Last month, a Rabobank report said that global weather continues to be “highly unusual”, with drought forcing Australia to import wheat for the first time in more than a decade. “In the US we have had the wettest planting season on record with record prevent plantings for corn and historically poor conditions that could cut stocks substantially,” Rabobank head of agri commodity markets research Stefan Vogel said. “In India the monsoon took two weeks longer than usual to reach key sugar areas, Côte d’Ivoire is experiencing dryness that is threatening the main cocoa crop and in Australia we have had a severe drought that has resulted in the first wheat imports since 2007.”

In May, the United Nations Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) found that global food security was at risk, with human-induced climate change to blame. Its Global Assessment painted a picture of a planet in peril, with life on Earth being wiped out at an unprecedented rate. IPBES chair Robert Watson said the health of ecosystems on which “we and all other species depend” is deteriorating “more rapidly than ever”. “We are eroding the very foundations of our economies, livelihoods, food security, health and quality of life worldwide.”

Urgent action on local and global levels is needed to preserve life on Earth. “It is not too late to make a difference, but only if we start now at every level from local to global.” “Through ‘transformative change’, nature can still be conserved, restored and used sustainably”. That means a “fundamental, system-wide reorganisation across technological, economic and social factors, including paradigms, goals and values.”