Simply growing more food will not achieve security - Yorkshire Post Letters

How does the Government’s plan for us to grow more of our own food relate to the objective of food security? On the one hand, it may be excessive. Security doesn’t require that we grow all our own food in ‘normal’ times, but rather that we have the capability for ramping up to this when the need arises.

If, however, it isn’t feasible to produce all the food we need (as well as the animal feedstuffs, fertiliser, pesticides, fuel and agricultural equipment required for this), then simply growing more than we do now will not achieve food security. A policy for that must, as in John Galsworthy’s Foggartism, look also at population level.

Unfortunately, governments of all shades have followed the path of growing our population (with only the occasional burst of rhetoric to the contrary). Bringing in more foreign farm workers will hardly help: if temporary they may not be available in a crisis, if settled here with their families they will be more mouths to feed.

A strategy including reliance on imported food may have made sense during our century or more as the leading naval power and largest exporter. That time has passed.

Our economy is no longer tied to our mineral deposits and less of our activity needs to be located in Britain. Many of us could be based anywhere and preferably somewhere much closer to plentiful supplies of food.

We and other countries recognise highly able people as an asset. The challenge for us now is to increase the proportion of our next generation who are of such calibre, both to meet our own needs and so they will be welcome as migrants to other places.