The End of Food: The Coming Crisis in the World Food Industry
By Paul Roberts
Bloomsbury £12.99 390 pages
FT Bookshop price: £10.39

When Paul Roberts published his previous book, The End of Oil, in March 2004, Brent Crude was trading at $30 a barrel. In a careful dismantling of the ideology of oil optimism, he predicted that when the peak of oil production was reached, perhaps around 2015, “prices [would] not simply increase, they [would] fly”. We all know what has happened since.