Radishes, one of the easiest vegetables to grow. Photograph: Sean Smith
How much is a pint of milk? How much a half-dozen eggs? If you don't know you probably were pretty unexcited by last week's stories about soaring food inflation, here and round the world. Be honest, did you notice? "Food prices rise at record rate," was the splash in the Daily Telegraph on Tuesday; you had to wonder how bothered that paper's readers are about 10p on a pint of milk - or even £750 on the average family's annual shopping bill.
So how much is a pint of milk? You'd be amazed how many people get the price of a pint wrong by 50% or more. The entire staff of Edinburgh's Habitat. All but one of the mums I saw from my son's (definitely middle-class) school. Every single male I spoke to on Wednesday and Thursday last week. But, at Lidl in Leith, all the women shoppers knew that milk and eggs were up a good 15-20% on last year - and their overall shopping bills by at least 10%. And they were worried.
Clearly food price rises hit the poor first and hardest. But even the blithest trolley-fillers need to start worrying. This is a real food scare. The UN says so. Economists are saying that the 30 years in which food has, in real terms, got cheaper, are over. And this time we can't just blame Tesco and the rest - the global factors that have raised the price of food 11% over the last year are pretty much out of the supermarkets' control. But it's been interesting watching them duck and dive over the last week. The British Retail Consortium assures us it's an "inaccurate scare": shops are bravely shouldering much of the weight of the global price rises themselves - and that healthy competition will continue keep prices down.
That's pretty rich: in fact it's farmers and other suppliers who have been taking the hit since the price graphs turned upward two years ago. Raj Patel, author of last year's gripping and caustic expose of the sickness in the global food economy, Stuffed and Starved, emailed me after I'd finished my Observer piece on the subject to punch home the point that supermarkets are "far from innocent victims of price rises". He explains just how they increase profit in a time of rising prices in his excellent blog. He says: "As my MBA-holding brother once told me, in an unfortunate toilet-based metaphor: 'Even when things are going down the pan, there are people who can ride the wave down to the bottom.'''
So how are we going to sort this one out? The OECD says that food prices could rise by 50% in the next decade. According to the economists, if food prices rise by one-third, they will reduce living standards in rich countries by about 3%, but in very poor ones by over 20%. In a major analysis last month , the Economist - for perhaps the first time in its history - called for government to step in and support the incomes of the poor, while an Independent editorial sang a neo-con tune - end trade restrictions, free the markets.
What everyone can agree on is what would help: a drop in the oil price by 75% or more, the Americans stopping turning food crops into SUV-fuel, and better weather for farmers all round the planet. Simple things. "But then," says Tim Lang, Professor of Food Policy at City University, "even if you could sort those out, there's population explosion, and nutrition transition, to tackle." He says it will be the biggest change in the food economy since the Second World War.
Start planting. Make sure I finish what's on my plate. Any other ideas?
