A Good Food Strategy

The Oxford Farming Conference saw the launch by Hilary Benn of the government’s food strategy ‘Food 2030’. This was Defra’s follow-up to the Cabinet Office Strategy Unit’s report in July 2008 ‘Food Matters’. The objective is familiar; the achievement of a “sustainable and secure food system for 2030” and includes both agriculture and fisheries.

The document is not politically controversial (from the point of view of the major UK political parties), placing emphasis on free trade, education (of both the consumer and producer) and carbon reduction. At times, the emphasis on influencing the global situation seems almost to hark back to the days of empire. The broad strategy may be immune to a change in government and could prove as significant for the industry as Sir Donald Curry’s policy commission report ‘On the Future of Farming and Food’.

Nick Herbert, shadow Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, welcomed the strategy even though he suggested that it smacked of a Soviet 20-year plan and indicated, quite reasonably, that while a food strategy for Defra was needed, it was rather overdue.

Accompanying the strategy are another two reports: ‘UK Cross-Government Food Research and Innovation Strategy’ (from the Government Science Office launched by Professor John Beddington, the Government Chief Scientific Adviser also at the Oxford Farming Conference) and a background report ‘Indicators for a Sustainable Food System’.

The reports all have a common structure:
1. Enabling and encouraging people to eat a healthy, sustainable diet
2. Ensuring a resilient, profitable and competitive food system
3. Increasing food production sustainably
4. Reducing the food system’s greenhouse gas emissions
5. Reducing, reusing and reprocessing waste
6. Increasing the impact of skills, knowledge, research and technology

The stated objectives are:

• Informed consumers to enable selection of healthy and sustainable food provided by profitable, competitive, highly skilled and resilient farming, fishing and food businesses, supported by first class research and development.

• Management of food production, processing and distribution to feed a global population: using global resources sustainably; maintaining a healthy natural environment and a high standard of animal welfare; protecting food safety; making a significant contribution to rural communities; and showing global leadership on food sustainability.

• Food security achieved through a strong UK agricultural sector and international trade.

• A low carbon production system through efficient resource use and waste management.

The strategy recognises that food supply is increasingly a global issue and therefore cannot be easily dealt with in national isolation. Thus, the strategy requires greater international collaboration and sharing of research. Similarly, the strategy aims to increase freedom of trade to align production better with the market requirement, while ensuring that production is sustainable, and that appropriate recognition is given to the supply of public goods. This can only be achieved in the context of the global supply chain.

A role for government is also seen in safeguarding social equity. Redistribution of food that would otherwise be wasted is also proposed.

Nationally, the strategy favours voluntary initiatives such as the Campaign for the Farmed Environment and, internationally, agreements such as that between Kraft Foods and the Rainforest Alliance. However, legislation may also be introduced. Origin labelling has been a component of food policy since at least the days of Tory agricultural Minister John Gummer but is increasingly being coupled to consumer education. Information on health targets (reduced salt, reduced saturated fat, reduced sugar and a reduction in obesity, in order to reduce cancer and cardiovascular disease) and environmental targets (carbon and water sustainability) are to be added to the label mix. It is clearly not sufficient simply to add data; it also needs to be understood. The strategy requires education in these areas as well as in food preparation. Government intends to lead through public procurement.

In order to achieve accurate labelling the strategy focuses on research to ensure the robustness of the nutritional and, more particularly, sustainability targets. The strategy treats carbon separately from other environmental and sustainability concerns and recognises the confusion with regard to emissions associated with meat.

Lifecycle analysis (PAS2050) of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions is prominent, and not just a reduction in national emissions. This changes the emphasis from the national reduction targets to a global reduction. The strategy requires the food chain to reduce CO2 emissions by 22% or 3Mt by 2020. Anaerobic digestion remains part of the strategy.

The aim is to improve the robustness of the UK food chain to deal with issues such as flooding and global price spikes. Nevertheless, the rise in food price was not seen to have had a significant influence on the nutritional quality of the diet in the UK, although it was important elsewhere.

While Hilary Benn managed not to mention it in his Oxford speech, farm profitability is an objective of the strategy. However, any increase in profitability is largely expected to be a consequence of research, for example, into more efficient resource allocation (such as may be achieved through GM crops) and more collaboration through the food chain. Education, or more particularly encouragement to take up training opportunities within the agriculture sector, is also part of the strategy.