Food shortages are beginning to cast a shadow over the world.

One long-term factor is the warming of our planet, which has slowly destroyed agricultural land. But the proximate cause of greatest concern is the war in Ukraine and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s Black Sea blockade, which is preventing Ukrainian grain and fertilizers from leaving the port of Odessa.

This is an extremely urgent problem, and policymakers are rightly scrambling to solve it. But there is also a generic problem, beyond the immediate emergency, that needs to be understood if we are to overcome the current food crisis. It arises from our failure to keep pace with the march of economic globalization by implementing global policy and conventions.