Climate Change and Biodiversity: Food Security

Lord Benyon Excerpts

Thursday 8th September 2022 Lords Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord Benyon) (Con)]

My Lords, I refer noble Lords to my entry in the register. I start by congratulating the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, on securing this debate, and welcome this opportunity to respond on the matter of climate change and biodiversity loss impacts on food security. I thought she made an outstanding speech. I agreed with so much of it, and I shall try to address as many points as I can in the course of my speech. I recognise her extensive experience in the area of food insecurity, particularly as chair of the London Food Board and as a trustee of the Food Foundation.

The Food Foundation is a fantastic organisation doing extensive work on the rise in UK households experiencing food insecurity and providing key research in this area, helping the Government to shape policy.

I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Young, for drawing to our attention, on this poignant day, the Queen’s Green Canopy. I echo all the sentiments offered to the Royal Family in today’s debate.

I join everyone in welcoming the noble Baroness, Lady Willis, to this place, and congratulate her on an absolutely outstanding maiden speech. One of the best duties that I have as a Minister is being responsible for the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and before being a professor of biodiversity at the University of Oxford, the noble Baroness was director of science at Kew, an extraordinary institution of global repute. It delivers so much for this country, not just in terms of what it provides to us as policymakers and to people who learn from it, but also soft power abroad, giving enormous heft to the attempts to tackle the very subject which we are debating today. The role of the noble Baroness there, and the roles of those people who are still at Kew, are extraordinary. Her addition to this House will be of enormous value. We need people who understand science and who can inform debates. I welcome her wholeheartedly and congratulate her on her maiden speech.

In the UK, we are privileged to have a highly resilient food supply chain, as demonstrated in the Covid-19 response. It is well equipped to deal with situations with the potential to cause disruption. Our high degree of food security is built on supply from diverse sources: strong domestic production as well as imports through stable trade routes. We produce 61% of all the food we need, and 74% of the food we can grow or rear in the UK for all or part of the year. These figures have changed little in the last 20 years.

It is vitally important that we continue to meet our food production needs, while protecting our food supply and resilience from the adverse effects of climate change and biodiversity loss. As the noble Baroness on the Front Bench opposite said, the FAO, in its report The State of Food and Agriculture 2021, asserted:

“To feed a world population forecast to reach 9.7 billion in 2050, agriculture may need to produce 40-54% more food, feed and biofuel feedstock than in 2012. Improving water security, restoring species abundance—particularly in pollinators—and protecting soil health so that it functions effectively, is crucial to food security, and closely linked to the significant action that we are taking to tackle climate change and biodiversity loss.”


It is very welcome to have the Climate Change Committee’s chair here today. Its Independent Assessment of UK Climate Risk was published in 2021. It offers a detailed and up-to-date insight into the growing risks and opportunities that the UK faces from climate change, including the risks to food supply chains. In this report, the committee notes that the risks to future domestic food productivity and food supply chains are high. Water scarcity is likely to be an early factor affecting the viability and quality of agricultural land in many parts of the world, impairing the ability to grow crops in the conventional way. Many noble Lords have made powerful statements about both the domestic experience that we have had here of recent weather extremes, and experiences abroad.

This means that international food security could become more dependent on the ability of the temperate regions of the world, such as the UK, to produce food sustainably. Here in the UK, climate impacts could include reduced soil function due to erosion and through extreme weather events, causing flooding and leading to increasingly compacted soils, and droughts, thereby causing low soil-moisture levels. There is also a greater risk of pests, pathogens and invasive species, as well as disruption to supply chains from climate change overseas.

Every month, we have a biosecurity meeting. I confess, at times, the picture of some of the pests and diseases that are either here or coming here, and with which we are trying to deal, is very bleak. This is a very sobering immediate impact from climate change to which we need to react.

The noble Baroness, Lady Jones, asked about net zero. The simple answer is that, yes, there is an absolute commitment. It really would not matter if there was not, because it is in law. No Government could possibly get a reversal of our intentions to achieve net zero through both Houses. It was announced today that my colleague in the other place Chris Skidmore is to lead a review on net zero to find the most efficient and fastest way to reach our climate targets. That will report to the new Prime Minister by the end of the year.

Recognising the importance of food security, under the Agriculture Act 2020 the Government made a commitment to produce an assessment of our food security at least once every three years. The first UK food security report was published last December and covers food security in the widest sense, from global food availability and sustainability to domestic supply chain resilience, household food security and food safety. We published the government food strategy this summer, setting out a plan to transform our food system to ensure it is fit for the future.

The point of the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, about the ability to produce food from less land was well made. Martin Lines, who runs the Nature Friendly Farming Network, said to me—I think this is right—that he is producing the same amount of food from 11% less land. That 11% is turned over to nature. I will come on to talk about how we can be positive because, as we have seen, nature can recover very quickly. There are plenty of examples of that now. We can produce food and be secure in our supply chains, but we can also do it sustainably and protect future generations, as the Dasgupta review requires of us, if we follow that excellent report.

We announced in the food strategy that we will publish a land-use framework for England in 2023, which will set out land-use change principles to balance climate, food and environmental outcomes. We are seeking to deliver as much as we can from our limited supply of land and to deliver the full range of government commitments through multifunctional landscapes. I hope this addresses the good point that the noble Baroness, Lady Young, made. A decade ago, people such as Sir Graham Wynne were talking to me about this need and, I confess, I did not really understand what was meant. I do now and it is vital. The House of Lords report that presaged this government commitment is worth reading; it is the most powerful reason for backing what we seek to do. I hope to keep the House informed of progress, if I am still here—I have yet to be told, in answer to that question.

I was greatly moved by what my noble friend Lady Mobarik said about Pakistan. The UK has committed to spend £11.6 billion of climate change finance, of which £3 billion will be on nature. We are one of the biggest contributors to the International Climate Fund and this will help economies such as Pakistan to cope with these sorts of terrible moments. We are very focused on food vulnerability across the world. We committed an extra £130 million to the World Food Programme and we are a major investor in research and development, especially in areas where agriculture is destabilised by the climate and method of farming there. We need to support those countries to move to more sustainable systems.

The Government are committed to taking action to mitigate climate change and to adapt to its impact. To support farming, we are introducing three schemes, which have been referred to: the sustainable farming incentive, local nature recovery and landscape recovery. Together, these schemes are intended to provide a powerful vehicle for achieving the goals of the 25-year environment plan and our commitment to net zero by 2050, while supporting the rural economy. Through these schemes, farmers and other land managers may enter into agreements to be paid for delivering public goods, including adaptation to and mitigation of climate change.

In her excellent speech, the noble Baroness, Lady Worthington, talked about what more could be done in addition to ELMS and whether this was all. There are many other schemes that farmers can access, but I emphasise the importance of the private sector here and the ability of private sector green finance to enhance farmers’ income by doing public goods. Getting some of the trillions of dollars of ESG money sloshing around into dealing with climate change and reversing declines in biodiversity is a very important part of what we are trying to do in promoting green finance spending that is honest and is not greenwash. That is a very important priority that we have in the department.

We included a requirement in the Environment Act to set a new, historic, legally binding target to halt the decline in species abundance by 2030. That is seven years away. To be pessimistic, there are many reasons why any Government could fail to hit that target, but we are utterly determined to hit it. But if I want to be optimistic, I point out that the ability of nature to recover very quickly has been proved, on land and at sea, if we protect and enhance those environments in the right way, with highly protected and properly managed marine protected areas. The ability of soils to function properly and the ability of nature to restore and regenerate can be remarkably quick. Nature can be kind to us in that respect if we get on with it. That is what we are doing.

Several measures are being developed to help improve and protect soil in England, making it more resilient to the impacts of climate change. This includes new future farming schemes, which will pay farmers for sustainable approaches to farm husbandry that deliver for the environment, improve and protect soil health and support farm productivity. I say to my noble friend Lord Caithness that the soil action health plan will be incorporated into the environmental improvement plan, which is to be presented to Parliament, as is legally required, by January. It might be before then, but it will be by January.

On the important point made by the noble Viscount, Lord Stansgate, about biodiversity, we in the UK have to do that in seven years, as I said. In nature terms that is a heartbeat, but we are setting out very clear plans as to how we are to achieve that.

The UK is co-chair of the High Ambition Coalition for Nature and People, a group of more than 100 countries that are championing a global deal for nature and have signed up to protect at least 30% of the world’s land and oceans by 2030, to halt the accelerating loss of species and to protect vital ecosystems that underpin our economic security. Also, COP 26 showcased ambition and action on repurposing public policies and support to deliver sustainable agriculture and food systems. The UK presidency placed nature at the heart of the UNFCCC. Some 45 nations pledged urgent action and investment to protect nature and to shift to more sustainable ways of farming. A ground-breaking package was agreed to halt and reverse forest loss and to transition towards sustainable land use. It includes 142 countries, representing over 90% of the world’s forests, pledging to halt and reverse forest loss and land degradation by 2030.

The UK has also announced a £65 million Just Rural Transition support programme to help communities move towards more sustainable methods of agriculture and food production. The UK is driving up global ambition on biodiversity, and hopes to create a Paris moment for nature at the Convention on Biological Diversity in Montreal this December.

In the few minutes I have left, I will try to address some of the other points that were raised. The noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, made a very important point about our position in the global battle to tackle these problems. We are stepping up to respond. We are calling for all countries to keep food trade flowing. At the World Bank and the IMF spring meetings in April, the UK and our partners secured the largest ever financial commitment from the World Bank, of £170 billion before the end of June to support countries that are facing economic hardship resulting from the Russian invasion of Ukraine. With G7 allies, we are discussing Germany’s proposal for a G7 global alliance on food security to scale up a rapid needs-based co-ordinated response, building on current peace and security architecture and avoiding a fragmented global response.

Obviously, tackling domestic food poverty is a key priority for the Government. In the Spring Statement the Chancellor announced that we are continuing to provide targeted cost of living support for households in most need. From April, the Government are providing an additional £500 million to help households with the cost of essentials, bringing the total funding for this support to £1 billion. We take food insecurity seriously, which is why the Government added internationally recognised food security questions to the Family Resources Survey. The latest national statistics from the survey show that 93% of households are food secure, but we are working hard and accept that large numbers of households are facing wider cost of living issues.

I think I have already addressed the points made by a number of noble Lords on the food strategy.

The noble Baroness, Lady Jones, asked how resilient the UK food supply is. Thanks to our farmers, we are almost 100% self-sufficient in fresh poultry and certain vegetables and close to 90% self-sufficient in eggs. A lot of points were made about fruit and horticulture. Our horticultural plan is soon to be announced, as well as incentives to support that sector and make sure that we are producing as much as we can nationally and locally. We want to disrupt the rather clunky supply chains through new technologies such as vertical farming, and we will see this happening in coming years.

There are a number of other points which I will seek to write to noble Lords about, given the pressing time.

I finish by saying that my noble friend Lord Goldsmith has been leading work to ensure that the success of COP 26 is embedded in the COP 15 conference, which was due to the held in Kunming, China, as half of the food we eat is totally dependent on biodiversity. This is a key point. This COP could not come at a more important time, and we have to make sure that we have success at the end of it. What we do nationally and domestically is important—it is important to our citizens; people really mind about the state of our countryside, nature and how we produce food—but we cannot do it in isolation from the global challenges that we face at this important time. Frankly, with the at times terrifying statistics on biodiversity decline, we need to be part of international focus on trying to tackle that as well as making sure that domestically we are farming and producing food sustainably and reversing the tragic decline in species that we have seen in recent decades.