Benn to unveil food strategy

The long-awaited strategy will draw together a range of policy strands that have gained increasing prominence in recent years, including food security, climate change, the environment, managing natural resources, nutrition and obesity.

Mr Benn is expected to emphasise the role farmers will have to play in the strategy when he delivers a speech on ‘a new age of agriculture’ at the flagship farming conference on Tuesday morning (January 5).

The strategy will focus on how industry and Government can work together to continue to reduce farming’s environmental impact, manage natural resources and biodiversity, and adapt to climate change. There will also be an emphasis on research and development and improving skills in the industry.

The strategy is the culmination of various investigations into food policy by the Government, prompted by the events of 2008 that saw a dramatic rise in food prices spark riots in some parts of the world.

In July 2008, the Cabinet Office Strategy Unit’s ‘Food Matters’ report called for food policy to better integrated across Government and highlighted climate change and obesity as key challenges.

Defra published an assessment of UK food security in August 2009 looking at what the nation’s food system might look like in 2030, the key messages of which have been incorporated into the strategy.

Farmers are likely to be presented with opportunities and threats in a strategy that will reach way beyond the question of how to ensure there is enough food to satisfy growing demand.

Mr Benn appeared to signal a new approach within Defra towards farming when he told the 2009 Oxford conference he wanted ‘British agriculture to produce as much food as possible. No ifs, no buts’.

But NFU president Peter Kendall expressed concern that other parts of Government had still not got the food security message. He called on the Treasury, who he recently criticised for making cuts affecting farmers in the Pre-Budget Report, to ‘take a long-term approach’ to the issue, as it has done with climate change.

“This strategy needs to put in place the building blocks that will help us meet realistic demand for food – and not just for lentils and cabbage – from a population rising to 70 million by 2030, with as little impact on the environment as possible,” he said.

Tenant Farmers Association chairman Greg Bliss is unconvinced by Defra Ministers’ rhetoric on food and farming. He said the Department had ‘largely forgotten the need to preserve a vibrant agricultural industry in Britain’ and called for the re-establishment of a dedicated Cabinet post for agriculture and food.

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