Waste not want not, Gordon Brown tells families

From The Times
July 7, 2008
Britons are throwing away £1 billion of food a year
Philip Webster, Political Editor in Hokkaido

Families facing spiralling shopping bills were told by Gordon Brown yesterday to stop wasting food, as a government report said that Britons were throwing away groceries worth more than £1 billion a year.
A cross-Whitehall study into higher food costs has identified waste as a factor. The report said that British households disposed of four million tonnes of food each year that could have been eaten. The Cabinet Office inquiry into food policy, ordered by Mr Brown soon after he became Prime Minister, accuses families of wasting an average of £420 a year on food, The Times has learnt.
Mr Brown reinforced its message yesterday, calling on people to stop throwing food away as he travelled to the G8 summit in Japan. “If we are to get food prices down, we must do more to deal with unnecessary demands, such as by all of us doing more to reduce our food waste,” he said.
A second government report will blame the switch to biofuels in Britain and Europe for a big part in pushing up food prices. It will also raise serious questions over whether this has produced the environmental benefits that were expected from adding plant-based fuels to petrol and diesel.

The two reports, aiming to tackle the demand side of the food price problem, will be published as Mr Brown calls on the G8 to address the supply problems by taking action to double production of key food staples in Africa within 5 to 10 years.
He and other leaders will demand international action to contain food prices, including a doubling of investment in agricultural research and development, and help for training a new generation of scientists and experts in developing countries.
The 140-page Cabinet Office report on food, which took 10 months to prepare, was discussed by the Cabinet last Tuesday. It finds that, having been broadly stable for 20 years from 1985 to 2005, world food prices have risen substantially because of a combination of poor harvests in exporting countries, higher energy and fertiliser costs, the diversion to biofuels and a long-term rise in demand for grain.
The average British household now devotes 9 per cent of its spending to food, down from 16 per cent in 1984. But the poorest households use 15 per cent of their spending for food while the richest pay just 7 per cent.
The pressure is even worse for low-income households because they spend proportionately more on basic foodstuffs such as milk, eggs and bread – products that have seen the biggest price rises in recent months.
Globally, soaring food costs have hit developing countries the hardest. Household spending on food by poorer families in these areas is typically between 50 and 60 per cent of income.
The report is understood to conclude that cereal production needs to increase by 50 per cent and meat production by 80 per cent between now and 2030 to meet demand. The solution lies in raising production in the developing world.
If yields in Africa and elsewhere reached their potential, global food output would be much higher, far fewer people would go hungry and social instability would decrease. In the developing world, up to 40 per cent of food harvested is lost because of inadequacies in the processing, storage and transport systems, the report added.
“We would like to see production of key foodstuffs in Africa double,” Mr Brown said yesterday. There are growing warnings that soaring prices could spark unrest and political instability.
The Gallagher report on biofuels, to be published by the Transport Department, is expected to sound a warning that far more research is needed on the impact of biofuels such as corn ethanol and biodiesel on land use and food production before the Government sets any targets for their use in transport.
Britain is expected to press for EU targets on extending the use of biofuels to be scaled back. Food prices have risen because farmers have replaced traditional food crops with those to produce biofuels.
The Gallagher report is expected to accept there is a case for biofuels as an alternative to fossil fuels and a source of income for poor farmers.
But it will distinguish between first-generation fuels, which use food crops such as corn and rapeseed, and second-generation fuels, based on fibrous nonfood plants, which can be grown without taking the place of other crops and raising prices.
Mr Brown will today press for the creation of a new expert panel, similar to that on climate change, to be an early warning system on food supplies and demand, and the risk of price shocks.
One of the priorities at the G8 in Japan will be to give impetus to the struggling world trade talks to cut distortions in the markets and allow farmers in the developing world to exploit their comparative advantage.
Britain has already spent more than $1 billion on tackling rising food prices, through agricultural research, humanitarian relief and strengthening crop resistance to climate change.
In an interview at the weekend, Mr Brown said that there were “good and bad biofuels”.
The Prime Minister also said that rich nations must not abandon action to tackle climate change and world poverty in the face of the credit crunch.
Amid campaigners’ fears that the summit in Japan could see previous pledges on aid and global warming scaled back, the Prime Minister said they should, in fact, be accelerated.
“The world is suffering a triple challenge: of higher fuel prices, higher food prices and a credit crunch,” he said.
“My message to the G8 will be that, instead of sidelining climate change and the development agenda, the present economic crisis means that instead of relaxing our efforts we have got to accelerate them.
“This agenda is not just the key to the environment and reducing poverty, but the key to our economic future as well,” Mr Brown said.