Jul 18 2008
Waking up to food security
The UK government is at last waking from its long complacent slumbers and asking serious questions about food security. After enjoying an abundant supply of ever cheaper food for the last five decades, the developed world may at last be beginning to realise that we can’t take the essentials of life for granted indefinitely.
Tim Lang, professor of food policy at City University, has long been warning that we are “sleepwalking into a crisis”. Is it possible that we’re waking up in time to find another path?
A rash of reports
After years of waiting for a decent government report on the food system, three come along at once.
Following last week’s Cabinet Office publication of the most important policy statement on food for decades and a Treasury report on global commodities (mostly focusing on food and energy), Hilary Benn (Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs) yesterday released a Defra discussion paper on food security.
Recognising the issues
While Tim Lang talks about “a new era”, even the government is openly raising questions of:
unforeseen disruptions
(Defra)
instability and uncertainty
(HM Treasury)
long-term challenges for world food security
(Cabinet Office)
The Cabinet Office even admits
we are still a long way from having an environmentally sustainable food chain
and
none of [agriculture's emissions and use of resources] is sustainable in the long term
Change to the food system is inevitable and it’s imperative that we do whatever we can to change it for the better.
UK Self-sufficiency
The Defra paper pulls together some revealing figures on the UK’s ability to feed itself. Our current self-sufficiency ratio is currently around 60%, meaning that 60% of the food we eat is produced in the United Kingdom, following steady decline from a peak of 80% in the mid 1980s.
Self-sufficiency in the 1980s was higher than at any time since the early 19th century, representing the peak of post-war agricultural intensification. The nadir of British food production was between the World Wars, when as little as 30% of our food was home grown and Britain relied on its empire to feed it.
Britain was last 100% self-sufficient, or as near as makes no odds, over 250 years ago, when our diets were limited to what we could produce and global trade was almost non-existent. Current food imports are only in part driven by our taste for a diet beyond the temperate produce of these islands. We only produce 80% of the temperate produce we consume.
The benefits of trade
There are powerful arguments for some international trade in food, and not just the exceptionally varied diet we enjoy with barely a thought for the intricacy of the mechanisms that put tea, bananas and tuna on our plates.
The economic law of comparative advantage tells us that all should be better off if we specialise our production and trade. Food security must be considered a global issue and we have to share the world’s production if we’re all to have enough to eat. On the other hand, some trade is simply a profligate waste of resources or a shameful transfer from the poor to the wealthy.
Trade can also bring resilience to our systems of food supply, allowing the movement of food to alleviate unexpected local shortages through severe weather, crop failure or animal disease.
Not just local or global, but sustainable, resilient and equitable
Rather than wasting our time on a polarised argument (local v global), we should be attempting to answer the very difficult question of what constitutes a sustainable, resilient and equitable balance between universally advantageous trade and appropriate local production.
Where does our food come from?
Defra is proud to tell us that no more than 13% of our imports come from a single country, avoiding too much fragile dependence. The majority of imports come from the countries closest to us and are more to do with production techniques and history than extending our diet beyond the confines of our temperate climate.
Our principal supplier is the Netherlands, a country that recognised early two opportunities that now underpin much of our food supply: the advantage of glasshouse production of fruit and vegetables to produce consistent crops through an extended season; and the opportunity to use cheap global grain supplies to produce higher value meat, particularly pigs and poultry. Both types of production are heavily dependent on energy inputs.
A role for communities
The Cabinet Office paper acknowledged that:
community groups, voluntary organisations and social enterprises have an important role to play in supporting activities that promote healthy eating and more sustainable production and consumption, and in encouraging public debate about food issues, and thus in promoting new social norms that facilitate behavioural and cultural change
However, there’s nothing about community, co-operative or domestic action in the Defra paper, which recognises deep-rooted problems with the modern food system without countenancing any truly radical possible solutions, such as those discussed in the recent Growing Food for London conference.
Be consulted
Defra has published this as a consultation paper and is inviting feedback, before issuing a final policy statement on food security later this year. Read the full food security discussion paper and have your say on this critical issue.
Read more…
- Ensuring the UK’s Food Security in a Changing World, Defra’s food security discussion paper
- Patrick Holden of the Soil Association responds to the Defra discussion paper
