1.Government committee sets out food security recommendations
2.Britain's new "peasants" down on the farm
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1.Government committee sets out food security recommendations
Farming News, 4 June 2013
http://www.farming.co.uk/news/article/8451

The UK government's International Development Committee today released a report on Global Food Security, in which committee members make a series of radical recommendations they say will contribute to ending hunger and poverty.

The MPs warn, amongst other things, against the overconsumption of animal products, feeding edible grains to livestock and using potential food crops as biofuels. Although farming industry groups have reacted strongly to the report, the MPs' recommendations are nothing new; food policy campaigners have been making similar recommendations for over a decade.

Sir Malcolm Bruce, chair of the International Development Committee warned on Tuesday, "There is no room for complacency about food security over the coming decades if UK consumers are to enjoy stable supplies and reasonable food prices."

He pointed out that two notable "shocks" or "spikes" in global food prices have impacted upon consumers in the UK (who are more insulated against such fluctuations) in the past five years. Price peaks in June 2008 and February 2011 "hurt many parts of the UK food industry and strongly undermined the global fight against hunger," according to Bruce and his fellow parliamentarians.

Reduce waste

In addition to making recommendations that livestock are reared in extensive systems, on grass, and that consumers reduce their intake of animal products, the Commons committee called for a Government-backed campaign to reduce household waste; in contrast to developing countries, where the majority of waste occurs early in the food chain, in "Western" cultures retail and household waste, which occurs further down the supply chain and is associated with consumerism, presents much more of a problem.

MPs in the development committee said a campaign to tackle this should include "national targets to curb food waste within the UK food production and retail sectors, with clear sanctions for companies that fail to meet these targets." They said current global trends towards more meant and dairy consumption are "unsustainable."

Biofuels are detrimental

Echoing European policy makers, who have called for curbs on rapid growth in the biofuels sector, made possible by EU funding, the MPs were highly critical of agricultural biofuels. Expressing concerns over the environmental and social impacts of these fuels, MPs warned "agriculturally produced biofuels are having a major detrimental impact on global food security by driving higher and more volatile food prices."

They added that EU targets requiring 10 per cent of transport energy to be drawn from renewable sources by 2020 are likely to cause dramatic food price increases and urged the UK and European governments to revise renewable fuel obligations to specifically exclude agriculturally-produced biofuels.

Commenting on the biofuels issue on Tuesday, Sir Malcolm added, "Biofuel crops not only displace food crops but are in some cases providing energy sources that are potentially more damaging to the environment than fossil fuels. So while we recognise that refining the Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation will make it harder for the UK to meet current EU obligations, the relevant target does not kick in until 2020 so there is nothing to stop the UK from revising the RTFO now to exclude agriculturally-produced biofuels."

Angry reaction from industry groups

Although recommendations resulting from the Global Food Security report tie in with similar advice issued by EU and UN policy makers in recent months, industry leaders in the UK reacted strongly to Gordon MP Bruce's counsel.

NFU chief livestock adviser Peter Garbutt contested the calls to cut meat consumption; he added that red meat forms "a traditional part of the British lifestyle and is enjoyed by most of the population."

Making the case for meat production, Mr Garbutt continued, "The UK livestock sector plays a crucial role in sustaining some of the nation's most beautiful and treasured landscapes as well as being the bedrock of rural communities. Almost 60 per cent of farming's uplands, which is dominated by livestock, is designated as National Park or areas of natural beauty. The reality is that if red meat consumption falls dramatically there would be a very real risk of the most valuable environmental assets being abandoned."

Though he too has come in for criticism from uplands farmers, in his latest book, environmentalist George Monbiot claims that reducing livestock production and "rewilding" areas of the UK would provide many benefits for the environment and wider human society.

International issues and support for small farmers

On an international scale, the Committee expressed concern that large corporations are buying up massive areas of land, enclosing them and preventing access to local communities, which often includes driving smallholders off land they previously tended. Although the MPs said the issue was mainly a problem in developing countries, a recent report revealed similar patterns of enclosure also exist in Europe.

Having expressed concerns over the fate of smallholder farmers in the face of 'land-grabbing,' the development committee backed this model of farming as one that will play a key role in feeding a growing global population and in reducing rural poverty. MPs called for more funding to be directed into supporting the formation of inclusive farmer organisations, co-operatives and agricultural extension services, particularly those aimed at women.

Commenting on these issues Sir Malcolm added, "Farm extension work went badly out of fashion decades ago in the aid sector, but should now be expanded… Smallholders and large commercial producers all need an enabling environment with adequate training, investment in roads, storage and irrigation infrastructure. They also need new skills and methods with which to improve the resilience of their cultivation systems in the face of climate change, a challenge already making it much more difficult for farmers in many communities to decide when to sow, cultivate or harvest their crops."
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2.Britain's new "peasants" down on the farm
Claire Provost and John Vidal
The Observer, 16 June 2013
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/jun/16/peasants-revolt-to-change-food-production

*A determined generation of young smallholders hope to reclaim the British countryside from the grip of corporate food giants

[Image caption: Smallholdings should be the dominant face of farming in Britain, says the Land Workers' Alliance]

The English peasantry may have officially died out in the Middle Ages, but a new breed of small-scale farmers who live off a few acres and celebrate life on the land have been accepted to join the world's biggest peasant organisation.

Jyoti Fernandes and other members of the newly formed Land Workers' Alliance were in Jakarta, Indonesia, last week for a global meeting of La Via Campesina, a movement of more than 180 peasant organisations which together can boast 200 million members in more than 80 countries. The alliance is the movement's first membership organisation in England and Wales.

Fernandes, 39, is part of a wave of self-proclaimed English "peasants" determined to stand up for smallholders and reclaim the countryside with an alternative vision of what the future of UK agriculture could look like. "Food and farming aren't just about market economics and just getting people calories in their body; it's got this huge social and cultural dimension to it," she says.

Western definitions of "peasant" are mostly pejorative, suggesting "a member of a class of low social status that depends on agricultural labour as a means of subsistence". But many of the 70 people who set up the alliance in March are young, highly educated and committed to a life on the land. They expect membership to grow to several thousand.

Fernandes and her husband live at Fivepenny Farm, a highly productive 20-acre Dorset smallholding, producing vegetables, herbs, meat, eggs, and cheese and generating its own electricity from small wind turbines and a set of solar panels. They sell directly to consumers at the weekly market in nearby Bridport.

"People have to be pretty creative to move to the land," says Fernandes, who has long campaigned to change planning laws so that making a living off the land is easier. "People who have a lot of money and want to live in the countryside with a farmhouse can outcompete at an auction any day people who want to do a land-based farming industry. The countryside isn't just this picture-perfect place for people to go and retire to. It needs to be a living, working countryside."

So what do small farmers in south-west England have in common with peasant farmers in Africa or India? Fernandes says the lives of her counterparts in poor countries are similar to hers: "They say, 'Oh, you're a farmer too, so what do you have?' and I say, 'Well, I've got two cows and I milk them every day, and I've got chickens,' and they say, 'Oh, I've got cows as well,' and we talk about that and who is looking after the cows while you're away. The practical realities of life are pretty much the same – you get up in the morning, you milk the cows, you have to do something with your milk,"

"Farming has caught the imagination of a new generation of young people who are particularly politically aware," says Ed Hamer, who has a small market garden in Chagford, Devon. "Growing food is a very positive reaction to what many see as problems of globalisation. One objective is to address the lack of representation of small farmers here in the UK."

Simon Fairlie, a smallholder and editor of the Land magazine, adds: "There hasn't really been an effective organisation in Britain representing small farmers – and there is a need for it. Agricultural extension facilities were abolished under Thatcher, and today there's no acknowledgement in government that there are people doing this and that they could use support. Large-scale farming can produce the food, but so can small-scale farming, but with less machinery and more human interaction. And there are people who want that lifestyle."

As members of La Via Campesina (literally "the peasants' way"), people in the new alliance share the idea of "food sovereignty", which insists on the right of people to produce for themselves and their communities and rejects corporate control of the food system. They say this has growing resonance in the UK, where less than 1% of people work on the land but increasing numbers of young people say they want to farm. "It might be for political reasons, or it might just be that they don't want to sit behind a computer all day. It might be people who were disenfranchised in school. Whatever it is, they're going into agriculture because they believe in it," says Fernandes. "Food is really becoming an issue at the front of public consciousness.

"I think people are really realising what we lose when we lose a good, healthy food culture. And instead of constantly fighting a system that's bad, we want to create positive alternatives … How can we take the right steps so that in 50 or 60 years we have enough people [in Britain] engaged in agriculture with enough skills and enough access to land and resources to be able to provide the food we need? We want to show that smallholdings can be productive."

Patrick Mulvany, chairman of the UK Food Group, says the alliance may serve as a "lightning rod" for growers, gardeners, small farmers and others looking for alternative food systems in England and Wales (the Scottish Crofting Federation is already a member of La Via Campesina).

"To have a group in England is wonderful. At the moment, the [farming] debate is dominated by NGOs and policy wonks. These people, instead, are spending most of their time growing," he says.