Beware of Government hogwash on food security!

It’s not quite 1985 yet, but if this jet stream-driven spell of broken weather continues, it may well turn into that.

Having watched June cut silage blowing away in the baking sun and wind, July made silage has become wet and soggy. Stories of cutting winter barley at over 20% moisture isn’t really the stuff that dreams are made of. Mind you, not the nightmare that a holiday on Rhodes would appear to be!

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The extreme weather all over southern Europe has once again put the issue of food security back on the news pages. Just when Rishi Sunak thought he had ticked that box by getting his picture taken with Kaleb Cooper (of Clarkson’s Farm fame, for those of you who don’t have Amazon Prime!) at the Downing Street UK Farm to Fork Summit in May, up pops another drought threatening food production in parts of Europe.

Not to be outdone, having got into even more of a mess in the Ukraine – if that’s possible – Vladimir Putin has started bombing grain silos on the Black Sea coast and on the banks of the Danube, near Romania, to try and blackmail the world into concessions by starving as many people as he can, when he can’t actually kill them directly.

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The government’s response to this complete carnage (which, incidentally, no politician on the planet has control of, let alone the hapless Rishi Sunak), has come from Mark Spencer. He was another one of the 70 jolly attendees at the stage managed Farm to Fork jamboree and is Farming Minister in Westminster.

He told the Environmental Audit Committee last week that 'food security has never been as high on the political agenda'. He also claimed that the UK had very robust supply chains – then conceded that 'we are going to have to think long and hard about how we mitigate the impact that [a warming climate] is going to have on our supply chains and domestic production'.

I think the key words from the endless hot air we keep hearing on this topic are 'thinking long'. Thinking so much and so long it might end in the long grass as usual, I guess!

This topic is hitting the headlines because food prices have risen to realistic levels for producers (at last), which is hurting cash-strapped consumers who have been used to food for nothing in the UK for 30 years.

These worthless photo-ops by the PM and empty words by Mark Spencer and others aren’t fooling anyone in the farming and food industry or the public at large. The UK government and Scottish government are both hell-bent on reducing production from our farms and the policies they are pursuing, or in our case lack of policies, make that abundantly clear.

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So, how can this possibly square with all this drivel about actually being interested in domestic food production? Of course, the answer is that it can’t.

Livestock production in particular continues to face a barrage of ill-informed, biased commentary and attacks from politicians and some sections of the media alike. The Scottish Greens being gold medal winners at this.

But they aren’t alone. Last week, an academic research organisation based in Oxford University known as LEAP (Livestock, Environment and People), which was set up in 2020 and funded by the Wellcome Trust and names as supporters, amongst others, Sainsbury’s and the US-based environmental lobby organisation, The Nature Conservancy, published a paper analysing the environmental impacts of different levels of meat consumption across the world.

This academic research involved analysing survey data from 55,000 individuals and the impact that their self-declared dietary behaviour had on the environment. I haven’t read the report in detail, but have read enough to know that it is very complex as it claims to have looked at 38,000 farms and their production methods in over 100 countries.

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The data allegedly collected somehow claims to be able to measure the environmental impact of all this lot in relation the GHG emissions, land use, water pollution risks and biodiversity loss.

Despite substantial variation according to where and how food is produced, the report stated 'the relationship between environmental impact and animal-based food consumption was clear' and the authors argued 'that this should prompt policy actions to reduce red meat production and consumption'.

Before this report was published, it was interesting to note that LEAP have been involved in a number of public engagement events over the last year or two. The headline in this public engagement section of their website states 'are you a meat eater interested in reducing your meat consumption?'

Call me an old cynic, but it is unlikely that, with this type of propaganda as a backdrop, their latest publication would offer any kind of balanced view of meat production or consumption. Never mind drawing attention to the massively different impacts of production systems in the 100 countries used in this desk-top gobbledegook.

Not surprisingly, this has been music to the ears of the ever reliable, unbiased BBC whose headline out of this little lot was 'if big UK meat eaters cut some of it out of their diet, this would be like taking 8m cars off the road'! Of course, it didn’t specify what 'big' actually meant and is absolute, unsubstantiated s..t, but it still made the Six o’Clock News as if this was somehow balanced, factual reporting.

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It is utterly pathetic to be honest and a scratch under the surface of LEAP throws out some very interesting facts.

The advisory board has the predictable smattering of academics, most of them professors. But also some household names. The chair is apparently Lord John Krebs – remember him of FSA and BSE fame? Professor Ian Boyd, the chief scientific advisor to Defra. Tom Heap, the BBC broadcaster of unbiased Countryfile fame. Tim Smith, of Tesco notoriety, and, wait for it, Sir Peter Kendall, former chair of AHDB and one a NFU president.

So, despite the worthless promises and press releases about food security and photo calls by the PM and his Cabinet, the truth is that their advisors and closest allies are involved in organisations peddling some fairly dodgy, simplistic and, dare I suggest, convenient conclusions on a very complex subject.

They have the supermarkets for company and the BBC – and others in the media are all too happy to act as the mouthpiece for any message that happens to suit the outcomes these folk want to achieve.

The one surprise (or maybe not) is Peter Kendall. I remember him when he was a simple farmer, then he became NFU president then a Sir and the rest is history. As chair of ADHB, should he really be involved in this kind of propaganda?

Mind you, I guess he would argue the same as NFUS president, Martin Kennedy, does with regard to his neutered, ineffectual ARIOB group, that you are better with a seat at the table trying to influence things from the inside.

The trouble with this old chestnut always seems to be that the only people who actually benefit from these cosy wee appointments and relationships are those individuals, not the folk who put them there.

Meanwhile, we (the folk) are left to fend for ourselves, getting bombarded by this pish, while trying to earn a living.