Food Security Policy

Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer Excerpts

Thursday 24th May 2012 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer]

That this House takes note of the Government’s policies on food security.

[Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer]

My Lords, I declare an interest in my family vineyard and farm, Vignobles Temperley, and family cider business. I was absolutely delighted to win this topic in the balloted debate, but I am even happier to see such an array of experts who will contribute. Noble Lords know that even in the UK and Europe we cannot afford to be complacent about food security. We are the lucky post-war generation who, by and large, have not seen shortages. We have only recently begun to understand the importance of the concept of global food security rather than seeing it as an issue only when there is a regional famine or shortage far from these shores.

One of the problems has been that political attention has not really focused on food production or nutritious consumption for a long time. We did not even get government time to debate the Chief Scientific Adviser’s immensely important report The Future of Food and Farming but, just like buses, you wait for ever and then they all come at once. The G8 had food security high on its agenda last weekend. This week, the Environmental Audit Committee in the Commons published its excellent report Sustainable Food and in this House this subject for debate wins the ballot. At least we are focusing attention.

In March this year, the UN high-level task force on food security made the point that there is no one set of policies to tackle food security that is globally applicable, but it identified some key pointers and the crucial importance of sustained political commitment. Historically in the UK, political attention has focused on food production when there has been a crisis or a scare such as salmonella in eggs or a disease such as foot and mouth or BSE. For a moment, food and food issues are a political hot topic, and then attention wanders away again to the more seductive stage of foreign affairs or the Olympics, but circuses would lose their charm without bread. I am pleased that the noble Lord, Lord Curry, is going to speak this afternoon because his commission did a lot to bring this to national attention.

In nations where many people live a precarious existence, a food price increase or a shortage can cause the sort of riots that we saw in dozens of countries in 2008 and that were repeated to some extent during last year’s price spike. Even in rich and middle-income nations, we must assume that things are not always going to be as comfortable and easy as they have been over past decades. The expertise in today’s list of speakers allows me not to attempt to address why and how climate change, water shortages, storage problems and animal diseases are undermining food security.

The only international issue I will touch on is the relatively new phenomenon of some richer nations and multinationals buying up vast tracts of land, especially in Africa: so-called recolonisation or land grabbing. At its worst, land grabbing dispossesses whole villages from their subsidence existence against their will. There is an illusion that big international deals bring investment and new technology to a region, benefiting local people, but in fact that ideal is rarely achieved. More often, local communities are dispossessed of their lands and return, if at all, only as minimally paid workers and profits are exported. Fred Pearce in his recent book, The Land Grabbers, gives many examples from different continents of the huge downsides to the practice. I am sure many of your Lordships have seen examples on your travels. I certainly have, notably in Ethiopia. The UN has just adopted historic land grab guidelines for rich countries buying land in developing nations. Guidelines are better than nothing, but there is something immoral about dispossessing the already very poor to feed the well off better or to provide biofuel for their motorcars. I hope the UK Government will support this UN initiative and ensure that UK-listed companies do not ignore the UN guidelines.

I am going limit the rest my contribution to Britain. This week, the NFU launched the campaign “Farming Delivers for Britain” which demonstrates that our agriculture is a bright spot among the austerity gloom. That is good news indeed, but how well are we caring for the basics that enable that agriculture and make us so well placed to feed ourselves and to maintain healthy exports not just of food but also of knowledge? Knowledge and expertise are probably our most useful contribution to global food security.

I am going to focus on just a few of the essential ingredients of a healthy UK production and consumption food policy and on perhaps the most fundamental thing of all, which is soil. A properly managed soil can do so many different things. It stores carbon, retains water, maintains a vibrant ecosystem, reduces pollutant run-off and cuts greenhouse gas emissions, and also produces healthy, nutritious crops. However, I am sure that your Lordships have often seen water flooding off the fields during heavy rain, washing down the drains into streams and filling rivers. It is even more terrifying when you fly, look down at rivers and see that they are dark brown after heavy rains. That is the soil washing into the oceans. We have not looked after our soils. They are literally disappearing through erosion, including wind erosion. The erosion rate is about five times faster than the formation rate. We are also losing prime soils to development. We are just tarmacking them over. We cannot afford that rate of loss and, if we have not lost it, soil fertility itself has been diminished by farming practices over decades. The Food Ethics Council recently produced an excellent collection of research called Soil: A Fragile Foundation. It highlights the national lack of targets and indicators of a healthy soil. I wonder whether the Minister’s department is tackling that now.

Back in 2006, there was an EU soil thematic strategy which would have helped with some of this but the then UK Government blocked its implementation, thereby setting us back many years. Now I assume that we are supporting the EU soils framework directive wholeheartedly. Then there is the farm regulation review, which suggested a duty of care for soils. Can the Minister say whether Defra is considering that? How does practical support for farming practices—increased soil and health structure—fit into the CAP reform proposals?

Secondly, we should play to our strengths. In the UK, we have some of the best grass-growing conditions in the whole world and a wonderful range of livestock breeds, both old, traditional breeds and modern breeds. Their genetic strengths are in world-wide demand. I hope that Defra’s policy will be to support and strengthen this sector rather than to encourage the development of a livestock sector that will rely on vast quantities of imported soya or require the UK to devote considerable acreage to protein production for cattle lots and dairy production, US-style. How is Defra’s assessment of the intensive dairy proposals going? What work is Defra doing on carbon footprinting the different production methods?

On insects, they have an up side and a down side. The down side is, of course, that they can be such tremendous pests. Last year, a letter in the Times from the UK’s leading entomologists highlighted the fact that there were actually only 10 professors of entomology left in the UK. It is such a crucial area of study—the huge impact of insects on food production and storage. I ask the Minister whether that position has improved.

While I am on the subject of insects, I turn to bees. I welcome Defra’s healthy bee action plan, which is a great step forward. It addresses the health of the honey bee, but the honey bee pollinates only about 15% of our crops and wild flowers that are insect-pollinated. The other 85% are pollinated by the other 265 species of bee and pollinators, which are also suffering severe declines of about half their numbers. Can Defra produce similar plans and guidance to help to ensure that the decline of the wild bee population is halted and reversed?

Food security is all about resilience and diversity. We must value our seed heritage and our different animal breeds. I congratulate Garden Organic on its heritage seed library collection and, indeed, Kew on its work. These and other organisations are guarding and developing for future generations—and, in the case of Garden Organic, for the public to use—a large number of unusual and heirloom varieties.

The hot topic of this afternoon may well be biotechnology. I am looking forward to the contributions on that. Public confidence in GM was adversely affected right at the beginning by the Monsanto approach which tried to prevent farmers saving seed. The public came to understand that it was just about the bottom line and not the public good. That approach bred distrust and suspicion. I hope that we can move away from that first generation of GM. I do not that think GM is the answer to food security issues, but nor should we seek to halt scientific exploration and trials. There are many interesting things to explore. Among the less controversial but very interesting advances of biological sciences that are being progressed is accelerated selective breeding, which deals with same-species genetic changes rather than cross-species manipulation. I am anxious that we not be diverted by huge EU battles over GM. It has already sucked so much political capital, energy and investment, leaving fundamental deficiencies in the rest of the scientific effort. Can the Minister tell us the latest UK position on EU negotiations over GM?

We have another round of CAP reform coming up. We must use this round to make sure that it offers farmers support that is all about farming for the future as well as for today. One of the things that worries me most about the future is the lack of young entrepreneurial people choosing to go into farming and food production. On this, I miss my late noble friend Lord Livsey, who often decried in this House the contraction of our agricultural college places. I hope that that decline has halted or will be put into reverse.

There are lots of other forms of support for farmers, such as co-operatives—buying co-ops, selling co-ops, machinery co-ops—which other countries practise far more than we do. There is a great strength of advice for the struggling lone farmer from that sort of circle. I hope that Defra plans to strengthen co-operation between farmers. There have been some interesting examples in various parts of the country, including Somerset. It is work that needs more impetus.

I am sure that other speakers will highlight other examples and the very interesting report, Innovation in EU Agriculture, from Sub-Committee D of the EU Committee. I am pleased that members of that sub-committee are speaking this afternoon. The report covered developments such as precision agriculture, with precise dosages and timing of fertilisers, and better land practice. I will not have time to talk about agro-forestry or perennial crops, or low-till and no-till regimes, but all these things offer us a tremendous amount for the future. It is actually an exciting time in agriculture.

Amartya Sen said that,

“there is no such thing as an apolitical food problem”.

We have many of the tools that could enable us to solve the issue of precarious food security. We can do it, but we need to keep the political attention firmly focused on food and food security. I beg to move.

[Baroness Verma]

My Lords, I remind noble Lords that this is a time-limited debate. When the clock shows “6”, you are in your seventh minute.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer]

I warmly thank all noble Lords who have spoken and the Minister for his very detailed and thoughtful reply. In doing so, I congratulate him on securing that £250 million for the science budget. It cannot have been easy, and the interview today on “Farming Today” with the director of the BBSRC was a good one, because it showed how the budget would be distributed very generally. We will be glad to see that, and to know that it will not be over-focused on one thing.

I am grateful to noble Lords for focusing on the issue of waste. As so many contributors said, it is ridiculous that we are worrying about feeding more people when we have almost enough food in the world to feed the 9 billion that will be. It is just that we waste it by throwing it away here or it failing in storage in the developing world.

This was an incredibly useful debate. I would very much agree with the noble Lord, Lord Knight of Weymouth, about commodity speculation. That probably merits a whole other debate in itself. I hope that we can look forward to a more regular debate on food security and think that this afternoon will have proved the worth of having one.

Motion agreed.