With Putin’s warmongering having further exposed the fragility of the world’s food supply, it is worth reflecting on another Vladimir, Lenin, who wrote over 100 years ago: “Every society is three meals away from chaos.” During the Covid-19 pandemic people fought in shops over loo rolls, imagine the reaction if we were to run short of food!

Some Tory politicians think the UK doesn’t need to worry about growing its own food, because we’re relatively wealthy and can buy what we need from other countries. North Dorset’s MP Simon Hoare recently wrote about the need to sustainably increase UK food production, but focused entirely on livestock farming and claimed there is no ‘argument to sustain’ a decline in the livestock sector.

West Dorset MP Chris Loder has similarly written about how effective pastureland is as a carbon sink, and said that science does not support a plant-based diet.
Can I respectfully suggest they need to look more closely at the evidence, perhaps starting with DEFRA’s reports on the UK’s food security and land use.
DEFRA acknowledges that the biggest medium- to long-term risk to the UK’s food production comes from climate change and other environmental pressures like soil degradation, water quality and biodiversity. It also estimates that climate change will cause a more than tenfold increase in heat-stress for livestock, particularly in the South-West.

Livestock presently forms the major part of Dorset’s farming industry, but we can and must change that because at present we have to import so much of what we eat.
Animal farming is a hugely inefficient way of producing food, using large areas of land to produce relatively little food. About 71 per cent of UK land is used for agriculture, and 72 per cent of that is grassland for grazing. Most of the wheat, barley and oats we grow in the UK is used for animal feed, and we have to import almost half our fresh vegetables and a staggering 84 per cent of our fruit.

With the changing climate we cannot rely on other countries to be able to provide what we need.
Properly planned food production can go hand in hand with the restoration of the wildlife habitats of which we have lost so much. It is not an either/or situation.
Farming is the most important occupation, bar none. Without food we cannot survive. So we need to encourage younger people into the profession, and properly reward forward-looking and innovative farmers for their efforts. Where necessary they should be subsidised for producing all the varieties of food we need, and doing so organically in ways that regenerate the health of our depleted soils, make our waterways clean again, increase biodiversity and capture carbon. Our healthy future depends on it.
Statistics from: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/united-kingdom-food-security-report-2021/united-kingdom-food-security-report-2021-theme-2-uk-food-supply-sources