Call for move to food self-sufficiency

By John Willman, Business Editor
Published: January 22 2009 01:16

Farmers should be encouraged to make the country 100 per cent self-sufficient in food production, according to one of Britain’s leading businessmen, who says it would create jobs and reduce carbon emissions.
In a letter to the Financial Times on Thursday, Sir Anthony Bamford, chairman and owner of JCB, the excavator manufacturer, says ministers are complacent about the decline in food self-sufficiency from 68 to 61 per cent in the past 10 years.

In a lecture last month to the Fabian Society think-tank, Hilary Benn, environment, food and rural affairs secretary, said the UK should not look solely to farmers to feed the nation, calling instead for international agreements to help secure food supplies abroad.
Sir Anthony, who owns organic mixed farms in Gloucestershire and Staffordshire, says the indifference to food self-sufficiency is a consequence of the absorption of the old Ministry of Agriculture into the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.
“A strong support of farming has shifted to a woolly focus on ‘rural affairs’, and their lack of interest in food self-sufficiency is further evidence,” he says. “Billions of unnecessary food miles clock up as we import indigenous foods such as potatoes, apples and sugar, causing congestion, road infrastructure costs, pollutions and greenhouse gas emissions.”
Sir Anthony says ramping up food production could boost jobs. The agri-food sector accounts for 6.9 per cent of the economy and employs 3.6m people – 13.8 per cent of British employees and more than four times as many as the car industry.
Mr Benn told the annual Oxford Farming Conference earlier this month that food imports, mainly of things the UK could not grow, were very important to the country and that more output could have damaging environmental consequences.
Sir Anthony’s letter reflects concerns expressed by other farmers at the conference that the government was more concerned about environmental issues than food production.
“British farmers are some of the most productive in the world,” Sir Anthony says. “Mr Benn should immediately announce clear actions that support them in production and make 100 per cent indigenous food self-sufficiency a priority.”
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009