Almost nothing I have so far read or heard since the food price summit at Downing Street this week gives me the impression that the experts involved have the foggiest idea how to solve what the prime minister is billing as a world food shortage.

They’re trying, bless ‘em, and the government will now throw yet more millions of our money at the problem, in the hope that one day it will miraculously disappear.

Gordon Brown’s watery pledge to reassess his biofuels targets pretty much says it all. It is a typical Labour soundbite response to an issue they just cannot get to grips with. That their biofuels targets are unrealistic and likely to cause food shortages didn’t dawn on them when they put them in place only a few days ago. The majority of politicians are being drawn to biofuels by firms chasing the big pound signs on the horizon, and not environmental concerns.

As has been pointed out in FPJ in recent weeks and months, food is not short, it simply is not distributed in a manner that allows people of all income brackets an even chance to get fed. All the time the UK, and other nations to be fair to our government, prevaricates around the issue, people all over the world are starving to death.

Meanwhile, the UK wastes one third of all the food that it buys. And consumers here are far from alone in being profligate with valuable global resources. Maybe I’m missing something, but biofuels seems like an issue for tomorrow.