You have probably noticed the cost of your supermarket trip rising – food prices have gone up 30% since April 2022.
Research by the Food Foundation found households struggling with the cost of food tended to cut back on fruit and veg, exacerbating health inequalities.
Food insecurity now affects one in eight households – one in six in households with children – a reality you may not have noticed unless you are living in one of those households.
The numbers are shocking, and that hardship is real; it has real world consequences for people – constraining opportunities, harming bodies, mental health, relationships.
Food costs are projected to rise further in the next 12 months, due to disruption caused by geopolitics and climate change.
Farmers are shouldering unsustainable levels of risk at the hands of volatile global markets and unprecedented weather.
For landowners looking for alternatives, solar farms can offer a relatively long term, reliable, predictable solution.
Objections to solar farms centre around taking farmland out of production. But there’s an even bigger issue when it comes to land for food: the rising numbers of poultry units in Lincolnshire. Feed for livestock takes up a wildly disproportionate land footprint to the food it provides, both in the UK and in the global South where it is driving deforestation.
The government’s recent national security assessment put it very clearly:
“The UK does not have enough land to feed its population and rear livestock: a wholesale change in consumer diets would be required.”
A wholesale change in diets is needed anyway, we already know this, for the sake of our health and the future of the NHS. The good news is that the kind of diet that is better for the planet is also better for the human body!
96% of adults don’t eat the recommended amount of fibre, and 91% of 11-18 year-olds don’t get their five-a-day. Chicken is presented as cheap, high quality protein, but the low price of chicken meat is thanks to the profit that can be made from low quality, unhealthy products derived from the rest of the carcass.
The foods we need to eat – and grow – more of are fruit, veg, beans, nuts, diverse whole grains. It’s hardly news for consumers, we now need to pay attention to how we prioritise land use and farming incentives.
A well-functioning food system is one that provides nutritious food for everyone, decent livelihoods for those growing and producing food, and protects the environment that underpins food production in the future, such as healthy soils, clean water, biodiversity, a stable climate.
The UK food system is on the wrong trajectory to achieve this. Addressing these complex issues is the fundamental work of Food Partnership. Join us.
Article by Laura Stratford. First published in the Lincoln Independent
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