It’s been over a year since the Foresight report ‘The Future of Food and Farming: Challenges and choices for global sustainability’ was published in January 2011 and what a year it’s been! We’ve taken time to talk to stakeholders about how the report has affected them, which you can see in the video below.
The subject of sustainable agriculture is one of the most important issues we face today and one that is close to my heart. As the world population grows we need to look at ways to ensure that we are able to produce enough food to meet human need and overcome significant challenges to our natural resources. Currently, food production systems are unsustainable: without change the global food system will continue to degrade the environment and compromise the world’s capacity to produce food in the future, not to mention contributing to climate change.
Within UK Government, we’ve worked closely with our sponsor departments: DFID and Defra as well as NGOs such as OXFAM, FAO and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
DFID has worked hard to meet the commitments set out in the Food and Farming Futures Action Plan. Defra’s Minister of State for Agriculture and Food, Jim Paice MP, mentions in the video that the report has “really become the lodestar which guides all our work”, a testament to the hard work Foresight has put in to the project.
Internationally, we’ve worked with China and Brazil in developing their strategies and helped the African Union explore their priorities.
This week, I gave the keynote speech at the Westminster Food & Nutrition Forum event at the Royal Society. It was a chance to reiterate the importance of maintaining discussion and progress surrounding the issues of climate change, the growing population (late last year, world population reached 7 billion!) The next billion is expected by 2025, increasing demand for food, water and energy.
There is still hope, but we must start now. We need to push food security higher up the agenda at summits such as G20 and Rio+20 and continue to raise the profile of hunger around the world (a billion people go hungry and almost another billion suffer from lack of nutrition). We need to make the best use of agricultural technologies; from simple solutions like agro-forestry, improved irrigation to high tech advances in biotechnology. We need to do our best to reduce waste both domestically and globally. Most importantly, we need agriculture to work harder to reduce hunger by improving the sustainability of the food system around the world.
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The Food Standards Agency RIFE 16 reports high levels of Caesium 137, Tritium and Iodine 131 in marine samples along the Somerset coast, downwind of the Hinkley Point nuclear site. Can you take soil samples to test for Caesium 137 deposits within 25km downwind of Hinkley Point and sample Somerset milk products for contamination with Strontium 90.
Hi, It’s very interesting to learn directly from Sir John what’s happened over the past year since the Foresight report was published. However, the Future of Food & Farming Action Plan did promise that the High-level Stakeholder Group would publish a ‘One Year Review’ in early 2012. Has this promise been kept please?
Thanks for the message.
Foresight have been working with key stakeholders to produce this one year review since January 2012. It’s available on the website.
http://bis.gov.uk/foresight/our-work/projects/published-projects/global-food-and-farming-futures/one-year-review
Hi, Many thanks for the reply. Could you tell me when the One Year Review was publsihed please?
Hi Simon,
It was published last week (23 May 2012) at the Westminster Food & Nutrition Forum event.
Please I will be most grateful to receive a copy of the Report from you, so I am informed indepth to make informed decisions and take decisive actions.
Thanking you sincerely
JC
If you google ‘Environment Agency RIFE 16′ you can follow the links via the Food Standards Agency to the RIFE 16 ‘Radioactivity in Food and the Environment, 2010′ report, read and/or download it.
Please, I will be most grateful to receive a copy of the Report from you, so I may have in-depth information at my finger-tips, to make informed decision and take decisive actions.
Thanking you sincerely
JC
Hi JC,
You can order a free copy of the report through the website, by clicking the “order here’ link.
http://bis.gov.uk/foresight/our-work/projects/published-projects/global-food-and-farming-futures/reports-and-publications
Do you have a soft copy of this report? Veryv interesting article indeed
See comment above.
Keep close; But NOTE : Global Cassava Partnership Second Scientific Conference GCP21-II will be held in Kampala, Uganda: June 18-22: http://bit.ly/KJdUes
“Most importantly, we need agriculture to work harder to reduce hunger by improving the sustainability of the food system around the world”
I disagree. Agriculture does not need to work harder nor produced more from its depleting natural resources. This is how we’re going to solve the world food problem.
1. We are going to tell people that they are gluttonous and consuming significantly more than their body requires for maintenance and health. That in itself will save a massive amount of demand upon the earth’s resources as less food will need to be produced. There will likely be a balance on the supply side which can be used to equate the shortage in other parts of the world where required.
2. By doing this, we will simultaneously have an effect which is positive upon the health of all those who are currently obese. The vast financial resources that we will save can be deployed to much more productive and long-term projects.
3. If only the relevant government departments would get to work on the absurd level of perfectly edible food which is currently wasted, the need which Sir John and others perceive for us all to produce more would be appreciated as not required. It’s a tiny example, but my daughter has been living very healthily from the waste (non-meat) in skips in Newcastle whilst at university.
These are just the starting blocks, but they are huge starting blocks. With the right willpower they can be achieved far faster than any scientific project will deliver significant change. Furthermore, they don’t have the risk of nasty side-effects, and will provide long-lasting benefits for everybody.
What would be wrong with announcing this to be the new policy mix?
Hi Oliver,
Defra’s contribution in the One-year Review discusses the UK’s food waste reduction plans.
Thanks.
I’ve got a CD ROM copy of the RIFE 16 ‘Radioactivity in Food and the Environment, 2010′ from the Food Standards Agency section of the Environment agency. It might also be available on the EA website.
Dear Jo
It is great you have such information documented (CD ROM); will last longer and provides well for reference purposes, yet you may still make best use of it as a benchmark for future analysis, arguments and development.
I was wondering if you could avail me a copy so I may see what information it may have additional to what I already know, to generate more thinking.
Kind regards
JC Amone
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I lecturer in ecological building and have for a number of years been looking into how a building can be built with materials that replicate the best quality earth in the world.
It turns out that the best quality earth in the world has a paramagnetic element. That is a soil that contains volcanic rock-dust with a high paramagnet element. This produces well mineralised plants reduces the need for fertilisers and improves the quality of our food,
Our UK soils can be upgraded with this soil technology.
Has this been considered in your reports?
Hi Bob
This sounds very interesting research, can you recommend any places to find out more i.e. websites, academic papers/publications etc.
Thanks
Sean
We are in very interesting times, we live on a planet with finite resources (to all intents and purposes) yet we operate on an infinite growth paradigm of cyclical consumption with a relatively non existent recycling strategy. The earth itself has a carrying capacity for the lifeforms on it, currently the earth has more than enough to sustain the population of the planet. But as population grows we will reach a tipping point, so we need to educate population about this danger or we face mass starvation and death. The current agricultural practices are archaic, soil erosion will eventually render land unfarmable. We need to look at alternative methods of food production such as Aquaponics and hydroponics. We must remember we live on an emergent, symbiotic, synergistic planet and assess impact on a delicately balanced ecosystem.
Apologies for the missing words from my last post!
We need to find alternate methods of sustainability decouple ourselves from the death grip of this infinite growth paradigm.