Over 20 000 farmers have left the land in Southern Africa since 1990 - chased away by land grabs, genocidal murder and so-called "land claims". Once productive farms producing food on a large scale often lie barren or have been turned into tiny subsistance plots barely able to feed the owner and his family. Having got rid of the white farmers who provided food for Africa's exploding population, many of these countries now find they still rely on white farmers for food - albeit those living in western countries. The situation is increasingly unsustainable. As an example, Ethiopia in the 1970s claimed they were experiencing famine because of "drought". The population then was some 35million. Today, with ever increasing food aid, the population of Ethiopia is over 70million, with most citizens preferring to hang around food delivery points waiting for their free hand-out, rather than getting off their backsides and growing their own. Extrapolate this across Africa and it is quite evident that a tipping point is quickly being reached. Southern Africa was always able to feed itself and export huge quantities of food - but no longer. All it is going to take is one of the region's regular droughts and we will see famine across Southern Africa on a biblical scale. It is probably already too late to prevent wide-spread food shortages, but unless the governments of Southern Africa act swiftly, the situation will get a lot worse. They should bear in mind that many revolutions were driven by the lack of food and that many greedy government fat cats found themselves being strung up from lamp posts by disgruntled citizens. They have been warned.

Did Marie Antoinette teach our leaders nothing?

We had a major food crisis scare in 2007/8 and last year the Chinese wheat crop was within two weeks of being ZERO. This year we have the drought in Texas which has dramatically effected both maize and soy prices and availability (yes, it is yellow maize but animal feed will take what it can get).

What do our world leaders do to counter this growing threat? Nix, nada, boggeral