The government’s Food Security Assessment published this week reveals yet another failure by this administration to think strategically, says Simon Heffer in The Daily Telegraph. After energy, education and immigration disasters, this time they’re learning that “if you ignore the plight of farmers, you’ll end up with little food”.
Hence we now discover that self-sufficiency in indigenous food has fallen from 82% in 1998 to 73% in 2008, and between 1997 and 2008 land for vegetable production fell by a quarter. Blame – at least in part – Tony Blair for failure to honour promises made before the 1997 election to extricate us from the European Union’s Common Agricultural Policy, “which militates against the efficiency of our farmers in subsidising the inefficiency of so many abroad”.
Leaving aside the blame game, how worried should we be? asks Martin Hickman in The Independent. Very: the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation estimates that world food supplies need to rise by 70% by 2050 to feed a larger global population of nine billion. Climate change, diminishing energy sources and depleted fish stocks all mean that we “can no longer be complacent about our ability to feed ourselves”.
The good news is that Britain is in a better position than most and we could switch to a system that is “both healthier and more productive”. Britons overeat, with heavy costs for the NHS, while our current production and use of food is “hugely wasteful”. Around 25% of fresh produce doesn’t reach the shops because it fails to meet the cosmetic standards set by supermarkets, some crops are over-watered and it is estimated that we throw away 30% of the food we buy each year.
Globally, “the problem is not that there is not enough food, but that the poor cannot afford it”. Increasing British production – which is part of the UK’s new plan to ‘play a full part’ in hitting the UN’s 2050 target – “will ease the strain on global markets, thus lowering the price of food into the reach of millions”.