English Government Food Strategy: Professor Tim Lang reflects:1

Professor Tim Lang, Commissioner on the UK Government’s Sustainable Development Commission from 2006 to 2011, was a hill farmer in the 1970s.  For many years he has been engaged in academic research and debate about food policy, advising many bodies, from the European Commissioner for the Environment to the Mayor of London.

In 2022 his review of the Government’s 33-page report, What the English Government Food Strategy says to Europe, was published in UK in a Changing Europe.*

Tim Lang found it disappointing. The GFS is a strictly English document. There is no hint of addressing unequal food power in it, no future regionalism and no promise of Committee of the Regions giving needs-based support.

Henry Dimbleby (right) to whose Independent Review this is supposed to be the official response, has already said “it is not a strategy”.

Lightly edited extracts

The steep rises in global food prices now affecting world markets have widely been seen as a wake-up call, even in the UK. The food system is oil-dependent. Oil-based fertilisers, which enabled the massive production increases from the 1960s is a source of weakness not strength.

Big challenges are upon us: climate change, diet-related ill-health (think obesity), social inequalities, the purpose of land, food standards. The GFS side-steps all these by deciding not to legislate.

By ducking serious politics, the GFS actively delegates trouble to future Governments and present citizens. Its 33 pages are a smorgasbord of ideas which talk of data sharing, food poverty alleviation, and market realignments. 

Arguably the most sensitive politics of the day is food prices. Dimbleby stressed that for the population to eat healthier diets requires those on low incomes to have more incomes, plus welfare support, mass free school meals, and interventions to end what he called the junk food cycle.

The White Paper simply side-steps these and refers them to the Department of Health and Social Care. The UK has the highest consumption of ultra-processed foods (high in salt, sugars and fat) in Europe (See PHN article).

The UK has a huge food manufacturing sector. What is Government going to do about it? Meanwhile the UK produces 11% of the fruit it consumes and 55% of its vegetables. What is the government planning to do about these issues?

What is land for? Homes and roads, even solar farms, not food farms is the policy!

Public concern about chlorinated chicken and weakened meat standards have already shown they can damage the Government. It’s why Dimbleby’s report was expected to become a new Food Bill. Defra Secretary of State George Eustice ruled this out, leaving him wriggle-room for future trade deals.

Most room for political manoeuvre and appetite for change exists at the sub-national level of governance. It’s where the food start-ups exist, where the need to rethink multi-functional land use most matters.

Andy Burnham, Mayor, Greater Manchester, Jamie Driscoll, Mayor, North of Tyne, racy Brabin, Mayor, West Yorkshire, Steve Rotherham, Mayor, Liverpool City Region, and Dan Jarvis, MP, Barnsley Central & Mayor, South Yorkshire.

The M10 group of metropolitan mayors, for instance, could now be kick-starting bio-regional food economies which deliver resilience for climate change ahead. They could be developing shorter supply chains to deliver the low carbon, low calorie food systems of the future.

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Food crises and the spectre of collapse: Alan Simpson

Tractors pass in front of the Coliseum in a farmers’ protest in Rome, Italy, February 15, 2024

A summary of the recently published article by Alan Simpson

The Guardian put the protestors’ case in a nutshell – “Farmers have said they face falling sale prices, rising costs, heavy regulation, domineering retailers, debt, the climate crisis and cheap imports, all within an EU agricultural system based on the premise that ‘bigger is better’”.

For farmers, struggling to pay the bills and survive, you can see the appeal of narrow, Far Right solutions. Blame bureaucracy and climate obligations. Blame foreigners and cheap imports.

The globalisation liberal societies have embraced has become the ideology that would destroy us. Globalisation became a mandate for the multinationals. Corporate fiefdoms hoover the lifeblood out of our soils, societies and solidarities. Their voracious accumulation of wealth detached itself from public wellbeing.

Political elites that became the defenders of such a moribund ideology would end up as our undertakers not our life-savers.

Wherever you look, extreme weather events are disrupting food production and the seasonality of planting and harvesting.

Britain is awash with water, made worse by the chemicals and fertilisers then flowing into our streams, rivers and bathing waters. Flooding is exacerbated not just by the intensity of downpours but by farm practices that still plough fields in vertical furrows, rather than following Europe’s preference for horizontal ‘terracing’.

La Viñuela reservoir in Malaga province, 2023

At the other extreme, reservoirs in southern Spain are down to 4% capacity. Some of South America’s greatest rivers are reduced to trickles, and great swathes of their forest ‘lungs’ are being ripped out in uncontrollable fires. California and Eastern Australia seem to have had their share of both flood and fire … And it’s about to get worse.

AMOC – the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation – is the ocean circulation pattern that gives Britain the temperate climate we have been blessed with. Climate scientists have been warning for decades that global warming, and melting polar icecaps, are weakening the ‘pump’ that pushes warm water up from the Gulf of Mexico, holding back the Siberian cold front that, in winter, would wish to embrace us.

If the pump stops, which at some point looks likely, all bets about weather patterns will be off. Farmers (and a host of unconventional food producers) need to be part of a conversation about what local, national and international food security must then look like:

• guaranteeing farmers a secure living wage (see NI Farm Welfare Bill);
• prioritising more localised production and distribution networks (following the example of Liège’s ‘Food-Land Belt’ which aims to produce 50% of its food needs from within its own region);
• shifting from carbon intensive farming to organic and regenerative systems;
• prioritising low-mileage, local distribution networks over the international demands of supermarkets;
• levying carbon taxation on food imports and processes; and offering 50% reductions on business rates for goods produced within 50 miles of their urban outlets;
• making soil health and environmental repair part of the deal.

The French farmer who pointed out that the fields he was to set-aside would otherwise have produced 300,000 baguettes was making an important point. Families don’t feed off empty shelves.  

In France, fallow land covers about 300,000 hectares. It may now be used because of shortages due to the war in Ukraine (Euractive)

We desperately need a new coalition between farmers, families and climate activists. Innovative programmes of urban agriculture are already creating new links between low-mileage food and farming.

In Britain, expanding the current production of sea vegetables around the nation’s coastline would both clean up our waters and offer huge nutritional value to the food chain.

We have to take power away from the fiefdoms that control distorted food markets, disfigured landscapes and dilapidated politics. It could happen if citizens movements – North and South – rise up to offer a different narrative.

If today’s politics is in its death throes anyway, what have we to lose? Only the chains that bind us to junk food, no food, or to fiefdoms that impoverish the grower, the eater and the Earth that we depend on.

It ought to be an easy choice.

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A link to this, and many other articles by Alan Simpson, may be seen here.

 

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FT editorial board and WEF back agri-business giants, South Africa resists the advance of GM corporates and – worldwide – some grow and eat local food

A recent Financial Times editorial correctly notes that – for all but the largest enterprises – farming at the best of times involves big risks and meagre financial rewards.

Farmers say that in recent years input and borrowing costs have soared due to inflation and the war in Ukraine. Margins have been squeezed by retailers trying to hold down prices in the cost of living crisis. And they complain of being undercut by imports, including Ukrainian products as the EU has thrown open its doors to support Kyiv’s economy.

However, the editorial concludes that – given the difficulty of making a living from farming today – turning farms into more stable businesses owned by companies that can afford to invest might keep more people on the land.

Source: Pennsylvania Food & Ag Careers

In contrast, award-winning food and trade policy analyst Devinder Sharma,  deplores lobbyists pushing hard for more corporate control over agriculture.

He observes that, at the national and the global level, the policy framework often hinges on the strategy that agri-business giants spell out. Whether it is left, right or the centre the political leadership’s skewed economic thinking is so dominant that it is difficult to penetrate the with saner alternatives.

One example is that the System Initiative on Shaping the Future of Food Security and Agriculture that the World Economic Forum initiated at Davos in 2017,  is dominated by chief executives, ministers and heads of international organisation and others. Agri-business framed the global agenda for food security, nutrition and agriculture. The earlier Vision for Agriculture launched in 2015 also had industry majors leading the programme.

Sharma adds that according to DeSmog, a ‘journalistic and activist’ website focussing on topics related to climate change, representatives of the largest pesticides companies – Bayer, BASF, Corteva and Syngenta, with fertiliser companies like Yara and OCP Group were favoured with frequent meetings with the selected MEPs – eight times more than the meetings with NGO representatives.

South Africa’s Agriculture Minister Ms Thokozile Didiza (left) overrules Industry and Appeal Board decision on gene editing, rejecting the challenge by a powerful consortium of agricultural industry actors, under the aegis of the Agricultural Business Chamber of South Africa, the South African National Seed Organisation and CropLife.

GM Watch reports that the African Centre for Biodiversity (ACB) welcomes the decision that the risk assessment framework existing for GMOs will also apply to new breeding techniques (NBTs).

According to the ACB, these NBTs are intended to function as colonial mechanisms to entrap agricultural and food systems, and secure and capture new markets for industrially produced corporate-owned seed, and should therefore be banned. The beneficiaries of these technologies will not be the people of South Africa but the corporations who own them.

Traceability and labelling of all GMOs are prerequisites for the freedom of choice for both consumers and farmers, and their exclusion from regulation would accelerate the privatisation of seed and its ownership, at the cost of consumers and farmers.

There are local food growing and selling initiatives all across the world; Local Futures estimates they number over half a million.

Community Supported Agriculture is a multi-stakeholder cooperative for CSA farms across the UK. It has over 150 farm members, representing over 25,000 people enjoying produce from CSAs and numbers continue to grow.

Half a million local food projects, like the ACB, will continue to stress the urgent need to move to more sustainable, ecologically and socially just agricultural systems: avoiding harmful industrial methods, including monoculture crops, factory farms, unsustainable fishing practices, and other practices that damage the environment and contribute to climate change.

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2024: the NFU manifesto stresses that food is a priority for voters going into the next election

Seven different environment secretaries have overseen policy since the UK voted to leave the EU in 2016 and the president of the National Farmers Union, Minette Batters (below left), points out that the system is still area based so that large landowners continue to benefit disproportionately.

“The focus at the moment is on growing a crop for the environment and not producing food . . . I think that’s going to be really hard with the cost of living crisis,” said Ms Batters, adding that consumers cared more than ever about food security (Financial Times).

The NFU has called on all parties ahead of the next general election to commit to domestic production targets

That would offer security to farmers who are struggling with high production costs and “the biggest shake up in agricultural policy since 1947”. “Farmers will vote for whoever has a credible plan for food production,” said the NFU president. 

NFU public opinion research shows that:

• 84% think food production targets are either as important or more important than environmental targets for farming.
• 82% say it would be a good idea for the government to set targets to increase British food production.
• 66% think that the parties’ plans on farming will be one of the issues that affects who they vote for at the next general election.
• 66% think that a commitment to a long-term plan for food and farming will be an important factor in who they vote for at the next election.

The group said the government should set and report on food production targets in the same way it sets environmental targets.

The NFU manifesto for the 2024 General Election stresses that food is a priority for voters going into the next election. Farmers and growers need action from the next government, not just warm words. Investing in domestic food production means we can increase our productivity, create more jobs and deliver much more for the economy and for the environment. In other words, working with us will enable us to continue farming for Britain’s future.

Stabilising farming incomes allows farm businesses to look beyond short-term market and cashflow pressures and invest for the long-term in productivity and environmental delivery, providing the foundation for a resilient, competitive and sustainable domestic agricultural sector which delivers food security and csres for the environment.

Investing in the economic stability of the agricultural sector benefits everyone: we can increase our food productivity, create more jobs and deliver much more for the economy and the environment.

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Cornwall’s eco-friendly New Holland T7 tractor: energy independent and carbon neutral

As government is pressing farms to decarbonise, despite its relaxed attitude to permitting new carbon generating oil and gas exploration licences, the world’s first manure-powered tractor has been unveiled by an award-winning Cornish firm.

The New Holland T7 tractor (above), fuelled by farm slurry, would see pastoral farms become “energy independent” and “carbon neutral”.

Bennamann, its Cornish maker, finds that the tractor matches the performance standards of its diesel alternative.

It makes a contribution to fulfilling their aim of creating a circular economy model for livestock agriculture and delivering a local clean energy revolution.

Chris Mann (left), the co-founder of Bennamann, told journalist Floris de Bruin (below right): “The T7 liquid methane-fuelled tractor is a genuine world-first and another step towards decarbonising the global agricultural industry and realising a circular economy.”

The 270bhp tractor is powered by capturing the methane that would otherwise escape from cow manure – called “fugitive methane” – then treating and compressing the gas for use as liquid fuel. Its cryogenic fuel tank keeps the methane as a liquid at -162C.

The technology has the potential to remove large amounts of methane from the atmosphere, which “has more than 80 times the atmospheric warming power of carbon dioxide over 20 years”, added Mr Mann.

Gilles Mayer, a member of New Holland’s global management team for alternative fuels, explained in Floris de Bruin’s article, that a150-cow farm would balance the CO2 emissions of 140 households in the UK per year.

He explained how the tractor is currently limited to using cow and pig manure, but that New Holland is working to expand the fuel’s source to other livestock manure such as that of poultry.

Last year, Bennamann conducted a pilot study in Cornwall which saw the T7 prototype tractor successfully reduce its carbon emissions from 2,500 tonnes to 500 tonnes, without sacrificing performance against its diesel alternative.

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Notes on plough or no till controversy

 

 

 

 

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Webinar: opportunities with renewable energy technologies suitable for on-farm use

Opportunities around renewable energy

Thursday 15th June , 5pm – 6:15pm

Register now

Renewable energy sources can displace fossil fuel use, reducing emissions on and off-farm. They can also help decrease national reliance on energy sources with volatile prices, and create new economic diversification opportunities for farmers. In this session we will explore opportunities with renewable energy technologies suitable for on-farm use that can include: ·         Anaerobic digestion ·         Geothermal ·         Solar thermal infrastructure ·         Wind turbines ·         Solar panels (photovoltaic) ·         Rechargeable batteries

Can’t make it live? Register anyway and we’ll send you the recording!

Catch up on the Transition webinar series so far: ·         Air and water – Private money for public goods ·         Genetics and varietal choice – in built traits for arable farmers ·         How to improve the resilience of your livestock business ·         Co-benefits of sustainable farm carbon sequestration ·         Stress-testing your farm business ·         Data & livestock farming – improving your productivity ·         Risk & reward: how to make money out of carbon ·         How to reduce your farm’s greenhouse emissions

 

 

 

 

Money and politics cause the gap between the rhetoric and action when it comes to climate change: Graihagh Jackson

  

Professor Bill McGuire (right) pointed out in the BBC’s first Rethink programme (6.21), that during the next 30 years, food supply and food security will be severely threatened if little or no action is taken to address climate change and the food system’s vulnerability to climate change’.

He was quoting the opening words of an article by Professor John Roy Porter (crop ecology and physiology, biological modelling).

Money and politics cause the gap between the rhetoric and action when it comes to climate change according to the presenter of the Climate Question podcast, Graihagh Jackson.  In Britain, money and politics have been actively involved in shaping several aspects of land use, including tourism, as noted in this timeline: 

In 2001 Christopher (now Lord) Haskins of Northern Foods pinned his hopes for the Lake District on tourism and the trade generated by servicing this sector [his ready meals?], praising the scenic caravan and holiday park sector which “has ‘shown the way’ to the rest of the tourism and hospitality industry in terms of the sustainable development of the tourism product”.

‘Wild Ennerdale’ 

In 2002 the New Scientist reported that farmers in Britain were given a new mission by the Policy Commission on the Future of Farming and Food: to switch from growing food to caring for the countryside – making tourism this country’s second-best earner. Agricultural heritage centres were built in rural areas and former industrial and mining areas were encouraged to turn to tourism for regional revitalisation and put manufacturing machinery in museums. Renewable energy proposals were often blocked, fearing adverse impacts on tourism.

In 2005 An Act of Parliament set up Natural England to implement the recommendations (to develop ‘the tourism product’) made by Lord Haskins, whose large food corporation produces pizza, biscuits, ready meals, sandwiches, salads and puddings using cheap imported food to keep costs down.

 In 2013 the ten-year-old ‘Wild Ennerdale’ scheme was set up. It is described as a partnership between local people and organisations which – significantly – are now the primary landowners in the Ennerdale Valley: The National Trust (NT), The Forestry Commission (FC). United Utilities and Natural England’. Its website reports that farm tenants, local businesses, the YHA, local people and volunteers “have caught onto the excitement and vision” of this attempt to turn a landscape back into a wilderness.

Farmer: we are being led by a group of influential people pursuing an impossible ecological utopia . . . politicians, TV propagandists and ecological fantasists 

A Cumbrian hill farmer commented on a Countryfile programme which began by referring to Snowdonia as a ‘playground’, “This is a gratuitous insult to the many generations who have managed to wrest a living from these hills and whose toil created and maintain the landscape, and who provide the nursery for the livestock that feed Britain . . . We are being led by a group of influential people pursuing an impossible ecological utopia . . . I have little patience with politicians, TV propagandists and ecological fantasies at the moment”.

There is however, a more solid dimension to this apparently idealistic preoccupation with play and fantasy: hard cash – with Chinese visitors making an average double ‘spend’. 

Travel Weekly records the World Travel & Tourism Council’s figure that pre pandemic (2019) “The Travel & Tourism industry contributed £35.6 billion to the UK economy and a Visit Britain forecast by Deloitte foresaw a tourism industry worth over £257 billion by 2025.

Will government ever realise the folly of relying on finance and tourism and redirect their energy and our money to build a stable economy in which skilled people, using sustainable technologies, once again produce essential material wealth – food, energy and goods.

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