The big food issue for the next decade will be putting in place the measures that will ensure that this growing demand for food can be met, and met sustainably - that is, without compromising the world’s environmental resources. To some extent, this challenge must be met by increasing the capacity of developing countries to respond. Yet many of these countries face some of the biggest climatic challenges as well as severe infrastructure issues. Therefore, in large part, the response will have to come from food producers and food exporters in temperate regions and the developed world.

The UK may be a small dot on the globe, yet our own population is expected to increase from over 60million today to more than 72million over the same period. Rightly, this has led to substantial debate in government and academic circles alike about our own food security, with self-sufficiency rates having fallen to around 60 per cent currently. Is our food security dangerously undermined by falling production in several sectors? Is our security best guaranteed through trade? Should we be concerned about a reliance on imports?

A policy based on becoming self-sufficient could harm the UK’s food security by making the country reliant on a single source. Equally, the belief that the UK can buy its way out of any shortages by importing more smacks of naivety as well as creating a new moral dilemma if it sucks food from deprived regions of the world.

In many respects, the global and national challenges are indivisible. We may be food secure; our key national challenges may be about improving diet rather than ensuring people are fed. Nevertheless, policies implemented at home can have an impact abroad and vice versa. The UK has a role to play in promoting agricultural production overseas and not just for selfish reasons. Equally, its domestic industry will have an increasing role to play in global food security. As the House of Commons Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Select Committee recently argued, the UK has a ‘moral duty’ to increase food production.

This may seem mildly absurd to some readers – British agriculture represents a very small part of our economy and our food exports have been historically low compared to other countries, like the Republic of Ireland. Nevertheless, the UK sits in a region of the world that already has the infrastructure and capacity to produce and to trade. It is also a region that may stand to benefit from climate change. Our vision is a British agricultural sector that stands ready to respond to the challenge of growing demand, a sector that is able to boost production while mitigating its environmental impacts.

So what is needed to bring this vision about? Simply put, we need to create the conditions in which British agriculture can respond through building capacity. There are a number of key ingredients in the recipe.

The first is science. Farmers need the technology and tools that allow them to be more productive, to yield more per acre for less unit of input, be this vegetables, crops, meat or dairy products. Investment in publicly-funded agricultural research and development has declined progressively and this decline must be reversed.

The second is competiveness. The food and farming industries must be able to compete, especially with their European partners. This calls for an approach to regulation that is sensitive to the needs of good business. It also calls for a fiscal environment that encourages farmers and manufacturers to invest for the future.

The third is functioning markets. At an international level the World Trade Organisation needs to look not just at market access, but also the impediments that several major exporters have placed on trade in recent years on exports. And at a domestic level we need fair play in the supply chain to prevent abuse of dominant market power, especially by major supermarkets. This is why a grocery supply chain ombudsman is so essential.

Tom Hind is head of economics and international affairs at the National Farmers’ Union