{"id":10542,"date":"2020-03-23T15:54:49","date_gmt":"2020-03-23T15:54:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/?p=10542"},"modified":"2020-03-26T13:07:17","modified_gmt":"2020-03-26T13:07:17","slug":"we-must-ensure-a-fair-safe-and-sustainable-food-supply","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/2020\/03\/we-must-ensure-a-fair-safe-and-sustainable-food-supply\/","title":{"rendered":"We must ensure a fair, safe and sustainable food supply"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The UK\u2019s main \u201coral\u201d export these days is whisky. <\/p>Tim Lang<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Food security is a growing concern as Covid-19 continues to spread across the world, transforming our daily lives.<\/p>\n

In the coming weeks, Sceptical Scot will focus as much as possible on practical, constructive responses to the crisis. We also feel the need to keep spirits up and there is much to celebrate in the way communities are reacting, discovering imaginative ways to connect and support the most vulnerable members of our society. Voluntary schemes are growing to take food where it is most needed.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But first we share hard facts presented by Tim Lang, Professor of Food Policy at City University of London. Coronavirus is revealing essential weaknesses in the UK’s food supply chain. In the longer term, producers, consumers, policy makers and politicians will need to adjust and prepare for a different way of life. We must create a food system which is fit for a new world order based on decency, equity \u2013 and climate change reality.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Right now \u2013 as panic buying continues \u2013 Professor Lang\u00a0 urges action to ensure there is enough food to go round.<\/p>\n

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It\u2019s why colleagues and I\u00a0have called on the UK prime minister<\/a>\u00a0to set up a rational system of rationing \u2013 based on health, equity and decency \u2013 to see the country through this crisis.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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Coronavirus: rationing based on health, equity and decency now needed\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Food security is no laughing matter at the best of times, but I gasped when I first read the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs\u2019 (Defra) annual food civil contingencies infrastructure report<\/a> in 2018. It is barely a page long (in public at least) and assures us everything is OK and that the food system is resilient and able to withstand shocks. As the coronvirus racks the nation and panic buying<\/a> continues, this complacency is about to be tested.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Few analysts of the UK food system are anything other than sober about its fragility. There is little storage. All operates on a just-in-time basis in which food travels down the supply chain \u2013 literally, just in time for when the next link or process needs it. Food businesses have been realigned to cut delays and storage. Consumers have come to expect constant flows of food, without hiccups or gaps. New industries have emerged, notably logistics and satellites which track this all from farm to shop. We are trucker-dependent now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Only 53% of food consumed in the UK<\/a> is produced in the country. Others feed the Brits. Some scientists calculate that UK external dependency is even greater, with hidden use of external land to provide animal feed<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While this distortedly efficient food revolution has been rolled out, the UK food trade gap \u2013 the difference between exports and imports by value \u2013 has widened. In 2018, food worth \u00a346.8 billion was imported, with exports worth only \u00a322.5 billion, leaving a food trade gap of \u00a324.3 billion<\/a>. Much of the imports are vital for health, the \u00a310bn imports of fruit and veg in particular. UK fruit and veg growing has sunk. The UK\u2019s main \u201coral\u201d export these days is whisky. Even meat \u2013 supposedly Britain\u2019s forte \u2013 is in the red. If borders close or supply chains snap, what then?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What about actual food?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Putting money to one side, UK self-reliance has been slowly dropping for decades from a high point in the early 1980s. I was among academics warning the government<\/a> in 2017 to beware a no-deal Brexit, as the management of ceaseless flow of food mostly through Dover and the channel tunnel is coordinated by the UK\u2019s giant supermarkets. Just-in-time systems are easy to disrupt. The retailers privately expressed alarm to the government but the no-deal posturing continued. It ought to have led the government to prepare serious change, to put the country\u2019s food flow on a secure footing. This did not happen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The UK does not produce enough of its own food. Ajit Wick\/Shutterstock<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

A year later, another report<\/a> argued that UK food security was more fragile than most people think. It too was dismissed initially by the government, only for ministers to U-turn within days and admit ships were being chartered, including from a company which owned no ships.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now coronavirus exposes other difficulties and deep structural weakness. It is almost as though a web of supply \u2013 from land and sea via processing, distribution, retailing and food service to consumers \u2013 was designed to undermine, not just ignore, resilience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If food security refers to continuity of supply sufficient to meet health for all, resilience means it being able to bounce back under threat, and food capacity<\/a> means having the skills, technology, planning and preparedness to do it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The current UK food system is already weak in all senses, and has been for too long. Food and agriculture account for one-quarter of greenhouse gas emissions<\/a>. They are also the biggest drivers of biodiversity destruction<\/a>, huge users and polluters of water, and the major driver of much illness from noncommunicable diseases and food-borne pathogens<\/a>, too. The UK consumes the highest rate of \u201cultra-processed\u201d foods<\/a> of any country in Europe. No wonder our obesity rates are alarming and the NHS under stress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The new kid on the block is home delivery \u2013 Deliveroo, Uber, Just-Eat for example \u2013 which now takes \u00a310 billion from the \u00a3225 billion<\/a>, almost as much money as farming.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Food is the UK\u2019s biggest employer with 4.1 million workers<\/a>. There\u2019s a feeding frenzy over who can make the most money from food. Currently, this is a battle between retailers, processors and food service, each taking about one-quarter of the \u00a3120 billion from the \u00a3225 billion<\/a> that consumers spend on food and drink annually. The new kid on the block is home delivery \u2013 Deliveroo, Uber, Just-Eat for example \u2013 which now takes \u00a310 billion from the \u00a3225 billion<\/a>, almost as much money as farming.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Food delivery companies, like Deliveroo, are being lent on to help people self-quarantining. nrqemi\/Shutterstock<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The UK government believes home deliveries will enable people to self-quarantine at home during coronavirus. If one in five workers go ill, this strategy might fail, as they are often self-employed, so unable to claim sickness benefit and incentivised to keep working working to pay the bills \u2013 potentially spreading disease not protecting people from it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Food for all the people<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

A crunch point for UK food policy and planning is surely approaching. The coronavirus crisis is already spawning worrying actions. Whereas under Brexit no-deal threats, stoicism ruled and \u201cpreppers\u201d \u2013 people stocking up \u2013 were generally few. Today shelves are being stripped and queues form for supermarkets to open. It\u2019s why colleagues and I have called on the UK prime minister<\/a> to set up a rational system of rationing \u2013 based on health, equity and decency \u2013 to see the country through this crisis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The just-in-time logistics system is being stretched. This is why retailers are planning to prune supplies to bare essentials and are rationing. If this is happening with government approval, it is surely an abandonment of democratic responsibility. If not, is government not in control? For people on severely low incomes, meanwhile, reliance on food banks is creaking. Donations are down<\/a>. We are clearly not all in this together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Coming weeks and months will stretch government and industry credibility, and also the public. It is a test of identity and whether the national interest really could mean all the people. We ought to be preparing a long-term redirection of the food system. However, the current agriculture bill<\/a> before parliament doesn\u2019t suggest that. Instead, it\u2019s an economist\u2019s bill mainly designed to redirect subsidies around the as-yet-untested notion of \u201cpublic money for public goods\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Food production and equitable distribution barely feature. We ought to be demanding that Public Health England and the devolved administrations in Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast revise the Eatwell Guide<\/a>, our national healthy eating guidelines, around sustainable diets, combining health, environment and social criteria such as affordability. These are what should drive production and determine rationing, if circumstances deteriorate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile, it is the food retailers who are beginning to ration supply. This is unacceptable in a democracy. If to happen, it ought to be in the open \u2013 and guided by health and sustainability. Surely the \u201cpublic good\u201d lies in feeding all well, according to need not income. Those values are what got the UK through the second world war, as our Churchill-inspired prime minister ought to know.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First published on The Conversation<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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