Biotechnology and Food Security

Julian Sturdy Excerpts

Wednesday 12th January 2011 Westminster Hall

[Mr Mark Spencer (Sherwood) (Con)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to debate this important issue. I want the debate to be fact-based and to be about the science. I want it to be an unemotional and genuinely open debate about the future of this country’s food security and how we ensure that the people of the United Kingdom are well fed into the next generation. I acknowledge that this issue is not the responsibility of the UK Government or the Minister, but a European Union issue. It is for the EU to decide whether it uses genetic modification and biotechnology to solve such problems. This debate is an appeal to the Minister to push for and facilitate discussion, so that others can join in and we can have an open discussion about how to ensure that this great nation of ours is fed.

I am no historian, but following the second world war Winston Churchill said that this country should never again allow itself to be exposed to the food security issues we faced during that war. We have had two or three generations of consumers who have no concept of what food security is, or what it is like to go to the supermarket and find that a product is not on the shelf. My wife will go to the shop and if the product she requires is not on the shelf, she will storm down to customer services, bang on the desk and say, “What do you mean you haven’t got any paprika?”—or some other wonderful product. My grandmother, however, would go to the butchers and say, “I’d like lamb chops” and the butcher would say, “You can’t have lamb chops. You can have beef dripping because that’s all I’ve got”, and she would have to take it. Consumers now have no concept of what food security is, and it will be a big shock if we find ourselves in those circumstances again.

I turn to where we as a country have come to. My right hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert) said last year that since 1997, the UK dairy herd is down by 22%, which is 500,000 fewer dairy cows. Fresh vegetable production is down by 36,000 hectares; the pig herd is down by 40%, which is 3 million fewer pigs; fresh fruit is down by 9,000 hectares; and the lamb flock is down by 25%, which is 10 million fewer lambs. Despite the fact that self-sufficiency in food production had dropped from 72% in 1996 to 60% in 2008, the Labour Government said in that year that the

“UK currently enjoys a high level of national food security”.

It is true that this country is still able to source and import food very easily, and nobody would stand here today and say that we will ever be 100% efficient in producing our own food. I, like many hon. Members, enjoy bananas, oranges and fruit from all over the world. However, the figures paint the picture of our diminishing ability to feed ourselves, and if that pipeline—the amount of food flowing into the country—were cut for any reason, it would have dramatic effects on our ability to do so.

There are four factors in the world today that will have enormous consequences for this country’s ability to feed ourselves: climate change, the global population, the global economy, and energy prices and our ability to supply energy to the world. I shall take them separately.

There is little debate over whether the climate is changing, and frankly, it is irrelevant whether we agree that that change is man-made or carbon-based. There is extreme weather: we need only look at Russia, which has suffered drought, and at Australia, which is suffering terrible floods at the moment, or at the terrible snow and frost in our country this year and the impact that had on vegetable producers. Trying to harvest carrots and parsnips from frozen ground was an enormous challenge for British farmers, who were trying to put those vegetables on to our plates for Christmas. Extreme weather brings huge challenges and will have a big impact on the cost of food.

Hon. Members who are familiar with commodity prices will know what this summer’s drought in Russia did to the value of wheat. Almost overnight, the value went from £90 a tonne to £160 a tonne for next September’s wheat, simply because the Russian Government said that they will not export any wheat but will retain it within Russia. That pushed world commodity prices up dramatically, which has affected general consumers. When they go to the supermarket to buy a loaf of bread, they find that quite a cost has been added to it.

In 2003 Europe experienced a long, hot summer, which reduced the EU’s agricultural output in that year by 20%. There is a fine line between over-supply and under-supply. We need only be 2% under-supplied for the market to react and push up prices; we will feel that more in future. Farmers need to find new technologies to assist them, so they can cope with the changes in climate.

Secondly, global population will impact dramatically on our ability to feed ourselves. It is predicted that there will be 9 billion people on the planet by 2050. Where is the food to feed that number of people going to come from?

[Julian Sturdy (York Outer) (Con)]

I thank my hon. Friend for giving way and congratulate him on securing the debate. He is right about the huge increase in world population and its impact on food security for the UK and Europe. Does he agree that the only way to tackle this is through new technology and science—for example, research to improve disease resistance and drought tolerance of staple crops, not only in the UK but across the world? We must not close the door on science and new technology.

[Mr Spencer]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. He is correct, in that we need to harness new technologies if we are to solve the problem. I will talk about that a little more later.

We have clearly been effective since the second world war in harnessing such technologies and in scientific advancement. The common agricultural policy, which came out of the post-war period, is often ridiculed as an enormous monster of a policy, but it was probably the most single most effective policy ever devised by politicians. It was designed to feed Europe and was enormously successful—so successful that by the 1980s, we had grain mountains and milk lakes. We all remember those stories in the media.

We have an enormous and growing world population, and we will have to try to feed all those people. It is important to recognise that the amount of land on the earth is not expanding, and we are using land for other things, not only food production. “They have stopped making land,” as they say.

At the same time, the issue is absolutely linked to the global economy. There have always been hungry people on this earth, but all of a sudden, we have countries with people who are not only hungry, but wealthy. On the other side of the globe, the economies of countries such as India and China are expanding, and diets are becoming western. The impact on the European Union will be enormous. In 1985, the average Chinese consumer ate 20 kg of meat a year, but it is now said that they eat 50 kg a year. Across the globe, economies are expanding—in India, the far east, south America and many African countries. Countries are moving in a similar direction to China, which will have a really large effect on our ability to keep ourselves fed.

The third relevant issue is world energy prices and our ability to ensure that we have enough energy. As economies expand, so, too, does their desire to consume energy—a country’s GDP is almost directly linked to the amount of energy it consumes. How will we produce enough energy and how will we do that sustainably? Sustainability is the key. It is all very well saying that we have enough gas and coal to keep ourselves going, but the impact of that carbon will be quite dramatic.