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UK food report goes to the heart of the flaws in the production model
Felicity Lawrence, Guardian
The real waste is to reduce a historic study to soundbites
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What a waste. A report that could be the most significant piece of government work on the food system since the second world war has been thrown away with a bucket of Downing Street spin.
Whoever thought it a good idea to have Gordon Brown tell us to address the global food crisis by eating up our leftovers while he and other G8 leaders banqueted in Japan should surely have seen the lampooning coming. The real waste is that an excellent analysis, commissioned by the prime minister, of today’s food economy and its structural failures has been buried in the slops.
Food Matters, the report from the No 10 Strategy Unit, represents a radical shift in government thinking. There is a fault line running through it, but it is the first recognition since the 1947 Agriculture Act that not only is a supply of good, affordable food vital to political stability in rich and poor countries, but also it cannot be taken for granted.
The report formally admits to the enormous environmental damage and public-health harms associated with our current food system
(9 July 2008)
USDA Rule Change May Lead To Crops on Conserved Land
Joel Achenbach, Washington Post
Under pressure from farmers, livestock producers and soaring food prices, the U.S. Department of Agriculture is weighing a policy change that could lead to the plowing of millions of acres of land that had been set aside for conservation.
At issue is the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), under which the government has paid farmers to stop growing row crops, such as corn and soybeans, on 34 million acres across the country. Designed in the mid-1980s to hold down production and bolster commodity prices, the $1.8 billion-a-year program has turned into a major boon for conservation, with much of the acreage planted with perennial grasses or trees, or restored to wetlands.
But the ethanol boom, widespread flooding and high prices for feed crops have changed the equation.
(11 July 2008)
Growing awareness
Paul Evans, the Guardian
… Gardening has the power to transform lives and landscapes, but gardeners are nowhere near as green as they might like to think. A recent report, Plant for Life, produced for the Horticultural Trades Association (HTA), suggested that 65% of gardeners polled were worried about climate change, and just under half worried about the use of garden chemicals, the loss of green-belt land, trees and hedgerows, and noise pollution. But it implied that nearly half of Britain’s millions of gardeners were not bothered. Depressingly for environmentalists, 69% of those polled recognised the aesthetic importance of plants, but only 9% recognised their environmental benefits.
Reducing flooding
Nevertheless, gardens plays a crucial role in the environment debate. They account for 15%-25% of the land area in Britain’s towns and cities, and their importance in offsetting some of the effects of climate change – through plants absorbing CO2, cooling urban micro-climates and supporting wildlife, and soils absorbing rainwater run-off and reducing flooding – is a message that is beginning to create trends in gardening.
But the big changes in gardening in recent years have more to do with a return to traditional values. Andrew Maxted, commercial director for HTA, says: “Society has been through a substantial materialistic expansion in the last 10 to 15 years, but consumers now are more discriminating. In the same way that more people are looking to experience new cultures and taste real food when they go on holiday, rather than going on package holidays, this search for the authentic is feeding into lifestyles at home and transforming gardens. Having fresh fruit and vegetables, tasting the difference, and growing them yourself has financial benefits, but it’s [also] authentic, and gardening for the table is producing a massive demand.”
(9 July 2008)
