Global Food Security

Pauline Latham Excerpts

Thursday 9th January 2014 Westminster Hall

[Pauline Latham (Mid Derbyshire) (Con)]

I am pleased to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Clark. I am also pleased to speak in today’s important debate on the International Development Committee’s report on global food security. The Committee put a lot of work into this comprehensive report, responding to the call to act on increasing worries about global food security, about which the public are concerned.

In the early autumn, for a whole afternoon and early evening—five or six hours—I led a debate with the Bishop of Derby in Derby cathedral about the IF campaign and global food security. The former Secretary of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell), also came along and talked about food security. The debate was well attended, which shows that people out there are concerned, in particular about the taxpayers’ money spent on international development, because they want it to be used effectively. In this case, we can use it effectively.

The need for immediate action was put beyond doubt after average global food prices hit an all-time high in 2011. According to the International Food Policy Research Institute, the three main reasons for the increases were biofuel production, commodity trading and climate change.

Having visited various African countries, I am especially concerned that land grabbing by the private sector for the growing of biofuels, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, could cause food crises due to the unavailability of land for food crops. Nevertheless, I feel that the recommendations made by the report provide a pragmatic and sustainable solution to the situation. The Government have not fully accepted or agreed with the recommendation made by the report to put in place a cap on the level of food-based biofuel that can count towards the provisions of the European Union’s renewable energy directive, but I am confident that consensus can eventually be reached.

I am also encouraged that the European Parliament has voted on the incorporation of indirect land use change factors into the directive. The directive, if accepted by the Government after discussions, combined with the revision of the UK renewable transport fuel obligation to exclude agriculturally produced biofuel, as recommended by the report, will ensure that land grabbing is kept to a minimum and that local people are able to feed themselves and their families for years to come.

I am in particular pleased at the news that the Government have agreed with the Committee’s report on the need to improve rural infrastructure to ensure global food security. I am pleased that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for International Development has launched a new challenge fund window for private companies willing to invest in eastern and southern African staple food markets.

The Government will also offer grants to companies that seek to invest in storage and collateral systems; my right hon. Friend the Member for Gordon (Sir Malcolm Bruce) mentioned storage, refrigerated vehicles and cold storage, which are problems particularly in parts of Africa with little electricity. Perhaps we could encourage solar energy technology companies to invest in such areas in Africa to help. They have so much more sunshine than we have here, and we are heavily investing in solar power, so there is no reason why they should not. The more people who use it, the cheaper it will become for them.

The Government also hope to invest in import markets and co-ordination and information systems in markets. My hon. Friend the Member for Stafford (Jeremy Lefroy) mentioned roads going in. I am pleased to see that happening. Roads open up markets and make it easier for people to get their produce to market. I am also pleased that mobile phone technology is helping people in African countries to find the best markets and the best prices for their food.

Some encouraging things are going on in different countries. What DFID does well is to take best practice from country to country and help people improve their techniques. DFID’s plans will help encourage food production and save thousands of people, not just from starvation but from malnutrition and undernourishment. It will also ensure that countries and farmers have the resources to build their own rural economies and help the global community reach the UN’s post-2015 millennium development goal of halving global poverty.

I would like to share one example with the Minister. When we were in Ethiopia, I went to meet a British glove manufacturer from the south-west that has always invested in Ethiopian sheep pelts for its gloves. It has now built a factory in Ethiopia and is manufacturing gloves over there, but the farmers there have stopped dipping their sheep. As a result, the sheep get various infestations that cause holes in the pelts, which means that the pelts are not of such good quality.

The company was umming and ahhing about what to do. Its core business is glove manufacturing, but it felt that if it could set up a model farm and train the local farmers to dip their sheep, they would not produce flawed pelts with holes. Not only that, but if they showed them how to let the rams in only at certain times of the year, as we do—so that when the lambs are born they have plenty to eat—they would get bigger lambs, bigger sheep, bigger pelts and more meat to share. That is the sort of lateral thinking that we can encourage. Maybe DFID should consider how it can operate model farms to show farmers how best to do such things.

Alternatively, because I believe that a lot of farmers in many countries need better education about farming practices, maybe we should be encouraging agricultural colleges to set up branches abroad or get people to come here to learn more about agriculture. However, it would be better for people to learn in their own countries, because we do not have to deal with the same climates or water shortages as they do in African countries. If farmers could be taught to use fertilisers and much better farming methods, including irrigation, we could help improve farming practices throughout the continent, which would inevitably improve productivity, which other hon. Members have discussed.

Another problem, discussed by my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford, is land tenure in Rwanda. We saw on our visit that Rwanda has a problem. It has allowed people to build all over the place, so that buildings are dotted about, meaning that there are no large amounts of land for people to cultivate, but lots of smallholdings. Until such countries have better planning laws, they cannot have large farms; they can only have various sizes of smallholding. Maybe some education could be delivered, or work done with Governments of other countries, to improve planning laws so that buildings are not built all over the place. Countryside is lost when that happens, and there should be better ways of planning for the future.

The report’s recommendations are clearly having an effect on Government policy. I am particularly encouraged by the partial consensus in the Government response that the UK will do its utmost in its role in Europe to promote the food security interests of less economically developed countries. I am hopeful that the International Development Committee will continue to be effective in dealing with that important issue in future. As hon. Members have said, we will have to produce much more food for the world. The land is there; we just need better technologies. We are well placed to help developing countries to produce more and better food.

I should perhaps declare an interest. I am involved with a charity in this country called Free the Children, which works internationally. It talks about adopting a village and does health and education work, but it also spends a lot of time teaching children in schools how to grow crops, so they can then go back and teach their parents. Free the Children shows them how to use water and fertiliser, and what happens if they are not used appropriately, so they can take the technology back to their parents, who can see that they get much more crop yield per acre or hectare than if they did not use that technology.

There are ways for us to be innovative, as Free the Children has been, by working with schoolchildren, as well as with our agricultural colleges working out there. We can also encourage British and European businesses investing in developing countries to think laterally and consider how they can help by setting up model farms and demonstrating ways to do things, so that best practice is spread as quickly as possible. Everything is very good, but it is all fairly small-scale. It needs to be much more rapid if we are to satisfy the world’s needs in the next 25 years.