Food security - it's for the birds

With recent shifts in geopolitical tempo, from Venezuela to tensions involving our closest allies, it seems only natural to consider just how woefully unprepared Britain is for war when it comes to food security. Ukraine, once considered the breadbasket of Europe, with enviable climatic variation, polder-esque irrigated land and lush soils akin to the Fertile Crescent of the Levant, is now at breaking point, with up to five million people facing de facto starvation according to the World Food Programme.

When a country renowned for its sprawling grain fields and yellow smiles of sunflowers can be brought to this point, it should concentrate minds. If the government wants to get serious about UK defence, it is time we retook a holistic approach and rediscovered the Dunkirk era “Dig for Britain” spirit. Food security is national security.

As it stands, the UK is around 62 percent self-reliant in food, rising to roughly 74 percent for food that can actually be grown domestically. This figure has remained broadly static for the last six years, according to the Office for National Statistics, with some variation depending on methodology. By my maths, of the circa 70 million people officially living in the UK, if all trade routes were blocked, British farmers could feed just over 43 million.

When Boris Johnson came to power and we voted to “get Brexit done”, I had a naive sense of optimism. After the deadlock of the “Brexit means Remain” May tenure, I hoped we would finally see ministers who believed in a self-confident, self-reliant Britain. Quietly, I hoped for a smaller version of what Trump pursued in the US. I even relished the thought of WTO tariffs on cheap pears flooding in from the EU.

Unfortunately, this was not to be. The Conservatives missed a golden opportunity, a second agrarian revolution for the UK. Instead of investing strategically in domestic food production, Johnson fell back on green credentials, ushering in a protracted and, in my view, disastrous expansion of environmental schemes.

Farmers were paid handsome sums to down tools, turn their backs on generationally loss-making food production, and align their chakras, bowing to the rising sun and becoming “one with nature”. The most heinous of these schemes has been the widespread sowing of winter bird food. You have probably all seen these hideous winter fields of what look like weeds. They are meant to encourage birds. I cannot say I have seen more birds, but I have seen more rats.

Of the circa 17 million hectares of farmed land in England in 2021, around 5.6 million hectares are now enrolled in environmental schemes. This has not only withered our food security; it has turned farmland into a new investment class. A guaranteed income, backed by a government covenant and requiring minimal effort, has drawn smart money into land ownership, pricing out genuine family farmers.

The data lags behind reality, but boots-on-the-ground farmers will tell you plainly that the expansion of environmental schemes with limited environmental return has already damaged, and will continue to damage, the UK’s precarious food security position.

UK agricultural policy is broken. It needs reform.

ALASTAIR LARGE