Why "food security" is just protectionism rebadged.

***

This exploration of so-called “food security” starts with an article in the Sunday Telegraph by Bee Wilson.

“Will we soon be stockpiling canned mandarin segments and clawing one another’s eyes out over powdered milk in Tesco?”

Apparently “food campaigners” have been begging us to face up to this dark future for some time now. According to the doyen of such food campaigners, Tim Lang, Professor of Scaring the Pants Off Us About Food at City University suggests (according to Bee) that we are “sleepwalking”:

“…into a future where our food security was likely to be undermined, whether by natural disasters, rising fuel costs, climate change or the massive pressures placed on the global food system by a rising population.”

Be afraid, be very afraid…we are all doomed unless…unless we buy into the food security deal. Which takes us to the prosaic little document entitled “Food 2030” that the former Department for Agriculture has produced. Littered with words like “resilience”, “sustainable” and “healthy” this is where it’s at when it comes to the future strategy for our supply, consumption and attitude towards food. And the big deal is another producer-driven protectionist ramp – “food security”.

“Food 2030” starts (after the sick-making foreword from Gordon Brown) with the usual lecture and an assumption that the “challenges” are solvable through a “more joined up food policy”. Once it has settled down a bit it takes us to a strange, Stalinist world where markets, the creativity and innovation of individual farmers and the choices of consumers are as nothing besides the issue of “food security”.

Suffice it to say I don’t agree. I don’t believe the world is in imminent danger of running short of food and the “food security” argument is about protecting already wealthy farmers, powerful food distributors (aka supermarkets) and the role of bureaucrats in the food and agriculture sector.

In essence “Food 2030” for all its greenery, self-righteous smugness and “consultation” is a proposal to reduce free trade in food, to build protectionist barriers and to direct money to the food industry at the expense of us consumers and those who grow the basic raw produce. Nothing new in any of this, of course, but now it is wrapped in the language of greenery, of sustainability and the saving of the planet. It’s no longer about ensuring our farmers can afford a new Range Rover but about reducing carbon footprints and making us all more healthy (and I’m sure the Range Rover will be a hybrid).

I will be writing about protection in agriculture, the wrongness of geographic designations and the continued capture of food policy by food producers and distributors – mostly to the cost of us consumers. I might even throw in a recipe or two!

...