'Groupthink' is a pernicious concept – it's been around a long time, but now drives social media.

The views of a 'group' not only dominate, but become accepted as right and the only acceptable position. By definition, others are then wrong and outside the fold.

Their views are not only ignored, but become unacceptable to others in the group, or in the case of social media to society in general. This discourages different, let alone radical thinking.

It is a modern concept on social media, but George Bernard Shaw identified its existence a long time ago, when he said all progress depends on change and that the man who cannot change his mind, cannot change anything.

With the world food supply under a pressure not seen for a decades and possibly never before on the current scale outwith world wars, now is the time for radical thinking. The problem, which had showed some faint signs of easing, got worse this week when Russia slammed the door on its deal to allow grain to leave the blockaded black Sea ports.

The trade has not yet halted, but there is a big question mark over its future. We are now even further away from what was normality just a few months ago, before Russia invaded Ukraine in February and smashed the world order as we knew it.

The global importance of food security should be ushering in a new age of agricultural improvement – a restoration of the Jonathan Swift view about the absolute importance of the person growing two blades of grass where one grew before.

That is happening at one level, with agriculture and food now higher on the global political agenda than for many years. However, the 'groupthink' mentality about how this should be delivered will not let go, even in the face of a global crisis.

The United Nations has acknowledged the threat posed by fertiliser prices and availability and the need to solve this problem. However, instead of a laser focus on practical measures about what could be done by industry, its comments are tied up with the need to support small farmers and the need for green solutions around farmers using fertiliser more effectively.

Bureaucrats need to learn that effective use of costly ingredients is what farmers have been trying to achieve for generations. They do not set out to waste resources, but they cannot control the weather and other outside factors.

More precision farming is part of the solution, but that will be delivered by progressive farmers who, despite the groupthink view, tend to be bigger and already more successful.

At an EU level, this same problem exists. When food security is, rightly, addressed and solutions debated they are inevitably linked to green messages.

The conventional wisdom is to link these solutions to climate change mitigation and to the fact that tackling this will help agricultural productivity in the future. Again, the thinking is dominated by idealism about the solutions, when what is needed is action now to make the food supply more secure.

That would come from the two blades of grass thinking, which in more recent terms has been described as sustainable intensification. This is a green solution, in that productivity is a better way to produce more food than methods, such as extensive farming or organics, which seek to deliver the same result by bringing more land into production.

That releases more carbon than the farming methods save, but this is thinking deemed unacceptable under groupthink philosophies.

Small might be beautiful, but big can not only be beautiful but the most effective way farming can respond to the food crisis. Scientists know this, but saying it or calling for work in this area is not the way to secure funding from institutions wedded to conventional wisdom.

Groupthink is only swept away when pressures to avoid the alternative become too great. We have been brought up by its exponents to consider meat bad for us and the planet.

However, a group of scientists recently challenged this orthodoxy, claiming that in moderation meat is good for our health. Now, some of the businesses producing synthetic meat are struggling financially.

They are discovering what common sense should have told them – that meat eaters do not want substitutes, while vegetarians and vegans are not interested in things that look like the product they do not want to eat.

Groupthink, it seems, can be the road to financial ruin as well as world hunger.