organisation).

Elsewhere Alison Saunders, head of the Crown Prosecution Service’s Organised Crime Division is arguing that expectations of Soca had been too high at its inception. She has a point. Meanwhile the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats are standing back and basking in the Government’s and the Agency’s incompetence and ineptitude.

Conditional cash transfers are the new new thing in the development world. The success of Mexico’s Oportunidades scheme, which gives cash to poor families if they participate in health programmes, has sparked a wave of imitations in both developing and developed countries - even New York has got in on the act. A randomised controlled study of Oportunidades found that it reduced illness among children in the programme by 23% compared to a control group. The children’s height increased by 1-4%, and the health of adults also improved. Similar programmes to reduce drug dependency in the US by giving cash to cocaine and methamphetamine abusers in return for clean urine samples have cut stimulant use.

The World Bank scheme relies on a crucial insight, which LSE AIDS guru Tony Barnett and I discuss in a paper to be published in ‘AIDS‘ this summer. In order to take decisions now that will benefit them in the future, people need to value that future. In other words, they need hope:

People with hope for the future are less likely to engage in activities that put them at risk of illness or death in the present…Without future goals, there is little reason to avoid actions that may cause harm in the future but do not do so in the present. People may therefore forfeit future gains in favour of present benefits.

Studies of hope have found strong effects on quality of life. Hopeful children do better in skills tests; adults who have goals have better mental health; and those without hope of career advancement have higher rates of mortality. And it’s not just about money; drug users in the US programmes reported that having something to aim for and receiving rewards for achievement spurred them to quit.

In much of Africa, where HIV is rife, people lack hope and therefore take risks. They exchange safety for pleasure by having unprotected sex with multiple sexual partners. They know they might one day die as a result of this, but the concerns of the present are too pressing, the future too remote. Cash can make a difference - a study in South Africa found that poor women women who received small loans in return for participating in HIV and gender programmes reported increased hope and reduced violence at the hands of their partners.

You might think that not dying of AIDS would be reward enough for practising safe sex. In an environment where people have little to hope for, however, and thus no reason to make plans, you’d be wrong.

I picked up a book about quantum physics and super-string theory I have been meaning to read for ages, for a column I’m thinking of writing. It had been hanging over me, daring me to read it. Five hours later, I realised I had hit the last page. I looked up. It was getting dark outside. I was hungry. I hadn’t noticed anything, except the words I was reading, and they came in cool, clear passages; I didn’t stop or stumble once.

Perplexed, I got up, made a sandwich — and I was overcome with the urge to write an article that had been kicking around my subconscious for months. It rushed out of me in a few hours, and it was better than usual….The next morning I woke up and felt immediately alert. Normally it takes a coffee and an hour to kick-start my brain; today I’m ready to go from the second I rise. And so it continues like this, for five days: I inhale books and exhale articles effortlessly. My friends all say I seem more contemplative, less rushed — which is odd, because I’m doing more than normal. One sixty-something journalist friend says she remembers taking Benzadrine in the sixties to get through marathon articles, but she’d collapse after four or five says and need a long, long sleep. I don’t feel like that. I keep waiting for an exhausted crash, and it doesn’t seem to come.

Tempting to agree with Kevin, who says he wants some - though you can’t help wondering about the general rarity of free lunches, as well as the implications for social equity (c.f. Jules on transhumanism)….

But this is not unique to Britain. And it is part of two broader inter-related trends; the disappearance of sacrifice as an element of Europe’s development and, as a result, the divorce of the institution most knows for sacrifice – the military - from European society.

The most obvious example is the disappearance of ex-military officers from politics. The appointment of Admiral Sir Alan West, the decorated former head of the Royal Navy, to a junior ministerial post in Gordon Brown’s government is remarkable precisely because it’s rare. Military experience has similarly become less important for reaching reach high office; no Ministers in the current Cabinet have served in the armed forces.

Few European countries appoint general officers to civilian positions; none serve at the top of the European Union’s bureaucracy, the Commission or the Council Secretariat. Of seven hundred European parliamentarians, only one was a former high-ranking officer: Philippe Morrilon, the former French UN general.

Contrast this with the United States, where, from George Washington onwards, military officers have regularly shed their uniforms to take high office.

President Roosevelt’s secretaries of War and Navy during the Second World War had both fought in France in 1918 and both wanted to be addressed as “colonel”, even by their subordinate, General George Marshall. In fact, most American foreign policy personalities in the twentieth century – like Brent Scowcroft, Stansfield Turner, and Colin Powell – started their careers in barracks and boot camps, not at Harvard Yard. Until Bill Clinton, every U.S president had served in the military, perhaps most famously Europe’s military saviour, Dwight Eisenhower.

And despite spending the Vietnam War in the Texas National Guard, George W Bush has appointed more generals than any of his predecessors; scores of military officers serve in key civilian positions, including as National Intelligence Director (an admiral), CIA Director (a general), as the President’s “War Czar” (another general) and as Deputy Treasury Secretary (a former general).

Inside the State Department – the most civilian of departments, mocked for housing pin-stripped, effete bureaucrats – military officers now occupy central jobs from the Counter-Terrorism Coordinator to the Under-Secretary for Economic Affairs. As the Bush administration begins drawing to a close, and civilians leave for jobs in the private sector, expect to see more military officers take civilian positions. And rumblings have already begun about the political ambitions of General David Petraeus, the top commander in Iraq.

What does this difference say about American and European - political cultures? In 2002, the American writer Robert Kagan sparked a trans-Atlantic row in the article “Power and Weakness” published in Policy Review. In his article – and later his book – Kagan argued that differences the U.S and Europe’s relative levels of power were leading Europeans and Americans to develop different ideas about how the world works and what their policies in it ought to be. Militarily well-endowed Americans are comfortable with unilateralism and the use of force, and uncomfortable with the constraints of international institutions. Militarily weaker Europeans are the opposite.

It is tempting to add America’s long-standing tradition to appoint generals to civilian positions in government – and European counter-veiling reluctance – as an associated distinction. It may also signal an appreciation of the virtues that military men are seen to bring with them into their civilian jobs – dedication, courage and loyalty. And pragmatism, a “get-things-done” mentality that, in fairness to the non-political European bureaucracies, has never been their hallmark.

But, on the other hand, the U.S is often accused by Europeans of having too militaristic an outlook, willing to dial 911-Pentagon to solve any problem. The presence of military officers in the upper echelons of the government may not be unrelated  (although the “hawkiest” members of the Bush Administration - Bush himself, Cheney, ‘Scooter Libby, Wolfowitz, Eliot Ambrams etc - did not come from the military).

However, I can’t help think that Europe’s approach to security issues might not benefit from having a few more ex-soldiers thrown into the mix.

For three years, my husband has talked about taking to the hills. About buying a smallholding on Exmoor where, with our four-year-old daughter, we can safely survive the coming storm - famine, pestilence and a total breakdown of society. I would wait for his lectures to finish, then return to my own interests. I had no time for the end of civilisation. As an editor on a glossy magazine until a few months ago, I was too busy. There was always a new Anya Hindmarch bag to buy, or a George Clooney premiere to attend.

But recently, I’ve wavered. Much of what he has been predicting has come true: global economic meltdown, looming environmental disaster, a sharp rise in oil and food prices that has already led to the rationing of rice in the US, and riots in dozens of countries worldwide. This week, the details got scarier. The UN warned of a global food crisis, like a “silent tsunami”, while Opec predicts that oil, which broke through $100 (£50) a barrel for the first time a few weeks ago, may soon top $200.

In one sense, it’s no surprise that food figures so prominently in her list of concerns: along with shelter and water, after all, food is about as basic as human needs get.  But on the other hand, you have to wonder: if you can afford Anya Hindmarch bags, do you really have anything to worry about on food prices?  Isn’t the problem actually the converse - namely that as the global middle class grows, its appetite for meat and dairy products (and handbags too) also grows - taking staple grains out of the purchasing power reach of poorer consumers in the process?

Still, the fact remains: people in developed countries who think about resilience a lot are worried about food.  John Robb, for instance, sees food as a critical dimension of his concept of the Resilient Community.  Or look at the Transition Towns movement in Totnes, who are going nuts about food security  (literally):

… the idea is to use town-wide plantings [of nut trees] to create a stock of healthy, productive trees that can serve as a great source of local food, and a buffer in times of scarcity. The reason that the group is concentrating on nut trees is their potential to outgrow cereal crops in terms of carbohydrates, and to utilise poorer soils with fewer inputs. The group has already planted hazelnuts, walnuts and almonds across the town …

So: how worried should we be in Britain, the US or other developed countries?  Is it time to head for the hills? 

Differentiating the risks

Well, start by differentiating three different kinds of food insecurity.

First, imagine an acute, short-term supply interruption.  Suppose that there’s another fuel crisis like the one in 2000, for instance, and that supermarket supply chains crash, with the whole process accelerated by panic-buying.  In policy terms, the main job for central and local government in this scenario would be (a) do everything to sort out the underlying trigger of the supply interruption, if possible; (b) try to limit panic-buying and hoarding; (c) deliver emergency relief.  (There might well be limits to how much government can achieve in all three of these areas.)

Now, imagine the opposite: a long term condition of insufficiency.  Think, for example, of Britain’s food supply during World War Two, and imagine similar circumstances arising today.  In contrast to the first example, normal service will not be resumed shortly in this scenario.  Here, the task of government would be much more extensive.  Rationing would presumably need to be organised, together with a national crash programme of growing staples (wheat, potatoes) and urban gardening - dusting off Lord Woolton’s WW2 manual, in short.

And then imagine a third example: where the problem is simply that prices go up, and up, and up - over a period of years perhaps - as the result of global supply simply failing to keep pace with global demand.  Unlike the first two examples, we’d expect to see plenty of food on the shelves here - but for only for those that could afford it (this is of course exactly what many developing country cities are currently experiencing).  Here, the immediate challenge is social protection for vulnerable people - followed, in the longer term, by a plan for growing supply and/or easing demand.

Now what interests me about the idea of the Resilient Community or the Transition Town is that it’s not always immediately clear which of these three scenarios they’re best suited to guard against.  Let’s go through them again one by one and have a look.

The World War Two scenario

Start with the second scenario.  I have a hunch that when people imagine a condition of food stress in the UK, this is the one that they reach for instinctively - because it chimes with our nostalgia for the war years (even those of us who weren’t born in 1945), and folk memories of ‘Dig for Victory’.  We love this stuff: if you went to St James’s Park a few weeks back, you could find a perfect replica of a World War Two allotment.  And of course, a Resilient Community or Transition Town today would be just the ticket were World War Two to start again tomorrow.

The problem is that of the three scenarios set out here, I think this is the least likely today.  To achieve the kind of sudden reduction in trade that Britain experienced during the war would take just that: a major inter-state conflict.  It’s virtually impossible to see how a terrorist group could achieve such an extensive goal (though if it was very lucky, it might be able to provoke a government into being stupid enough to do the job on its behalf, e.g. by insisting on searches of every shipping container to arrive at the border). 

So although transition towns look well designed as a strategy for dealing with this eventuality, the likelihood factor scores less strongly.  The other two scenarios look much more feasible.  So how do Transition Towns shape up against them?

The supermarket sweep scenario

Look now at the first scenario - that of acute supply interruption and empty shelves.  This one looks a lot more possible: indeed, as recent panic-buying of rice in the US showed, you can fall into this scenario on the basis of rumour and perception alone, without any actual perturbation on the supply side.

Here, the idea of the Resilient Community as a buffer against short term interruptions looks useful.  If, for instance, a supply interruption lasted for a couple of weeks, then some kind of endogenous capacity - domestic food stockpiles, local market gardening and the like - could make the difference between a bloody nuisance and something much more nasty.

But with that said, I think we need to be cautious of any blanket assumption that “more local = more resilient”.  Imagine, for a moment, a scenario in which the UK were mostly self-sufficient in food.  Now imagine a year of catastrophic freak weather (not difficult, these days).  All of a sudden, diversified global supply chains look like a significant source of resilience. 

Similarly, we might need to be careful of assuming that supermarket supply chains are fragile because they rely on just-in-time inventory management.  In one sense, of course, systems are fragile when the buffers are stripped out: the reason you’re likely to get delayed on a Ryanair flight is because the turnaround times are so short that there’s no margin for error, and plenty of scope for cascading failures.  But on the other hand, the sophistication of supermarkets’ distribution management can also be a source of resilience: if one supply depot goes down, it’s relatively straightforward to switch routing through other parts of the network- if  the management systems are up to it.

So rather than assuming that local production is more safe, we might do better to think of resilience deriving from the right blend of local, national and global supply chains.  As we’ll see in a moment, that raises big questions about what sort of trade system might best faciliate that - but the key point for now is that it’s not clear that “localisation is the answer”; we need a more nuanced narrative than that.

The food inflation scenario

So now turn to the food inflation scenario - which currently looks to be the likeliest (indeed, it’s already here).  For developing countries like the Philippines (which has said it wants to be self-sufficient in rice within 3 years), it’s easy to see why ‘food independence’ is an attractive idea: world grain markets haven’t proved quite as reliable as the World Bank suggested. 

But for the UK and other developed economies, it’s a different story.  The blunt fact is that their wealth allows them to outbid everyone else.  That’s why India suspended rice exports to Bangladesh, while cheerfully continuing to ship basmati rice to developed country markets; and it’s why Haiti, Egypt and Indonesia have seen food riots, while Norway, Canada and New Zealand have not.  While EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson, World Bank President Bob Zoellick or UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown all argue that further trade liberalisation will help poor countries, there are also good reasons to wonder whether it might not do the opposite: make it easier for rich countries and consumers to outbid poorer ones.

True, there’s the fact that while food prices may account for a small proportion of spending for the average OECD consumer (as opposed to the 50-60% in low income country households), that still leaves the question of poor consumers in rich countries (see Chris Bryant’s excellent FT article on hunger in America from last month).  But even there, it’s hard to see why increasing self-sufficiency would be a better bet than simply increasing welfare provision.  Admittedly, the political climate is currently inconducive to more generous welfare entitlements; but in a real long term slump, I suspect the political will would likely materialise (c.f. the New Deal).

So from a purely resilience-based standpoint - leaving aside questions of justice and fairness for a moment - it looks like Transition Towns might be just the ticket for Manila, but not necessarily in Manchester or Minneapolis, with their greater purchasing power.

But in practice, we should take those questions of justice and fairness into account.  If Britain’s international food security strategy is no more imaginative than “we’re richer than you; piss off”, then shame on us.  But let’s be clear: at this point, we’re talking about a bigger project than just local resilience: we’re talking about global resilience, through the means of global justice.  It’s a very different project.

Once we’re clear that we are talking about global justice - trying to find a system that feeds everyone healthily, rather than just our community - we need to start from first principles, which means not assuming that localisation will be right for everyone.  As I asked in my post on food yesterday, what about Saudi Arabia: are they supposed to go self-sufficient with 27 million people?  So that brings us back to trade.  It’s far from clear that liberalisation is the answer; but neither is it clear that self-sufficiency is workable.  We need a different approach again - fast.

So what does all this add up to?

In a nutshell, the following very tentative conclusions:

- we need to be clear that there are different potential sources of food risk for the UK, with very different drivers, impacts and policy implications;

- the scenario that the public perhaps most fears instinctively - a WW2-like situation of insufficient food supplies over a sustained period, even for those with cash to pay for it - is probably the least likely of the three;

- local food systems can add additional resilience, especially to short term supply chain interruptions, but probably as a complement for national and international systems rather than a replacement for them;

- while developed country resilience to long term price inflation (which we can already see) is boosted by the fact that they can afford to outbid other consumers for food (and energy), that’s the basis of a very regressive foreign policy: we should aim for a more enlightened international approach;

- and trade is absolutely central to this.  Neither liberalisation nor self-sufficiency looks like the answer.  All in all, we need a more sophisticated approach than “global vs local”.

“I don’t want some mom whose son may have recently died to see the commander in chief playing golf,” he said. “I feel I owe it to the families to be in solidarity as best as I can with them. And I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal.”

Bush said he made that decision after the August 2003 bombing of the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad, which killed Sergio Vieira de Mello, the top U.N. official in Iraq and the organization’s high commissioner for human rights.

“I remember when de Mello, who was at the U.N., got killed in Baghdad as a result of these murderers taking this good man’s life,” he said. “I was playing golf — I think I was in central Texas — and they pulled me off the golf course and I said, ‘It’s just not worth it anymore to do.’”

Problem is de Mello was killed in August 2003 and Bush was still playing golf in October. Coincidentally, the President also had knee problems at the time though I am sure that had nothing to do with his decision…

For a sense of what is to come its worth reading the transcript from Stephen Lander’s (former DG Security Service) and William (Bill) Hughes’ first visit to the Home Affairs select committee. But first the facts:

By the most conservative estimates, money laundering comprises between two and five percent of global gross domestic product (GDP).

The UNODC, roughly estimates that organised crime costs the global economy up to $1 trillion per year

In 2005, the UNODC estimated the global narcotics market at $322 billion—equivalent to a GDP ranking of roughly 30th in the world, measured against national economies, and roughly 75 percent of the total GDP of Sub-Saharan Africa

There has been a rapid expansion in the black market in counterfeit goods—now worth an estimated $400-$600 billion per year (before you stifle a yawn this includes parts for cars and areoplanes)

Preliminary research conducted by the Home Office into the economic cost of organised crime and estimated that the price could be as high as £40 billion a year – the abuse of Class A drugs estimated at £13 billion a year ‘at a highly conservative estimate’

These are serious numbers and show how big a business organised crime is. More than that it shows how organised crime acts as a cancer on society. But irrespective of how great the risk from organised crime is, the UK Government is in no position to do anything. SOCA’s budget has been frozen, resources and capabilities have been shifted elsewhere in Government to countering terorrism and enlarging the Intelligence agecnies; the MoD is focused on operational issues in Afghanistan and Iraq while the FCO recently dropped organised crime off its list of priorities. SOCA has become the orphan of Whitehall. A change of approach is needed.

However, is this any different from the past; and if so, why?

Even a cursory reading of Churchill’s memoirs or those of any of his wartime colleagues (like his defense chief, Lord Alanbrooke) leaves you with the impression that no detail was too small, no maneuver too inconsequential for the PM to take an interest - and, frequently, a direct role. As we know, this did not always have the intended beneficial effects, but the PM’s involvement was clear, all-pervasive – and ultimately crucial for Britain’s war-time effort. 

But in the 1950s, 60s and 70s as Britain fought countless battles against Soviet-backed, liberation movements – the heyday of counter-insurgency - the role of Whitehall seemed to decrease. Decisions were delegated to theatre level, as in the Malay campaign. It was only when the Troubles began - and the fight was brought home - that the day-to-day involvement of Whitehall began to increase.

But besides Northern Ireland, the Cold War did not include - indeed require – day-to-day ministerial oversight. Plans were laid to roll back a Red Army advance and the PM had to write a letter to submarine commanders bearing instructions for nuclear retaliation. But there was no day-today role. The Falklands War was may have been an exception to this hands-off, strategy-focused Cold War role.

In the modern world, however, wars like the Iraq War are fast-paced, cost billions of pounds, risk the lives of hundreds of soldiers and can cost ministers their careers. This drives greater ministerial involvement in decision-making than before. But, on the other hand, the complexity – and sometimes brutality - of modern counter-insurgency means many ministers are reluctant to get too involved in decisions, lest they be blamed for the choices made by a soldier in Basra or a diplomat in Kandahar.

Other issues drive the ambivalent role ministers today have in counter-insurgency missions. First, modern government is in many ways responsible for far greater areas than before, even after the Thatcher revolution. This has led ministers to conceive of a far sharper distinctions between supposedly policy and operational matters, lest they be held to account for an impossible vast number of issues. As the Cabinet Manual states: Ministers “should not be involved in their departments’ day-to-day operations. In general terms, Ministers are responsible for determining and promoting policy, defending policy decisions, and answering in the House on both policy and operational matters.”

This, naturally, reinforces a ministerial focus on presentation and stakeholder management. But if the distinction between policy and operational matters is difficult to make in domestic policy areas, in counter-insurgency it is almost impossible.

The second issue that may contribute to the ambivalent role ministers play is the fact that there is a dwindling pool of experienced ministers. New Labour has been in power for ten years and the attrition rate has been high. Only Jack Straw remains from Tony Blair’s original cabinet. The people who do remain have rotated through departments at alarming speed. Just think of John Reid’s tour of Whitehall. Six departments in all, I think. This, naturally, means less of a grasp of each department’s remit.

Third, fewer people come to ministerial office with a military background. OK – Winston Churchill may have been uniquely qualified for his role even for his time, but today no minister – besides Lord West – has any military background.

While senior officers are customarily elevated to the British House of Lords after their retirement and the Commons hold many a former colonel, few flag officers have in the past made it into Parliament. For many years, Lord Garden was a lone former three-star in the position of party spokesman. Other former defence chiefs will pipe up, like Lord Guthrie, on military debates, but they rarely hold official jobs. The appointment of Lord West, the former head of the Royal Navy, to a junior ministerial post in Gordon Brown’s government is remarkable precisely because it’s rare. This, too, may play a role in minster’s approach to  military matters and especially operations. They are simply too far out of their comfort zone.

Clearly this question merits serious historical research, not just a half-remembered dinner conversation. I have skirted over many issues, like the different approaches to different wars (Iraq v Sierra Leone) and how different departments work i.e DfiD v the FCO. But the issue ought to be investigated further. Any takers?

For the first time, Bush revealed a personal way in which he has tried to acknowledge the sacrifice of soldiers and their families: He has given up golf.

“I don’t want some mom whose son may have recently died to see the commander in chief playing golf,” he said. “I feel I owe it to the families to be in solidarity as best as I can with them. And I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal.”

Bush said he made that decision after the August 2003 bombing of the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad, which killed Sergio Vieira de Mello, the top U.N. official in Iraq and the organization’s high commissioner for human rights.

“I remember when de Mello, who was at the U.N., got killed in Baghdad as a result of these murderers taking this good man’s life,” he said. “I was playing golf — I think I was in central Texas — and they pulled me off the golf course and I said, ‘It’s just not worth it anymore to do.’”

(As I found, Cornwall is actually about the best place you could go to get some fresh perspective on food.  The Lost Gardens of Heligan have the most impressive kitchen gardens I’ve ever seen; the Eden Project fizzes with thoughts about how we’ll feed ourselves through this century; and Tim Smit - who led the construction of Eden and the restoration of Heligan - and Tony Kendle, director of the Eden Foundation, were both full of ideas about the future of food.  Plus, just over the Devon border is Totnes, home of the transition towns movement - which John Robb admires as an exemplar of the idea of the resilient community.)

So with last month’s briefing paper on food prices out of the way, I’m starting to think in earnest about the content of the main pamphlet that I’ll be writing over the summer. 

Although we’re not out of the woods yet on gearing up the humanitarian response to immediate term food price impacts, the issue is firmly on the agenda; by the time of the G8 at the start of July, most governments should have made their initial pledges of increased assistance.  Meanwhile, the UN’s new task force on food prices met for the first time on Monday, and will pull together a framework for action over the next few months.

But what about the longer term? What are the big questions we need to think through between now and the Italian G8 in 2009, by which time we’ll need to have thought through a global plan for the longer term challenge of meeting 50 per cent higher demand by 2030 - and a population of nearly ten billion by 2050? 

I’m tentatively organising my thoughts into three main clusters: questions about the future of agriculture; questions about the future of trade; and questions about the future of demand for food among wealthier consumers.

First, then, there’s the biggie: what’s the story for 21st century agriculture?  We know we have to grow supply; we know the old ‘productivist’ paradigm that brought us the first green revolution has been running out of steam in many parts of the world; and we know that some of people we need to worry about in particular are poor people in rural areas (three quarter’s of the world’s impoverished), so whatever plan we come up with has to work for them.

One open question in this area is how we can move towards a green revolution that really is green in places like Africa, where there’s great scope for productivity improvements.  The Asian green revolution of the 20th century achieved extraordinary things - trebling rice yields per hectare in India between the 1960s and the 1990s, for instance - but relied heavily on intensive inputs like fertiliser and water.  As water gets scarcer (above all because of climate change) and fertilisers get more expensive in line with rising energy costs, it’s clear that we’ll need a more resource-efficient approach - as well as one that can adapt as far as possible to the effects of climate change.

There’s also the question of what kind of labour 21st century agriculture will need.  There’s an unresolved debate here between enthusiasts for smaller, more labour intensive approaches - who argue that smaller farms tend to be more pro-poor and more sustainable - and advocates of much larger scale operations, who argue that rural to urban migration is just part of the process of development, and that in any case smallholder agriculture just can’t deliver the yields needed to feed the ten billion. 

And there are some interesting geographical questions here too.  Given the state of agriculture today and the prospect of increasing climate change over time - with very diverse impacts in different parts of the world - where will be the breadbaskets of tomorrow?  Which countries will benefit most from changes in agriculture over the course of the century?  If new acreage has to be brought into production, where will it be?

Second big question: where next on trade?  As I noted in the Chatham House briefing paper, we can already start to see three very different trade paradigms contesting food as a key battleground.  One storyline emphasises liberalisation and reliance on world markets: think of recent statements by Bob Zoellick.  A second approach suggests greater national self sufficiency or reliance on import substitution: think of some of FAO’s recent statements, or the Philippines’ aim of rice self-sufficiency within three years.  A third approach – being pioneered by China – emphasises long term bilateral contracts, of the kind Beijing is already making increasing use of to try to ensure energy supplies.

My hunch is that the correct answer here is “none of the above”.  Long term contracts pose obvious risks for poor countries with limited clout who may find themselves with no chairs when the music stops: the effects of recent export suspensions may be just a taste of what’s to come.  Self-sufficiency is much easier said than done, and in any case there are some countries who are simply going to have to rely on international markets: hands up who thinks Saudi Arabia has the wherewithal to feed 27 million people from domestic resources?

As to liberalisation: I’ve noted here before that cutting US and EU export subsidies now could lead to higher food prices in the short term.  But more fundamentally, I can’t help raising an eyebrow that the trade policy medicine recommended for a long term buyer’s market (i.e. the multi-year commodity prices slump that lasted until around 2005) is, as if by magic, also just the ticket for a seller’s market in which poor consumers find staple foods out of reach. 

In reality, of course, it partly depends on which consumers you’re most worried about.  If it’s people in rural areas who work in agriculture, then higher prices = good.  If it’s urban slums that are prone to riot if bread gets too pricey, then low prices = good.  The tightrope act that many developing country governments now face is the need to keep both constituencies happy.  It’s going to a need a sophisticated approach to trade policy that will take diverse forms in different countries - as ever, I’m a bit suspicious of any one-size-fits-all recommendation, most of all where trade is concerned. So we need a new story on trade: one that’s different again from all three of the storylines identified above.

Finally, there’s the question of richer consumers, in both OECD economies and emerging economies like China and India.  Where do they fit in to all this, given that it’s their changing diet patterns - and especially their taste for a western diet rich in meat and dairy products - that’s the single biggest driver of rising prices?

One question that I keep coming back to is: how much meat and dairy food can I eat without exceeding my ‘fair share’ - given that I’m not especially keen to become a vegetarian?  There’s an obvious analogy here to climate change, where under the principle of convergence to equal per capita shares of the atmosphere within a framework for stabilising the climate, each of us would have a personal carbon budget of perhaps a tonne or two of CO2 to play with (c.f. David’s post on climate earlier this week).  So by extension, how much grain are we each allowed to consume a year - whether directly (as bread, rice etc.) or indirectly in meat and dairy products?  Will food labelling in 2010 show a food’s grain footprint (you heard it here first) next to its carbon footprint?  Will development NGOs start to campaign on fair shares in food?

On a related note, there’s an important set of questions here about fisheries and aquaculture.  Fish is a much more grain-efficient form of protein than meat (especially red meat), and demand for it has been rising sharply in recent years thanks to health-conscious consumers eating their Omega-3s.  But with demand for fish and seafood forecast to double by 2030 while wild catches remain level, it’s clear that it will need to be aquaculture that picks up the slack.  That raises the same questions that will apply to agriculture on land: how to make it sustainable and resource-efficienct, and how to ensure poor people benefit rather than losing out.

Finally, there’s the cheerful factor that what’s good for consumers in health terms (less red meat, more fish; less saturated fat, more fruit and veg) is also - if we get the framework right - what’s food for environmental sustainability, and good for the world’s poor.  It’s rare to find a genuine win-win-win in life; but looks like one of them - and that will form part of my retort to the next neo-Malthusian I come across proclaiming that we’re all finished.

So that’s where I’ve got to so far.  For the next month or two I’ll be spending a lot of time immersed in books and papers, and talking to everyone I can. (And weeding the allotment. May - June: it’s a jungle out there…)