The global food crisis has prompted various rich countries to start buying up land in the poorer world to secure their food supplies. As well as affecting domestic food supplies in the countries affected, Sue Branford says it could be a time bomb for the world’s ability to cope with climate change. -- The day that the food starts to run out in the world may come far more quickly than most of us imagine. At present, there are more than a billion people going hungry even though there is no shortage of food. The very poor don’t eat enough because they don’t have enough money. The underlying problem is one of social inequality, of the highly skewed distribution of financial resources in the world. -- Over the next century much worse food shortages may emerge. The climate crisis is already arriving far more quickly than scientists expected and proving far more dangerous. For a while, many scientists believed that the increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would be partly compensated for by an increase in plant growth, caused by the greater availability of CO2. But now it seems that carbon fertilization, as it is called, will not happen or will happen far less reliably than was once imagined. --- And the world destroys its biodiversity at its peril, for it is hugely important to have genetically varied populations and species-rich natural and agricultural ecosystems, particularly at times of environmental stress. - Biodiversity plays a crucial role in supplying the raw materials and the genes that make possible the emergence of the new plant varieties on which we all depend. Such new varieties will be urgently required as the world heats up.