"That took a third out of your grain supply of the food market and that was a big hit." — Paul Collier, Oxford University

For the last several months, the BBC has been polling nations around the world to get a sense of rising cost of food and energy. Their latest results have been published in time for World Food day.

US consumers have been paying 5.2 percent more for their food over the past year. So the BBC world service embarked upon a little global experiment to see how much consumers were being affected. Every week reporters from eight cities around the world visit the same store, buying the exact same items to compare how the price of food fluctuates over time. Richard Collings joins us with the World Service Food Price Index, next on The Takeaway

Agriculture is a $31-billion industry in California — no state is bigger for farming. But with California in a drought, state-enforced water rationing is forcing farmers to abandon fields and lay off workers. The Takeaway talks to the mayor of Mendota, California, where hundreds have been left hungry, and with Sacramento Bee reporter Matt Weiser about the difficult choices the state is facing.

In the past month, Somalia has witnessed a sharp increase in violence directed at international aid workers, many of them employees of Western organizations, who deliver food and medical relief to the more that 1.1 million refugees living in Somalia.

The signs are all around us: salmonella outbreaks; riots over food shortages; fears over mad cow disease; water shortages; skyrocketing global food prices. These are portents for the end of easily accessible food. Paul Roberts, author of "The End of Food" and "The End of Oil" sees the potential cataclysm ahead.

The United Nations has convened a high-level conference of the World Food Program in Rome to discuss the challenges of climate change, bioenergy and food security amid rises prices. Making an appearance is Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe, whose own country faces an inflation rate of 165,000 percent.