Just when it seemed the world had discounted enough bad news for a decade - surging petrol prices, the collapse of huge merchant bankers, the vast American secondary mortgage market meltdown - we find another crisis about as bad, the doubling of food prices.

True, we knew these were coming - accelerating emerging market demand, more climatic disturbances, diminishing agricultural resources, rising production costs and competing biofuel demand. But the result is the same - almost a panic in countries like India, Indonesia, the Philippines, where growing populations have been crimping food supplies.