|
Defra's 20 year Food 2030 integrates policy on food across every department for the first time since the War; demanding increased food production, more sustainable farming methods, and an increased drive to eat local.
The new 20-year food and farming strategy published today acknowledges formally for the first time since then that the UK's food production and distribution affects not just the countryside and environment but our health, social equity, and whether we will even have enough to eat, as natural resources dwindle and climate change disrupts farming.
The policy also recognises the fragility of the current UK food system, which depends heavily on imports, last-minute ordering, and long distribution chains, which are vulnerable to sudden shocks from global price spikes, disruption to fuel supplies, and the impact of climate change on critical infrastructure, such as ports.
Previous Defra policy documents have stressed the importance of the global market in providing food for the UK. Now the government is talking about the need for the UK to increase its own food production and make its food supply more resilient. The new strategy also talks of the UK's "moral responsibility" to ensure that its consumption does not depend on depleting finite resources in other parts of the world, in its prolific use of palm oil from rainforest countries for example.
However, critics have pointed out omissions and fudges, the most significant being that it makes no attempt to address the concentrated power structures that determine global food production and thereby the nature of what we eat.
The Conservatives have managed to steal a march on Labour here, pledging to introduce the supermarket ombudsman called for by the Competition Commission two years ago to tackle the unequal power between farmers, suppliers and the big retailers.
Despite recognising the critical nature of national food supply, the 2030 strategy commits the government to only limited direct intervention, saying it favours instead voluntary-led approaches. The rhetoric remains that of "consumer choice" when many, even in the industry, now believe that consumers will have to get used to less choice.
The strategy touches on the issue of emissions from our high meat consumption, noting it but saying says there is not enough evidence for the government to act further. This after the government's own adviser, the Sustainable Development Commission, concluded only last month that the UK should cut its consumption of meat and dairy from intensive grain-fed systems. The SDC also stressed the need to cut consumption of junk food.
GM is hinted at within the context of ‘getting the public to accept new food science’. The chief scientist, Sir John Beddington, is instead expected to address the issue in a speech tomorrow at the Oxford Farming Conference.
Read Defra's Food 2030 Report
Trackback(0)
 |
TrackBack URI for this entry
Subscribe to this comment's feed
Public RSS