Food policy is in desperate need of considered direction if a sustainable food system is to emerge from the modern food industry, analysed by Tim Lang in his books The Atlas of Food: Who Eats What, Where and Why (updated edition 2008, with Erik Millstone) and Food Wars: The Battle for Mouths, Minds and Markets
The new fundamentals of food policy
In the meantime, the transcript of Tim Lang’s speech to the Garden Organic AGM 2008 gives a compelling insight into his recent thoughts on the rapidly changing food policy landscape. In this speech, Professor Lang identifies the ten “new fundamentals” of the 21st century world of food:
- Oil and energy
- Water
- Climate change
- Biodiversity
- Demographics
- Urbanisation
- Labour
- Nutrition transition
- Health care costs
- Battles of power and price volatility
Each of these issues clearly plays an important part in the working of the food system and the way we eat. Each of them must be addressed and the right answers found if we’re to create a sustainable food system, in the real sense of one that can feed us and future generations. It’s reassuring that Tim Lang is a member of Defra’s recently created Council of Food Policy Advisors.
The only obvious gap in this list of fundamentals is any recognition of taste and culture, the aspects of food that can bring so much rich pleasure and fulfilment to our everyday lives.
Summarising the fundamentals
The following clips show Lang’s concise summaries of each of the ten fundamentals and why they matter:
