The British government raised the bar on New Year’s Resolutions on January 4 when it released its 20 years worth of pledges in Food 2030. Eat more fruits and veg, lose weight, buy local, sustainable and fair trade, grow your own, stop wasting so much, make full use of people power… the list goes on.
But what makes the list a game-changer in terms of food – and that stands even if the specific resolutions meet the same fate as most peoples’ new year resolutions – is that it’s not a to-do list. This is the first time that the government of a major world power has committed itself to a food strategy. Reports on response plans to a specific problem — be it obesity and diabetes rates, skyrocketing food prices, hunger, food-borne diseases outbreaks, or whatever – have become standard government issue over the past two decades. This report bears down on the need for a strategy that highlights food connections across the spectrum of government departments and life connections.
As odd as it seems, a comprehensive food policy or strategy, dealing with the whole enchilada and lifecycle of food and the entire range of groups that need to be engaged, has not been attempted by any major government. My new year’s prediction is that this first stab at filling a major hole in government policy around the world will start to be widely imitated soon, and we will have Her Majesty’s Government in the UK to thank for it.
The need for a strategy has evidently bothered Gordon Brown since he became English prime minister and asked for a report on food’s future from the strategy office of cabinet, a slap in the face of the ministry normally charged with food, DEFRA (the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs). That office published the 2008 report called Food Matters, which called on all government departments to link and integrate their efforts around food, instead of treating it as the turf of one government department, usually one charged with responsibility for agriculture and rural affairs, one small part of the food story and impact. After Food Matters came out, Hilary Benn was instructed to come up with a long-term plan on behalf of a special cabinet committee, and Food 2030, signed off by DEFRA but with a strong forward by the PM, is the result.
At the media conference for the release of the report, Benn raised the stature of food security in the government’s overall agenda to energy security – for anyone who understands what governments do to support energy security, a huge hike in government heft. Benn then went to a farm conference and issued a call from the report that “people power can help bring about a revolution in the way food is produced and sold.” Though blarney is often associated with government reports, it’s not every day that senior ministers issue calls for people power and revolution.
By North American political standards, the level of discussion in the British report is almost unimaginably high. There is not one reference to food banks, for example, because it is stated forthrightly that ensuring the right to access food by people on limited incomes is the direct responsibility of government.
Also unusual, food production is subjected to the government’s overall commitment to “decarbonizing” the economy, moving quickly toward sustainability and meeting strict goals to prevent global warming; it’s more common for food production to be ruled an exception, both by national governments and United Nations agreements such as Kyoto. Waste is identified as a major action project, again unusual on the world scene, where all efforts are bent to increase production, not curtail waste, which commonly accounts for half the food that is produced. National responsibility to provide land for the one-third of Brits who wish to garden – doubtless building on the city of London’s commitment to organize 201 community gardens in time for the Olympics — is also accepted. Strong international commitments to food security are also highlighted throughout the report.
Unfamiliar with such a high level of political discussion on food, the Globe and Mail issued a front page story seriously misrepresenting Food 2030. The Globe report argued that Food 2030 took a harsh position on the trend to local food, when in fact the report simply stated the obvious — that local food is not a cure-all and has a long way to go before it becomes socially and environmentally sustainable. Likewise, the Globe report presumes that frequent references in Food 2030 to the need for innovative production methods – blindingly obvious to anyone familiar with the need to feed another three billion people on the planet by 2050, at a time when fossil fuels are due to diminish – are supportive of genetic engineering. Not too likely, given that there are no references to GE in the report, in all likelihood a sign of respect to DEFRA’s chief science advisor, Bob Watson, author of a major report for the United Nations in 2007 indicating that GE’s ability to feed the world was based on more hype than science, and that true innovation needed to centre on changing power relations more than seeds.
British food and environment groups were non-plussed by Food 2030. All talk, no action, charged Jeanette Longfield of Sustain, which campaigns for laws banning junkfood ads to children. It sidesteps the issue of meat reduction, charged leaders of Friends of the Earth.
These and other shortcomings need to be aired. But a new discussion has been joined, or as the Brits would say, “joined up,” and a page has been turned in public policy discussions on food.
(Adapted from Now Magazine, January 14-20, 2010)
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