Scientist attacks reliance on food imports

The chairman of food policy at City University in London, Prof Tim Lang, said the response to the challenges posed by the growing need for food both domestically had so far been “patchy” and growing more food was not the answer to fixing stresses in the country’s food systems.

Prof Lang was among a number of international food and farming experts speaking at a University of Leeds conference on the issues of food security and health, where it was also warned that the recent drought conditions seen in part of the UK could be seen more often because of the effects of climate change.

Prof Land told the Yorkshire Post that as a nation the UK had become complacent in its pursuit of food production and that over-reliance on imports had been now going on for more than 150 years.

He said the idea that Britain as a wealthy country could afford to buy its food from abroad was “neo-liberal thinking based on the politics of empire” and that while there was growing awareness that Britain and the rest of the world was going to need more food to deal with growing populations “the sustainability arguments have not captured policy-makers”.

“A process has begun but the coherence is not there yet. We are not being honest about the enormity of what we have to do.

“We are currently eating as if there are three planets to provide us food. In the United States they eat as if there are five planets.”

He said that there remained a great deal of opportunity for farmers in Yorkshire and the UK to grow but farming was still viewed in a negative light as a career choice and needed increased skill levels in order to flourish.

“Britain has the perfect climate for growing fruits and for 30 years we have been destroying our fruit trees. We are only consuming about half of the amount of fruit we should for nutritional purposes.

“But three quarters of the apples and pears we eat are from abroad. We need to focus on altering minds and mouths, as well as markets.”

A former farmer in West Yorkshire, Prof Lang, who is an adviser to the World Health Organisation and has advised the Government in the past on food and health issues, was a speaker at the university’s Africa College International Conference on Food Security, Health and Impact Knowledge Brokering Conference.

He told delegates: “We now throw away 30 per cent plus of all purchased food. We wrap it up in plastic or in paper which we have to cut down trees for. The NHS by 2050 will have to spend £50bn just to treat people with heart diseases due to obesity.”

Elsewhere a professor of climate change at the university, Andy Challinor, warned that the droughts seen in parts of the UK due to the unseasonably dry weather were something that were likely to be seen more often because of the effects of global warming.