Recently in Food Security Category

I have lost count of the number of times I have listened to Professor John Beddington's 'perfect storm' speech.

At a high-level seminar on the future of agriculture in Westminster yesterday, the Government's chief scientific advisor gave the same speech I saw a year ago in a similar Westminster venue.

The only difference was his tie.

The perfect storm, he said, is a confluence of earth-shattering figures:

• World food reserves are at a 50-year low.

• By 2030 we need to be producing 50% more food to feed the growing population.

• At the same time, we will need 50% more energy.

• We will demand 30% more fresh water.

• And if that wasn't tough enough we must do this while reducing carbon emissions by 80% from 1990 levels by 2050.  
   

A YEAR ago, after trawling from one event to another at the Labour Party Conference I wrote about how peripheral food and farming were . 

Farming was on the very fringe of even the fringe events, mentioned, if at all, only passing in discussions on real Labour issues like the environment, animal welfare or the wellbeing farmers elsewhere in the world.

The one core farming event, the NFU fringe, was pitifully attended, after the conference organisers forgot to include it in the listings.

What a difference a year makes. Ok, so farming wasn't exactly vying with Gordon Brown's future, Andrew Marr's interview technique or how much the Party now loves Peter Mandelson as the main talking point this week in Brighton.

But nobody attending this year could be left in any doubt about just how far the subject has moved up the political agenda in the space of 12 months.

Defra Secretary Hilary Benn was at pains in his conference speech to tell his Party just how important farming and food production is to the nation and the world, as the number of mouths to feed soars towards nine billion by 2050.

Perhaps Farming Minister Jim Fitzpatrick got a little carried away when he said farmers would be the nation's 'heroes' at a fringe event on food security. He also said his job was to represent the views of the industry within Government on issues like the supermarket ombudsman, 'surely a first from a Defra Minister', as one veteran conference goer observed.

But of undoubted significance was the number of well-attended fringe events like this one that discussed food production as an entity in its own right and put farming at their heart.

There at another fringe event on food security was former Defra Minister and farming champion Jeff Rooker, in his new role as Food Standards Agency, commenting in reassuringly robust tones on subjects like GM food and the health benefits (or lack of them) of organic food.

He popped up again later, this time in the audience, at the NFU fringe, which, this year was teeming with MPs, peers, prospective candidates, lobbyists and journalists, wanting to hear the farming take on one of the hot topics of the day.

However, talk is cheap and irrelevant if it does not translate to action. Mr Benn backed his rhetoric in July with his decision on a set-aside replacement. But Wednesday's announcement from Wales on its approach to bovine TB served as a reminder that he has some way to go yet before many farmers see him as an ally in their efforts to produce food.

The other problem - as everybody in Brighton was painfully aware - is that this Government might not be around for much longer to act on its new found awareness

of the nation's farming heroes.

I have just spotted a great comment on the news story 'Farming can deliver on food security - CLA' on our home page.

A chap whose signature name is 'If only I were PM' points out how desperate times are when the industry has to point out that 'farmers can produce food'.

I am inclined to agree.  

Having to point out that farmers can deliver on food security is about as useful as saying car manufacturers can deliver transport solutions.

Not really rocket science.  

But somehow it has taken more than a dozen Defra Ministers a dozen years to make the connection between food and farming.

Finally, last week Hilary Benn said he wanted British farmers 'to produce as much food as possible'. After a decade of falling production he said British farmers held the key to sustainable food production. At last! But will he act on his rhetoric?

It is important that farmers hold him to his comments or he might forget and go back to thinking food is grown by leprechauns.