Our future food security policy urgently needs rethinking

Having shown us how rotten March can be with the ghastly weather last Wednesday, since then it has shown us its sunny side and as temperatures rise to the mid to high teens things are looking up. The magnolia trees are in full bloom and spring flowers both wild and in gardens are to be seen everywhere. The hedges are budding and have a faint hint of green as the wildlife begins springtime activity and the dawn chorus gets louder.

Liberal Democrat MP and party spokesman on food and rural affairs Tim Farron, speaking at a Save British Food rally in central London last week, called this government’s agricultural policies a ‘deliberate assault’ on farming and rural communities which will do little for the environment but cause enormous damage to our ability to feed ourselves.

With the pig industry, which was just turning the corner, now hit with wheat prices at £320/t and soya at £500/t, the poultry industry in the same place, what will happen to businesses and production? Will food prices increase enough to cover these incredible input costs? The dairy industry is looking at production costs of 40p per litre and cereal farmers’ fertiliser at £1,000/t; massive increases in a matter of months.

The more extensive sectors of beef and sheep are of course affected but not in the same way as the more intensive sectors. These extensive sectors are therefore going to be more important at a time when hill farms which often use no fertiliser or feed are being told to give up food production and plant trees. Future policy for food security needs to be reconsidered and a new approach is urgently needed in these unprecedented times.

Should we plough up Britain? George Monbiot took it upon himself to make the case for re-wilding in The Guardian last week. He was criticising NFU Scotland for asking its government to shelve the more extreme environmental schemes there, and permit more land to be included in food production. George acknowledges that there is a crisis, but he refers to climate change and not the war in Ukraine, writing of a major food crisis caused by floods, droughts and other weather events.

He mentions that Ukraine and Russia combined produce 30 per cent of wheat exports, 15 per cent maize corn and 75 per cent sunflower oil; 12 per cent of the world’s calories in total, which is now unlikely to be available. The reasons for this are the lack of crops planted due to the war and what crops there are, will be consumed at home with Russia possibly banning its own exports. The effects that this will have on the Middle East and North Africa, which are reliant on Ukraine and Russian grain will be dire.

Fertiliser is the other issue which will affect South America and of course Europe. Other exporting countries could react to both the lack of produce exported from the Ukraine and Russia combined with the fertiliser shortage and curtail their own exports, making things worse. However, having agreed all this George Monbiot says that ploughing more land for food production in this country is akin to the call for fracking; too little and too late.

Astonishingly, he advocates that re-wilding should be pursued and the less productive land in England and a great deal more in

Wales and Scotland, should be taken out of food production. These are the hill farms who farm sheep and cattle on extensive systems in this country with little or no fertiliser or feed, producing not only high value red meat but incredible landscapes.

These farms are the pillars of society and communal structure of country life, something which is not valued or indeed understood by environmental groups. Furthermore, having stated how little food is produced on these hill farms, pressure groups then spend most of their time criticising intensive farming methods employed on the good arable land and it is due to them and their ilk that a fair percentage of the output from these farms goes to produce renewable energy; which they criticise.

Monbiot dislikes AD plants and he particularly has it in for bioethanol plants. Farmers will sell to markets which are most profitable and with food production totally devalued both monetarily and in people’s minds, little wonder that farmers turn to renewables; aided and abetted by the Greens. But not all greens are equal and not all greens speak the same language.

There are factions and while some groups advocate a certain direction for government policy, other groups disagree. In fact it is impossible to satisfy all the voices out there and dear old George ends his column with a call for us all to eat plant food. Well thank you very much but the vast majority of us prefer red meat produced on this poorer land, knowing that behind the purchase there are also many valuable things which are protected and funded. It might be a small proportion of the total George, but it is increasingly important, high quality and very tasty.

The reliance on Ukraine and Russia for wheat, fertiliser and gas will have long-lasting impacts on global food supply-chains and food and fuel prices. Less fertiliser applied to cereal crops could lead to lower yields further hampering grain supplies, and while longer term impacts are not yet clear, with tight global wheat stocks and markets looking for more production to balance demand, price will only go one way.

Livestock farms face the same fertiliser costs but more flexibility, but coupled with high feed costs; outputs from dairy farms and beef finishing units could fall back globally, especially across the USA, South America and Australia beef feedlots.

Should we plough up the whole of the UK? Of course not, and I remember stories of the

War Agricultural which was reformed in 1939 with the outbreak of the Second World War, which had extensive powers to direct farmers to require work to be done or face the possible possession of their land. Committees would decide which crops should be in which field. Sounds like the USSR, but British farmers increased land in production in this country by 1.7million acres in one year.

Not that there were very good crops everywhere, but the War-Ag was there with machinery and men to help out. Given that more than 20million people died of starvation and associated illnesses in Europe and Asia during the 1939 to 45 war, which was approximately the same number as soldiers killed in battle, it is interesting that most of the deaths from starvation were in Poland and the USSR. The central focus on Germany’s war effort was to access Poland and the Ukraine’s fertile agricultural land.

War is a terrible business and there are no winners but some lose more badly than others. Even if Putin agrees to cease this needless and reckless war, the consequences will affect everyone for many years and therefore any reactive, listening government should be looking at its food security and how to mitigate the dire costs to its citizens who will need to fund all of this.

If Defra and the government want to continue with prioritising re-wilding and the environment over food security and prices, then the least it can do is come clean about the cost to all of us.