PPT link

Food Security, Peak Oil & Climate Change: the policy context

Tim Lang

talk to ‘Food Security & Peak Oil’ meeting, All Party Parliamentary Group on Peak Oil, House of Commons, Portcullis House, Thatcher Room, Westminster, March 25 2008

 
 
 

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This talk…. 

• What is the policy context?
• Why the interest now?
• What is the UK Gov’t position?
• What other positions are emerging?
• What is the way forward?

[& …if we have time]

6.   What issues require more attention?

 
 
 

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1. What’s the policy context?

 
 
 

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Food and Peak Oil 

• C20^th efficiency gains heavily oil-dependent
• 95% of all food is oil-dependent: on farm processing; distribution; retail; consumers
• Oil politics: price rises; finite; wars etc.
• Oil $100 barrel  +c.10% food prices (SDC 2007)
• Weak / mostly palliative policy response
• Emerging discourse of carbon-calories?

 
 
 

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Food and Climate Change 

• Food is single largest contribution:
• c19% total av UK household GHG
• Targets exist:
• on reducing emissions from buildings and operations
• no Govt strategy on reducing transport emissions
• Main food hotspots:
• meat & dairy, glasshouse vegetables, air-freighted produce, heavily processed foods and refrigeration

 
 
 

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Where Tesco sets its Carbon Footprint boundary (2007) 

source: Tesco (2007). Measuring our carbon footprint. Cheshunt: Tesco plc.  http://www.tesco.com/climatechange/carbonFootprint.asp

 
 
 

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Peak Oil & Climate Change are but latest entries to long FS discourse  

• Trade & Empire: less need to grow food  cheap food for cheap urban labour  WW U-turns  EU tie-in  multilevel governance
• Health & wellbeing: public health (Chadwick)  eugenics (Boer War)  rationing  NHS  obesity today
• Welfare & morality: facilities  affordability   income support  choice culture
• Supply efficiency: breeding  mechanisation   science  corporate control
• Demand: class  women’s skills  consumerism

 
 
 

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FS policy is complicated by different meanings… 

• Food nationalism: self-sufficiency, autarky
• Food defence: feeding in dire circumstances
• Food control: the actions of state (rationing)
• Food resilience: capacity to withstand shock
• Food risks: factors which threaten goals
• Food sovereignty: ensuring societal control
• Food democracy: full social engagement
• Food capacity: capability to produce

 
 
 

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2. Why the interest now?

 
 
 

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8 fundamentals loom 

• Commodity prices
• Climate change
• Fuel / oil / energy
• Water
• Land use (biofuels)

 
 

• Labour
• Demographics / affluence (BRICs +)
• Health / Nutrition transition

 
 
 
 

See:

1. T Lang (2008) City Leaders lecture: http://www.city.ac.uk/news/archive/2008/03_march/04032008_1.html

2. T Lang (2007) Rachel Carson lecture: http://www.pan-uk.org/Projects/RCML/index.htm

 

3. Chatham House project: http://www.chathamhouse.org.uk/research/global_trends/

 

 
 
 

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3. What is the UK Government position?

 
 
 

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Current food security policy 

• No new official food security policy (yet)
• Curry Commission (2002)
• Cabinet Office Strategy Unit 2007-08 review
• Some tensions: farm protection (CAP)
• General ‘market’ focus:
• Efficient supply chains (redoubled post Curry)
• Retailer-led standards
• Price conscious
• Emerging stress on public goods: environment, health, ethics, land
• Defra / HMT voicing new global position (2005)

 
 
 

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Defra 2006 FS paper 

• “Poverty and subsistence agriculture are root causes of national food insecurity. National food security is hugely more relevant for developing countries than the rich countries of Western Europe.” (p23)
• There is enough food to feed the world
• Self-sufficiency is an undesirable goal for a trading nation (and won’t work anyway)
• UK can and should buy on open markets and work for CAP reform (HMT & Defra 2005 A Vision for the CAP)
• Contingency planning is needed (p51)

 
 
 

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FS not important to a ‘modern’ rich economy? 

• Globalisation: restructuring e.g. WTO
• EU: CAP
• From quantity / security  + env’t (pillar 2)
• UK economic ‘direction of travel’ as finance, service and trading centre rather than production centre
•  return to ‘old’ policy agenda:
• Why have farming? (what is land for?)
• Triumph of 1840s ethos (again!)

 
 
 

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The UK Self-Sufficiency Ratio 1956-2005 
source: Defra Fd Sec Dec 2006 fig 6.1 pg 34

 
 
 

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Self-sufficiency ratios for a sample of commodities 1980-2005 Defra (2006) Fig 6-2, p 34

 
 
 

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Source: Defra 2007 Labour force statistics. York Dec 2007 

E+W AGRIC LABOUR FORCE 1996-2007 
NB 1983-1996 decline of total agri labour force was 28%  
(1996= change of data collection methodology)

 
 
 

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Food resilience (to shock)  

• UK is resilient with some problems exposed: Helen Peck 2006 Defra study

    http://www.defra.gov.uk/science/project_data/DocumentLibrary/FT0352/FT0352_4705_FRP.doc

• Potential shocks in FS discourse:
• Power (centralised + no back-up)
• Supply chain management
• Environment: long-term climate change?
• Health: avian ‘flu impact on labour?
• Transport: fuel prices up? (SDC study)
• Power: Russians turn off the gas?
• Taut supply chains = less storage?

 
 
 

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4. What other policy positions are emerging?

 
 
 

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Emerging competing positions (1) 

• Malthusians
• Eco-malthusians
• Armaggedons  Sci-Fi ‘Forever War’ where currency is calories
• Deniers
• ‘Something will come along’
• ‘Shop till we drop’
• Markets will sort it
• Chance to alter playing field (end subsidies)
• Redefine efficiency (wheat/maize biofuel=stupid)
• New land can come into play

 
 
 

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Emerging competing positions (2) 

• New ruralists / farm revival:
• Economic self-interest - Commercial Farmers Group
• Rural fabric: Women’s NFU / Baroness Byford (Shadow Minister for Food & Rural Affairs)
• Technical fix:
• new Green revolution: H₂0
• Biotechnology, GM, ‘biopesticides’
• Consumer fix:
• Alter diets
• Reduce waste

 
 
 

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Emerging competing positions (3) 

• Egalitarians:
• Rich over-consume; poor under-consume
• All need to change how we consume
• New Localists:
• Stop idiotic ‘exchange’
• Rebuild the local (what can be grown)
• Interventionists
• Price controls, rationing, etc
• Welfare: raise incomes to keep food affordable

 
 
 

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5. What is the way forward?

 
 
 

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Shift discourse to Food Capacity- reflecting the SD 3 pillars 

• Production capacity: production base, supply chain governance & necessary skills (at a time of fragile employment on land)
• Load-bearing capacity: food’s impact on environment, land and natural resources (in a time of climate change stress)
• Social capacity: all-important social dimension of consumption and consumer expectations (at a time of rising diet-related health costs and consumer expectations of low prices which fail to internalise full environmental costs)

 
 
 

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Roadmap for Food Capacity 

• Address all 8 fundamentals in systemic focus
• Think through governance implications (Gov’t lead)
• Work out on national/regional/local basis
• Build on embryonic thinking
• D.A.s: Wales, Scotland
• Civil society: Transition Towns movement
• Research: Zero Carbon Britain project (CAT)
• From CAP to Common Sustainable Food Policy

 
 
 

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Redefining UK Food Policy Goals 

• State:
• Must lead on what a sustainable food system should be - SDC (2008) ‘Green, healthy & fair’ http://www.sd-commission.org.uk/pages/supermarkets.html
• Supply chain:
• Work to omni-standards: nutrition, safety, GHGs, H₂0, fairness, etc.
• Consumers & civil society
• Eco-nutrition will require dietary change
• Shift to ‘values-for-money’

 
 
 

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UK has a lot of catching up? eg. Fruit

 
 
 

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6. What issues require  
more attention?

 
 
 

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i. What could a post PO food system look like to meet FS? 

• New vision needed
• Clear framework (learning from WW2?)
• Certain hotspots are likely

 
 
 

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ii. Dietary change? 

Meat & Dairy

• Major GHG source
• Big land use impact
• Poor health impact (excess)
• Poor converters
• Huge water impact

 

Fruit & Vegetables

• Major health gain
• Big skills requirement
• Seasonality issue
• Cultural challenge
• Not all land can grow!

 
 
 

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iii. Price rises almost inevitable? 

• Tackling consumer assumptions
• Price
• Availability
• Seasonality
• What would values-for-money look like?
• A big political decision cuts across conventional party lines

 
 
 

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iv. Public engagement 

• City review for Chatham House 2006: no publicly available studies on attitudes to FS
• Defra 5 studies on consumer SD behaviour change:
• Food sustainability consciousness low
• Behaviour change shaped by cost + individual benefits
• “If it was serious, the Gov’t would be doing something about it”  need for visible action by Gov’t + business
• Buying better products is more acceptable than changing lifestyles – consumers ‘locked in’ by children + food tastes

 
 
 

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v. Government role 

• Leadership: carrots not sticks
• Define what a sustainable food system is (SDC)
• Common Sustainable Food Policy?
• Develop omni-standards
• Key starting points:
• Land policy: food not biofuels
• Energy: reduce use / retrofit
• Skills: SD training across food supply chain
• Re-orient the market on sustainability grounds
• “Carry the people with us” not “hide behind Tesco”

 
 
 

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vi. Supply chain capacity 

• If 95% food is oil-dependent, what would a post or ‘less oil’ food economy look like?
• Which sectors need to change most?
• Cost: prices need to rise but how much would they? SDC $100 showed +5-10%
• Skills on farm – role for gardening / urban agriculture?

 
 
 

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vii. Consumers & civil society 

• Patchy understanding of precarious state of supply system (due to élitist debate)
• Low income consumers
• NGOs: FS could be a unifying issue beyond single issues
• Core issue is Constraint vs Choice Culture
• Rationing on sustainability grounds?
• Carbon, water, nutrition standards = omni-standards