The Source

It is not often that a book about the future of the British food industry and the UK’s food policy makes it onto a newspaper Christmas book list, but 2020 is like no other year and this is no ordinary book.

The book’s author, Tim Lang has been involved with issues surrounding food policy since he first started working with his viewpoint also shaped by spending seven years as a hill farmer. He is currently Professor of Food Policy at the Centre for Food Policy, City University, London which he founded in 1994 and then directed until 2016. His ideas for reform right down to the grassroots of food production appear highly relevant as the arrival of Brexit threatens to change both the farming and food producing landscape for good.

While Lang sat down two years to research and write this book his interest was originally sparked 40 years ago when he read an early Penguin Special book about preparing for the then approaching war in which food was viewed as a strategic and defence issue. By contrast, he says, in the last half century few in Europe have had to think about the full range of what exactly is meant by food ‘security’ with the term now used mainly for discussions around hunger. The major discovery he made in writing the book he tells me is that the UK’s food system is ‘messier and more fissured by complex mixes of good and bad than even I had suspected.’

Lang believes that the withdrawal of subsidies in favour of environmental reforms will result in a big shake-out in the farming industry.  How does he think that UK food producers can step up to the challenge of public preference for cheaper foodstuffs (imports) following Brexit?  ‘Maybe remembering the Boston Tea Party and being prepared to take cheap, lower standard imports seriously? Taking the issues to the public – do you or do you not want farmers at all?  Start feeding people direct via short supply chains? Lobbying? There are many things farmers can do.’ He suggests.

How can we support British food production and engender better purchasing?  ‘The elephant in the food policy room is consumption. Consumers are not being helped. They should be. There is more attention on shaving bits of CO2 from production than on persuading consumers to eat and choose differently.’ He insists.

How then does he think UK food producers and the UK public food buying sector can come together to the advantage of both? ‘It’s difficult when there are long chains. Personal relations and agreement on the values desired are essential even when there are short supply chains.’

For those who won’t make it to reading the whole 500 pages of this thorough and fascinating book on the politics of our food right now, how we got to where we are and how to fix it he concludes: ‘The UK needs to build a more diverse, regional and decentralized food system; decide whether it wants continued economic and market concentration of power in the hands of a few giant companies; rethink land use to give more priority to horticulture and to reduce in a planned way grain-fed animal production being the norm; bring in new legal powers to set strong clear targets for lowering environmental and health damage and to give institutions some leverage to accelerate the change to meeting goals; introduce a more grown up discussion and engagement with consumers about the need to alter diets now.’