IN this supermarket age we take food buying for granted, and we expect foods from around the world, with a wide range of choice.

This didn’t apply to those of us who grew up in the 1930s and 1940s but we certainly survived and probably benefited from a limited diet. However few people now realise that those days are returning, and we need to concentrate on how we keep folk alive in the future.

By the second half of this century the world population will be some two billion more, nudging ten billion, all with appetites, and this means more food, particularly when those currently starving join the rest of us with full stomachs.

However the evidence suggests that the yield of our basic foods, wheat, maize and rice, will fall by some ten percent with a rise in temperature of just over one degree Celsius, apart from losses caused by torrential storms, the increase in areas suffering from drought and record temperatures, as well as sea level rise.

Just a six per cent reduction, less than a degree’s worth of climate change, means 40 million tonnes less wheat, with even more lost in the developed countries, such as the USA, France and the UK. where arable farming methods put it at risk.

However it’s certainly possible to do something about the supply, as well as reducing CO2 emissions, as Cuba showed a few years back. When Russia pulled out the extensive and mechanised farming collapsed to be replaced with a labour intensive approach, almost gardening, on every street corner, patch of grass, and around houses.

The yield is impressive and reminds me of the output from our gardens, front and back, in the 1940s. We should all do the same, now, as you can’t eat roses or turf, and food growing should be central in every school curriculum,