New challenges ahead in the coming 70 years

MANY of us will have been reflecting on the changes that have taken place over the past 70 years as we collectively celebrated the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee.

In this context, when the Queen came to the throne, we were still in the post-war austerity years with many food items such as sugar, butter, cheese, margarine, cooking fat, bacon, meat and tea all still being rationed.

It is therefore no surprise that at that time, the drive in agriculture was to produce more food.

This came in the form of the so called green revolution which was a series of research, development and technology transfer initiatives, between the 1940s and the late 1970s.

It increased agriculture production in the UK and around the world, especially from the late 1960s. This green revolution was credited with saving more than a billion people from starvation and key to the increase in food production was the widespread use of artificial fertilisers and pesticides.

Farmers were also encouraged to produce more food through a variety of subsidy schemes, both before and after the UK entered the then EEC in 1973.

All these developments brought wealth and prosperity to agriculture in the early years of the Queen’s reign but by the mid-1980s questions were beginning to be asked about the economic and environmental consequences of the Green Revolution and the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy in particular.

This resulted in milk quotas being introduced in 1984 and then set aside in order to control overproduction.

In time, area-based subsidies were introduced which became an important part of a farmer’s income.

Now it is all change, as this form of subsidy is being phased out altogether in England following our departure from the EU.

These area-based payments are being replaced by a whole series of environmental payments, heralding a completely different form of green revolution where food production no longer appears to be at the heart of the Government’s agricultural policy. However, it is also sobering to note that as the Queen came to the throne, we were recovering from a global conflict that saw its roots in Europe and we are now witnessing another European conflict the likes of which many had hoped we would never see again.

The war in Ukraine has already had a massive impact on fuel and food prices and one cannot help questioning whether, alongside the Government’s environmental agenda, which is important, there also needs to be a coherent food policy.

During the past 70 years we have undoubtedly seen a massive increase in food production which has benefited the human population worldwide, but this has come at a massive cost to biodiversity and the wider environment.

Thus, the challenge for the next 70 years will be to balance these sometimes conflicting forces to create a sustainable future for both the world’s human population as well as the global ecosystem.

■ James Stephen, Carter Jonas