I don’t know how many readers heard Professor Tim Laing on the Today programme this morning. He was talking about the growing world food crisis and it made sobering listening.

The item followed on from a piece about the protests by Pig Farmers about the rise in feed costs and the drop in the price they could get for pork. There’s a perfect storm brewing. With worries about oil running out coupled with concerns about carbon emissions there is a rush to produce large quantities of bio-fuel. Such is the scale of this that over 30% of the US corn crop is now grown just for ethanol (bio-fuel). This is replicated in many other countries and, as a result, staples such as wheat and soya have massively increased in price.

So the age of cheap food is coming to an end and it is the poorest who will be hit hardest – as ever! Meanwhile the developed world is getting richer per capita is demanding more and more meat and dairy products to eat because they can afford it and large quantities of meat and dairy consumption continues to be a symbol of wealth.

Meat and dairy, as we now know, is a very bad thing for the planet. Globally its production creates more emissions than transport. It’s also very inefficient in terms of land use requiring huge acreage and massive amounts of water in comparison to growing arable crops.

Tim Laing was quite candid in saying that we all need to eat less meat and dairy products – preferably none at all. And the UK needs to use its agricultural land more effectively. We only produce 60% of the food we consume at the moment. If now is not a good time to persuade people to go veggie and preferably vegan I don’t know when would be!