What price cheaper food?

What would you do to bring down the cost of food?

Rising food prices are a worry for many, but for impoverished people living close to the edge, more expensive food could mean starvation.

Writing in New Scientist, Deborah MacKenzie argues that one of the main factors driving recent price hikes is the growing demand for meat among increasingly prosperous people in developing countries. (Other factors include demand for biofuels and the fact that food production has not kept pace with population growth.)

The options? New Scientist argues that the answer is government-funded science to increase yields, and infrastructure to get the resulting technologies to farmers, even though that can take 15-20 years to happen.

Now don't get me wrong -- I'm a meat-eating, former agricultural research scientist . . . but surely it would be much quicker, cheaper and simpler if people were encouraged to eat less meat? I, for one, am happy to start today. What about you?