What Government really needs to do now to stave off a food shock

Carwyn Graves

This week’s news that the UK Government is planning to suspend import tariffs on around 100 everyday food products is symptomatic of governmental failure at all levels in the UK to take food seriously.

A performative gesture that amounts to a tiny subsidy on foreign producers while doing nothing to increase people’s ability to feed their families, it also does nothing to increase real food security in the medium term.

There are, however, far-reaching measures that Governments at UK or Wales levels could easily and quickly take to substantially increase the supply of food for everyone in the country, while building up capacity in the system against any shocks that may lie down the line. These include directly and strategically supporting the horticulture sector and taking the potential of food grown in communities seriously.

Demand

As has recently been demonstrated by the National Preparedness Commission, there is persistent reluctance at UK Government level to plan for food security with the only reference to food in the latest version of the UK’s National Risk Register coming in the context of risks to food supply contamination.

Welsh Government’s national Resilience Framework contains no reference to food whatsoever.

In stark contrast to this, extensive work by the Food, Farming and Countryside Commission across the UK has found that citizens in all four countries overwhelmingly want Government to show leadership in this space – and based on the evidence, they think it is possible for us to move to a resilient system with more local food production, creating space for nature and feeding people better quality food – affordably.

This is backed up by people’s habits; we are buying more fruit and veg and allotment waiting lists continue to soar to all-time highs. In other words, where they are able to, people seem willing to spend a greater proportion of their shopping bill on fruit and veg – and are also keen to reduce that cost by growing their own. And when they do, evidence shows that they eat more fruit and veg, cut their spend by 50% and overwhelmingly give away some of their produce to boot.

Supply

‘You can’t eat money’ may be an aphorism for hard times – but it contains a truth that decades of peace have concealed to us. If, due to war, pestilence or extreme weather, countries like India were to decide to drastically curtail rice exports – or Senegal to restrict fruit and vegetable exports, the UK’s ability to pay for imports from elsewhere would be of little use. You can’t buy products that aren’t for sale.

The only solution to this is to drastically increase supply using the levers that are readily available – and targeting those parts of the food supply that can be increased most rapidly, for the greatest public benefit. That part is fruit and veg – where in many cases volumes of produce can be grown from a standing start in one growing season with minimal capital input or specialist processing, and which makes a significant difference to our ability to feed ourselves a decent diet.

Many of the levers to do this lie at Welsh Government level, and as the Welsh Veg in Schools project has recently shown, we have the expertise within our small horticulture sector to grow supply rapidly.

Even just two measures, taken by Plaid’s new Welsh Government now, could significantly increase the supply of fresh food for those who most need it within months, while also strategically laying foundations for food security against any shocks that may come in the late 2020s.

These would be, firstly, to announce a plan to immediately significantly increase access to land for allotment sites across Wales, by removing any planning or regulatory blockages to this. A comparatively small area of land in strategic locations – near urban populations – could meet a high proportion of our annual fruit and veg need. The new Sustainable Farming Scheme already contains provision for ‘optional’ actions, providing landowners with an income for this public service (on top of the rent), and allotment tenants with affordable access to land.

Secondly, Welsh Government should lead the way for the UK by announcing a strategic incentive for existing horticulture businesses to scale up their supply with a fast-track fund for capital investment in production, match-funded to a high level (e.g. 80%).

This would enable businesses to increase production within their existing supply chains, putting a downward pressure on prices and an incentive for retailers to expand stock. Sustained for two or three years with supporting messaging to the public, this might make a greater difference to public health than many other initiatives tried and abandoned over recent decades.

Crucially, it would grow the sector in capacity and skills and lay the foundations for resilience in the face of global instability. The full impact of this measure could only be seen were UK Government to buy in –  but it is absolutely in the Welsh national interest to provide a very visible pathway for UK Gov to opt into in this domain.

Feeding people

We live in an age where the gap between performative compliance and real outcomes on the ground has been recognised across the political spectrum as driving discontent among voters. Even the two simple measures outlined above would constitute visible, real action on the ground that, together, would make a substantive difference to the food security picture – at both national and household levels.

The current approach of incrementalism and the swath of recent announcements around food by the UK Government put us in a Groundhog Day cycle, where ineffective and unserious measures do nothing to alleviate the situation and are quickly superseded by events – leaving us if anything in an even worse situation than previously.

Only ambitious, joined-up thinking around food has any potential to actually alleviate the looming food security crises. If we wait till it’s too late – it will be.