Digging our way to defeat?

1st June 2020


Web p22 food istock 1126188273 editv2

Related Topics

Related tags

  • Food and drink ,
  • Health ,
  • Policy

Author

Helen Skudder

Britain's food system is broken from top to bottom, according to a new book. Huw Morris reports

One of the most important dynamics driving food production is “from farm to fork“. Tim Lang thinks the UK is getting this perilously wrong.The professor of food policy at City, University of London bases his views on half a century of experience. After completing a doctorate in social psychology, he spent seven years during the 1970s as a hill farmer in the Forest of Bowland, Lancashire. He credits this with shifting his attention to food policy. In 1994, he founded City University's Centre for Food Policy, from which he has probed the role of local, national and international policy in shaping and responding to the food system.

Lang's career has included consultancy work for the World Health Organisation, auditing the top 25 global food companies on food and health. He has advised the UK government and four House of Commons Select Committee inquiries. He helped launch the 100 World Cities Urban Food Policy Pact in Milan in 2015, and was a member of the EAT-Lancet Commission on Healthy Diets from Sustainable Food Systems, which published the Food in the Anthropocene report in 2019. He also coined the phrase “food miles“.

His latest book, Feeding Britain: Our Food Problems and How to Fix Them, is a magnum opus covering the UK's food system, how it is damaging the population and the environment, and why it is unsustainable. In short, UK food is unhealthy, environmentally disastrous and, despite being unrealistically cheap, reinforces inequality between rich and poor.

Importing iniquity

For 170 years, the UK's food policy has relied on former colonies and trading partners. This position, which Lang calls “imperialist“, ignores the lessons of the two world wars, and is dangerous during an era in which climate change, mass obesity, market volatility and cyber insecurity are the new normal.

The UK should “dig for victory“, he says. We depend on imports for half our supplies, including 87% of fruit and vegetables, and what we grow is biased towards grass and animals. And this is before we waste it – 70% of UK food waste is domestic.

“Food is a crucial part of our national infrastructure, not a bargaining chip in trade“

The UK food industry generates £225bn a year, making it second in size only to financial services – yet just 8% of this goes to the nation's farmers and fishermen. This has led to concentration, distorted labour markets and what Lang describes as the naive belief that science or business will sort everything out.

And then there is the environmental destruction. Lang describes the UK as “one of the most nature-depleted nations on earth“, having lost 84% of its topsoil during the past 179 years. Much of its prime farmland is submerged in concrete. Meanwhile, producing a single beef burger requires 2,350 litres of water. Subsidies go to those who need them least, and are spent on intensive farming that is wrecking the ecosystem. Massive environmental challenges are on their way, if they are not here already. “Climate change will be noticed,“ he says. “More floods, more droughts, more stresses, more extreme weather. This has a big impact on land and how we use it.“

An insecure supply

Lang sees the Netherlands as a model for the future, because most of its fruit and vegetables are home-grown. He believes that food production should be more local, cutting distribution costs, and that junk food advertising and 'best before' dates should be banned.His book was written after the 2016 EU referendum but takes on added significance following the COVID-19 outbreak, with its warnings over the fragility of food supplies.

He is scathing about food contingency planning. The UK's naval protection has become more and more frayed, yet the government “seems intent to source more from far away“, even though ship and truck-based supplies can be disrupted by malware. The food industry, he says, knows the risks, and the government is “dangerously complacent“. Brexit is an opportunity to fix this. “Food is a crucial part of our national infrastructure, not a bargaining chip in trade,“ he says.

Lang calls on the public, industry and policymakers to take food security seriously. This means an overhaul of national food infrastructure, with new regional supply systems. Horticulture needs to be rebuilt, while our “inefficient cattle culture“ should be phased down. There then needs to be a consumer behaviour shift towards sustainable diets.

“We've come a long way since the time when British food was known as brown and bland,“ he says. “But future security depends on us rebuilding food governance which is fit for purpose. It needs radical change. Tinkering won't work in the longer term.“

Time to grow up

The UK needs to think about “what we want from the land in the first place“, says Lang. “Is it for the rich, as a hedge against uncertainty? Is it for the common people? For housing or building on? For food production? For woods? For water? For carbon sequestration? For culture and amenity? For the view? For tourism? The shape of that mix is a public issue, which we seemingly cannot decide – but climate change will force us to.

“Out of the UK's cultivatable 6m hectares, only 164,000 hectares are used for horticulture. This is bonkers. We need to double or treble our consumption of fruit and veg but instead have a tacit food policy to use other people's land. It's time we grow up politically and start rebuilding the connection between people, land, food and health. In short, it's time we had a food policy that integrates ecosystems, human health and food production. That's not what we currently have.“

Feeding Britain: Our Food Problems and How to Fix Them by Tim Lang is published by Pelican, £25.

Huw Morris is a freelance journalist

Subscribe

Subscribe to IEMA's newsletters to receive timely articles, expert opinions, event announcements, and much more, directly in your inbox.


Transform articles

Facing the climate emergency challenge in local government

It’s well recognised that the public sector has the opportunity to work towards a national net-zero landscape that goes well beyond improving on its own performance; it can also influence through procurement and can direct through policy.

19th March 2024

Read more

The UK government’s carbon capture, usage and storage (CCUS) strategy is based on optimistic techno-economic assumptions that are now outdated, Carbon Tracker has warned.

13th March 2024

Read more

The UK government’s climate adaptation plans are ‘inadequate’ and falling ‘far short’ of what is required, the Climate Change Committee (CCC) has warned today.

13th March 2024

Read more

The UK’s net-zero economy grew 9% last year while delivering higher paid jobs than average and attracting billions of pounds in private investment, analysis by CBI Economics has uncovered.

28th February 2024

Read more

A consortium including IEMA and the Good Homes Alliance have drafted a letter to UK government ministers expressing disappointment with the proposed Future Homes Standard.

26th February 2024

Read more

Campaign group Wild Justice has accused the UK government of trying to relax pollution rules for housebuilders “through the backdoor”.

14th February 2024

Read more

Three-quarters of UK adults are concerned about the impact that climate change will have on their bills, according to polling commissioned by Positive Money.

13th February 2024

Read more

All major housing developments in England will be required by law to deliver at least a 10% increase in biodiversity under new rules that came into force today.

12th February 2024

Read more

Media enquires

Looking for an expert to speak at an event or comment on an item in the news?

Find an expert

IEMA Cookie Notice

Clicking the ‘Accept all’ button means you are accepting analytics and third-party cookies. Our website uses necessary cookies which are required in order to make our website work. In addition to these, we use analytics and third-party cookies to optimise site functionality and give you the best possible experience. To control which cookies are set, click ‘Settings’. To learn more about cookies, how we use them on our website and how to change your cookie settings please view our cookie policy.

Manage cookie settings

Our use of cookies

You can learn more detailed information in our cookie policy.

Some cookies are essential, but non-essential cookies help us to improve the experience on our site by providing insights into how the site is being used. To maintain privacy management, this relies on cookie identifiers. Resetting or deleting your browser cookies will reset these preferences.

Essential cookies

These are cookies that are required for the operation of our website. They include, for example, cookies that enable you to log into secure areas of our website.

Analytics cookies

These cookies allow us to recognise and count the number of visitors to our website and to see how visitors move around our website when they are using it. This helps us to improve the way our website works.

Advertising cookies

These cookies allow us to tailor advertising to you based on your interests. If you do not accept these cookies, you will still see adverts, but these will be more generic.

Save and close