Radical change needed to make UK food and farming system sustainable within 10 years

1. True cost of cheap food is health and climate crises, says commission
2. Radical change is needed to ensure farms produce healthy food. MPs must act now
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1. True cost of cheap food is health and climate crises, says commission

Damian Carrington
The Guardian, 16 Jul 2019
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jul/16/true-cost-of-cheap-food-is-health-and-climate-crises-says-commission
[links to sources at the URL above]

* Radical change needed to make UK food and farming system sustainable within 10 years

The true cost of cheap, unhealthy food is a spiralling public health crisis and environmental destruction, according to a high-level commission. It said the UK’s food and farming system must be radically transformed and become sustainable within 10 years.

The commission’s report, which was welcomed by the environment secretary, Michael Gove, concluded that farmers must be enabled to shift from intensive farming to more organic and wildlife friendly production, raising livestock on grass and growing more nuts and pulses. It also said a National Nature Service should be created to give opportunities for young people to work in the countryside and, for example, tackle the climate crisis by planting trees or restoring peatlands.

“Our own health and the health of the land are inextricably intertwined [but] in the last 70 years, this relationship has been broken,” said the report, which was produced by leaders from farming, supermarket and food supply businesses, as well as health and environment groups, and involved conversations with thousands of rural inhabitants.

“Time is now running out. The actions that we take in the next 10 years are critical: to recover and regenerate nature and to restore health and wellbeing to both people and planet,” said the commission, which was convened by the RSA, a group focused on pressing social challenges.

The commission said most farmers thought they could make big changes in five to 10 years if they got the right backing.

“Farmers are extraordinarily adaptable,” said Sue Pritchard, director of the RSA commission and an organic farmer in Wales. “We have to live with change every single day of our lives.

“We are really keen that farmers feel they are in the driving seat and that they can be a force of change. At the moment, a lot of farmers feel beleaguered and that they have become the bad guys. But without sustainable, secure and safe farming in the UK, we will not survive.”

The commission criticised decades of government policy aimed at making food cheaper, fuelling rising obesity and other health problems. “The true cost of that is simply passed off elsewhere in society – in a degraded environment, spiralling ill health and impoverished high streets,” said the report.

Pritchard said the UK had the third cheapest basket of food in the developed world, but also had the highest food poverty in Europe in terms of people being able to afford a healthy diet. Type 2 diabetes, a diet-related illness, costs the UK £27bn a year, she said.

The commission also said agriculture produced more than 10% of the UK’s climate-heating gases and was the biggest destroyer of wildlife; the abundance of key species has fallen 67% since 1970 and 13% of species are now close to extinction.

To solve these crises, the commission said “agroecology” practices must be supported – such as organic farming and agroforestry, where trees are combined with crops and livestock such as pigs or egg-laying hens.

The commission has also adapted for the UK a recently published scientific diet that is both nutritious and environmentally sustainable. While it and other studies recommend large reductions in meat-eating, Pritchard said, “There is a strong case to be made [in the UK] to support sustainable beef and lamb in the places where grass is the best thing to grow.”

The so-called planetary health diet calls for more nuts and pulses in diets and Pritchard said these and more vegetables could be grown in the UK. Hazelnuts and walnuts are native to the UK, she pointed out, and some farmers are now starting to grow crops like lentils and quinoa, as well as beans and peas.

The commission said the government must develop a plan to put the countryside and the communities living there at the centre of the green economy.

“[Brexit] creates a once-in-50-years opportunity to change our food and farming system, but we need to act now: the climate emergency makes urgent, radical action on the environment essential,” said Sir Ian Cheshire, chair of the RSA commission and also a senior government adviser.

Gove said, “This report raises issues that are hugely important. We know that it is in the interests of farmers and landowners to move to a more sustainable model.” He added that the government’s agriculture bill would reward farmers with public money for public goods and a new “farm to fork” food review would look to ensure everyone had access to healthy British food.

The report was backed by Labour and the Liberal Democrats. The Green MP Caroline Lucas said, “This monumental report is a powerful and profound account of the ecological transformation of our food and farming system that we urgently need – and where we can start.”

The commission said a new non-profit bank should be set up to provide finance to farmers investing in new practices.

With Brexit uncertainty worrying farmers, the commission urged minister to stop delays on policy and trade decisions and commit to a future-proof ambition by January 2020. It also said schools, hospitals and prisons should buy more sustainably produced British food.

Prof Joanna Price, the vice-chancellor of the Royal Agricultural University, said, “The report paints an honest picture of the challenges and sets out some bold ideas to address them. We strongly agree that farming can be a force for positive change and that rural communities can thrive as a powerhouse for a green economy.”
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2. Radical change is needed to ensure farms produce healthy food. MPs must act now

Caroline Lucas
The Guardian, 17 Jul 2019
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jul/17/pesticide-industry-health-planet-mps-ffcc-report-farmers
[links to sources at the URL above]

A profound ecological transformation of food and farming is achievable, desirable and urgently needed. That’s a message that comes across loud and clear from the RSA Food Farming and Countryside Commission (FFCC) at the culmination of an innovative and independent two-year inquiry.

It provides a clear diagnosis of the causes of the current environmental and health crisis linked to how we produce and consume food. It describes how, over the last 70 years, agriculture has been about specialisation, consolidation and control over nature, with many farmers simply raw material suppliers to a processing industry. This model of agriculture has driven deforestation, wildlife loss, soil degradation and diet-related ill health.

We urgently need to farm in harmony with nature and put public and planetary health at the heart of food policy instead – and there’s one particular barrier that we need to do more to overcome: the malign influence of the pesticide industry. It’s no surprise that agrochemical companies are seeking to undermine the transition to environmentally friendly farming – just as the fossil fuel sector has sought to delay and derail the transition to renewable energy. Despite the Green Brexit rhetoric, recent signs are worrying.

In May, researchers from the University of Sussex uncovered a significant weakening of the pesticide approval process as part of the changes under the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2019, and a risk that the role of scientific evidence in pesticide regulation could be watered down.

A few weeks earlier, leading environmental NGOs resigned from the two main government bodies tasked with reducing environmental harms from pesticide. Citing the alarming decline of wildlife, butterflies and bees and an increase in land treated with pesticides, the Pesticide Action Network explained: “We simply cannot remain members of groups continuing to push the 'business as usual' approach as pesticides drive us towards the sixth mass extinction.”

The pesticide industry reach extends beyond Whitehall. Around half of all agronomists – farm advisers – are employed by agrochemical companies . That’s why the recommendation in the FFCC report for every farmer to have access to advisers with “independent and credible knowledge to make substantial changes to their systems or business models” is critical too.

If we liberate our food and farming system from the profit interests of agrochemical companies, what would that look like?

The FFCC report invites us to “imagine instead a future which is about valuing diversity, working with nature, with farmers able to secure their own prosperity and that of future generations.”.

It proposes a 10-year transition plan for sustainable, agroecological farming by 2030 – applying the principles of the regenerative economy to agriculture to create a sustainable and fair food system.

Don’t expect the pesticide industry to agree without a fight. There are profits at stake with a shift away from business as usual – although there is space for a just transition too.

Joined-up thinking is key yet, for instance, the Department of Health is dismissive of its need to be involved in proposals for “less but better” livestock and measures such as a tax on processed meat, when public health should surely be a key part of future food policy decisions.

There are also important question over what would this shift would mean for the cost of food. The UK already has the third-cheapest food among developed countries, yet it also has the highest food insecurity in Europe, too, because political decisions have led to poverty wages and grotesque wealth inequality.

The reality is that we’re all paying an eye-watering price for business as usual – most of all through harm to our precious natural environment and escalating ill health. The notion that we can’t afford sustainable food is also challenged by cities such as Copenhagen, which recently reached a target for 90% organic food in municipal institutions without increasing procurement costs.

Nothing short of a radical transformation of food and farming will suffice. At a time when society faces many divisions, agroecology offers practical hope for averting climate breakdown, restoring nature and securing human health, wellbeing and livelihoods. That’s an approach that many different voices and interests could unite behind. When MPs eventually get the chance to amend the agriculture bill, let’s put agroecology at its very heart.

• Caroline Lucas is the Green MP for Brighton Pavilion