Editor’s View: Old era of food certainty is nearly over
Harvesting spring barley © GNP “Today, we are undoubtedly in the era of self-sufficiency,” proclaimed Mike Anderson at the inaugural Conference on Food and National Security.
When you hear those words from someone who has twice been a director-general within Defra and served as chief of staff to two heads of MI6, it makes you sit up a bit.
For that is an attack on the foundation of what our understanding of food security has been for hundreds of years – really since we became a great global power.
See also: UK food production falls as farm losses mount, NFU warns
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Since then it has been broadly accepted that domestic production was a nice-to-have but it was our trading relationships with other major exporters and our ability to outbid poorer nations that kept shelves groaning with food.
And no-one disputes that trade is a vital component of food security.
If you suffer a poor harvest, as we have this year, or a disease outbreak, as we have this year, it is nice there are other nations out there with a surplus to top us up.
Of course, some trade will continue in the years ahead, and long may it for the sake of the British consumer, as it has kept food at rock-bottom prices for them.
Yet as we look today at the trade wars spawned by the fracturing of global alliances, such as between the US and Canada, as well as attacks on shipping in the Strait of Hormuz and between Russia and Ukraine, it is easy to see what Mr Anderson means.
The uncertainties of climate change, which will push more regions of the globe into food insecurity in the next decades, will likely further chip away at tradeable surpluses.
And the food that is available is not always something you would want on your plate, as we have seen recently with the salmonella outbreak linked to imported eggs.
The old certainties around imports that we have long relied upon are not dead, but they are in a state of decay.
Does an era with a renewed focus on self-sufficiency mean some North Korea-style future where we put the shutters up? Of course not.
But as Mr Anderson, and other panellists, went on to say it should mean a reframing of how we support farming and our food system before it is too late.
In a world where not every nation is motivated to implement stiff emissions reductions targets – or be a friendly trading partner – we should also go harder and faster at adaptation to equip ourselves to better withstand weather extremes and trading shocks.
As the NFU warned this week, we are not starting from a good place, as UK self-sufficiency has declined in 10 of 11 everyday food categories over the past three decades, including wheat, vegetables, beef, poultry and eggs.
This is one of a slew of contributors to the Food and Drink Federation’s forecast that food inflation will hit 6% by this time next year.
As NFU president Tom Bradshaw told Defra secretary Angela Eagle and MPs assembled in Westminster to mark Back British Farming day on Wednesday (9 September), it doesn’t have to be like this.
But will they act before there are gaps on the shelf?