Rice paddies the only answer

With news that an award winning West Sussex vineyard will be ditching its entire 2012 crop to ensure consistently high standards, comes confirmation that North America's recent mid-west drought has scuppered their wheat crops, Northern Europe's constant rain has ensured potato blight, peculiar apples and a dearth of perfectly formed vegetables. I am searching for ideas for cheap food sources for the coming winter months.

Pasta, a family staple, is clearly affected by the price of wheat, ditto - obviously - breads. All those animals feed on grain, what grain? There will be an air of extravagance with morning toast, an hoick in the price of your Sunday roast, a bitter taste to the apple crumble and doubt as to the origin of your pasty looking packet of Smash (I jest not, it could come to this).

Soups - perhaps vegetable soups made with all these ungainly looking crops will become the mainstay of our winter existence and, for carbohydrates, rice paddies are clearly the only answer. Here in the celestial swamp we have ready prepared ground, irrigation not an issue, a few people walking up and down in oversized wellies will churn the land up to a suitable degree. My only question; which can doubtless be answered by the International Rice Research Institute, located in the Philippines but at its helm a redoubtable scientist from North Somerset, is can rice live in constant drizzle at a temperature consistently below 15 degrees celsius in the summer months and at approximately 5 or 6 degrees in the winter. Perhaps the time has come to develop such a strain!