When a business makes long-term plans, they call it prudence. When a government makes long-term plans, they call it communism. Any sustained state intervention attracts the prefix “Soviet-style”, and triggers vicious attacks across the billionaire media. So governments have developed a bias against long-term thinking. This may explain why we no longer maintain strategic food reserves.

In Britain, where soils have parched, market analysts warn that we’re facing the most severe food security crisis in decades. In normal years, crop failures at home don’t threaten our security, thanks to global trade. This is one of the reasons why hunger and famines are rarer and less deadly than they used to be. But this is not a normal year, because the problem is now global.

Similar impacts are hitting farmers across Europe and in the US, whose wheat production this year is forecast to be lower than at any point since 1971. Until a few weeks ago, harvest forecasts in Canada were excellent, now its spring wheat is also shrivelling in hot and dry conditions.

Ukraine has had a good growing season, but export forecasts have been cut as a result of Russia’s attacks on its ports. At the same time, crucial global pinch-points for food and farming supplies are tightening: Donald Trump’s aimless war with Iran has caused major reductions in shipping through the strait of Hormuz, the Red Sea and the Suez canal. These have become essential trade routes for fertiliser and, more recently, food, thanks to the Middle East’s emergence as a major re-export hub.

One impact of these disruptions has been to divert more shipping through the Panama canal. But the canal is........

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