Food Security was deeply unfashionable for most of the last fifteen years, during which I have served on Synod?s Rural Group, though we members spoke anxiously about it, as our countryside faced crisis after crisis. Gradually TV chefs like Jamie and Hugh brought the subject obliquely to our attention as they spoke of buying local produce and of growing our own food In 2009, the politicians suddenly noticed that food, like oil, couldn?t be taken for granted. Hilary Benn told the Oxford Farming Conference that he wanted “British agriculture to produce as much food as possible-no ifs, no buts”. Successive poor harvests, volatile commodity prices, a growing world population, riots over food shortages in developing countries had brought shivers down the spines of those who had thought the countryside was purely for enjoyment.

The UN says world food production must increase by 50% by 2030. But Climate Change (and current public opinion) demands that this be done in a way that sustains the environment and safeguards the landscape.

But the reality of producing more while impacting less poses dilemmas for producers. Research and development has declined with the closure of   educational facilities, such as Wye College. Preservation of the environment has been such a dominant factor, especially after the revulsion to the earlier food mountains, and the EU?s support programmes of the past decade have been linked to this rather than to actual production. There are few “mountains” now.

The popular growth of free-range and organic produce has hidden the concurrent drops in production. The new Pesticides Authorisation Regulation will take 15-20% of previously approved crop protection products from the market. Yet climate changes are already bringing new diseases to crops and livestock, as well as distinct alterations in what we can now (or will soon be able to) grow or not grow in the UK.

Animal welfare is rightly paramount but the demand to ban battery cages and genetically modified crops might need to be re-assessed. Free range hens may well have a greater carbon footprint! Improving efficiency, by  producing more with less, is not yet acceptable to the vocal public, if it means so-called “intensive farming”. Yet, Dutch farmers can produce staggering amounts of food in a relatively small area. The weather, too, still governs most production throughout the world.

A campaign to stop meat-eating in order to save the planet is simplistic and ill informed. Grassland makes a positive contribution as a carbon sink. Bovine TB is killing massive numbers of cattle and many hectares now grow bio-fuel, not food, as crops. How complex it all is.
A million farmers have just been asked for their suggestions on how to meet the challenge of feeding the world. (www.fwi.co.uk/globalpoll). But, God Willing, they will continue to harness the miracle of photosynthesis, by converting solar energy into energy for human and beast.

Diana Taylor